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Sixteen Degrees Of Separation
With the release of the new SDK, fans are treated to a showing of forward motion by a company bearing the name Amiga. The new management has gone out of its way not to announce projects until they're near completion, and this forward motion is only creating angular momentum for the thousands of Amiga zealots who are getting in line to wait for new hardware. While most take a wait-and-see attitude towards the new Amiga, there's certainly a lot of excitement brewing with partnership deals with Corel and the strong support of Linux as a development platform for the new AmigaOS.
The guys at Amiga are interested in doing something new and interesting. I recently spoke to Amiga VP of Development Fleecy Moss. "The concept of an operating system has been dying for quite a long time. What we're looking at is creating a dynamic digital environment, in which the most important thing is the producers and consumers of digital [content] matter, and they don't really care how they got there, or what they used to get there, they just got into this environment. You know, you can take it anywhere, you should be able to use any hardware with it. For the lynxey type, the hackers, the geeks, whatever you want to call them, they would want to get down dirty and nasty with the stuff. But even a lot of that stuff, a lot of them would rather get on and actually produce and do stuff, rather than having to go down and find that driver, and change their config files and all that stuff. We're really trying to create this higher environment for developers and for users. It really is where we're moving towards the Gibson dream."
While the guys back in the home office cook up new things to connect us, the Amiga community is all about community. These guys are hardcore zealots fighting for their platform like angry lions. I recently got the opportunity to speak to Wayne Martin, news manager at Amiga.org, an Amiga news and information site.
Slashdot: What is the most important thing in the Amiga community right now?
Wayne: Being involved, I think. It's going to take a while for the new systems to arrive on the market, and it's pointless just sitting around and waiting for them to come. People need to be involved in promoting the Amiga. People need to start code, planning new projects, generally just getting involved. People really need to be active, they need to be out there, saying 'Look, we've got this brand new operating system coming out, and it has got features that nothing else has. It's the best, we think it's the best, here try it.' Amiga's got the best activists in the world."
Slashdot: What excites you about the new Amiga operating system?
Wayne: That it gives users choice. Instead of being restricted to the PC, you get to pick what hardware you want, and after all, that's the most expensive part of the computer. If you've got a job that doesn't require a 500Mhz Pentium III, a smaller chip, something cheaper, you can pick what you want because the operating system runs on so many chips and so many pieces of hardware. It gives the user the choice that they really need.
Slashdot: Do you feel that the purchase of the Amiga name from Gateway was a good idea?
Wayne: Yes, I do think it was a good idea. Gateway had some good plans, but I don't think their heart was quite in it, really. I think they meant well, but it really needs to be in the hands of people that want it on the market as much as the community does, and that's what the new Amiga brings, because it's staffed by Amigans, and you're not going to screw yourself over.
Slashdot: What's the best thing about being a part of the Amiga community?
Wayne: I think being able to go anywhere, and knowing that there's somebody there who knows what it's like to be an Amigan, who has been through the same things. It's like having a giant network of friends all over the world. You can go and stay at people's houses, if you want. You can be sitting on a bus, and talking to a person, find out they're an Amigan, and instantly, you're friends. You don't get that on the PC, if you're sitting next to somebody on the bus, and 'Oh, you use Windows, too!' It's not exactly the same kind of thing. When you're an Amigan, it passes being a computer user. There are some Amiga users who use it and they love it. There are some people who go much further than that, and it's more of a religion. It's coming even closer to a race of people, in a way, who all seem to think the same. They're very stereotypical, fanatical in some cases, but I think it's all generally there that the people have the right idea, and they're there for the long haul.
Slashdot: What is the stereotypical Amigan?
Wayne: A stereotypical Amigan is fanatical, loudmouthed, doesn't shut up about the Amiga, somewhat like me, I'm a perfect example. If you can possibly realize why we are so like that, you can see. It's like having this brilliantly cool toy, and nobody else can experience it like you have. It's almost like having a divine experience to search for words, something like this. You've got to tell everybody about it. They may not understand, but if you can get through to one more person, wow. That's them helped out, especially in the world of the Microsoft monopoly.
Slashdot: Given that Amiga's original big sell was stereo sound and multimedia capabilities, how do you feel about BeOS?
Wayne: Nice try, but no cigar. Be had a good idea, they wanted to make a media OS. It's obviously a hybrid between MacOS and AmigaOS. When it was there and ready, nobody came. It's a bit of a pity really, because it's not a bad OS at all. But if they can pull their act together, well, good on them, but I don't really see that happening too soon.
Slashdot: What about the 'soap opera' attitude the industry has towards Amiga? How does this affect the new company?
Wayne: Well, I wrote a small piece for Slashdot late last year. Within three days of writing that small paragraph, Amiga was owned by a different company, it was a different deal with AOL, and the entire computer spectrum for Amiga had changed, and that's just what it's like for Amiga. It's why I don't write articles anymore, because the second I do, the next day, the whole market has changed. That's the weird thing with this new Amiga. There's this eerie calmness. It's not erratic, people aren't making rumors, they're not seeking this stuff out, because they're actually getting the information! That's very reassuring for this company, and I think we're going to see good things from them.
Don't expect any of those good things to be Open Source operating systems, however. Straight from Amiga President Bill McEwen: "If we do any Open Sourcing of our architecture, releasing code on the driver side would make the most sense. I don't think Open Source everything makes sense. This is a point where Bob Young and I would disagree. I think it's done great, great things in a non-consumer environment, but in a consumer environment, I don't think you can Open Source everything. It makes it too hard to have a commonality in the way everyone could use it, because everyone's got their own opinion, their own way of doing something better. Unfortunately, in a consumer world, that doesn't mean that it's going to be better for everybody."
Just remember the phrase "The south shall rise again!"
And think about how well that phrase has been fulfilled.
Seriously, the Amiga had advantages a long time ago in terms of hardware. Back then, it was truly a superior platform. It lost the hardware fight and as a result lost the operating system fight. Does Amiga honestly have anything going for it at all? It may have a few cool features, but we don't need Yet Another Operating System to choose from. The way the open-source movement works, any truly superior techniques will be incorporated into Linux or BSD (not the code itself, of course, just the idea). Regardless of how good or bad Amiga turns out to be, there is no way they will get any market share at all. The time for that was five years ago, and there Amiga failed.
nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc. Hell, I can even simulate any of those machines with UAE.
The Amiga had it's chance to rule the world and due (partly) to Commodore's incompetence missed its opportunity.
Please, dear fellows... let the Amiga rest in peace. Soil no further my memories of that great machine, and let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s and the Atari Jaguars...
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
-colin
-Colin
If you really think about it, there are only X number of people in the world willing to use an alternative operating system. I'd say amiga's OS was it for a long time. There was a lot of development on it by hobbiest and professionals alike. In fact it had the largest number of shareware/freeware programs at one point in time (maybe it's still true?). But since Amiga's collapse a new OS has come around and attracted the majority of the old Amigoids to it: linux. It'll be really hard sucking all those people back. I know I was estatic the first time I got NetBSD running on my A3000. It'd take a lot for me to pull that A3000 out of the box in my closet and turn it back on again (partially because it happens to be broken). I'm, of course, hoping that the linux freenzy will succeed in making a decent desktop that will finally take a decent size chunk out of the Win32 desktop market share. Amiga didn't quite pull it off, which is sad.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
"That's the weird thing with this new Amiga. There's this eerie calmness. It's not erratic, people aren't making rumors, they're not seeking this stuff out"
I think its called `people not giving a shit`.
Slashdot: What is the most important thing in the Amiga community right now?
Wayne: Being involved, I think.
My brain: sounds like *BSD/Linux
Slashdot: What excites you about the new Amiga operating system?
Wayne: That it gives users choice. Instead of being restricted to the PC, you get to pick what hardware you want, and after all, that's the most expensive part of the computer. If you've got a job that doesn't require a 500Mhz Pentium III, a smaller chip, something cheaper, you can pick what you want because the operating system runs on so many chips and so many pieces of hardware. It gives the user the choice that they really need.
My brain: sounds like *BSD/Linux
Slashdot: Do you feel that the purchase of the Amiga name from Gateway was a good idea?
Wayne: Yes, I do think it was a good idea. Gateway had some good plans, but I don't think their heart was quite in it, really. I think they meant well, but it really needs to be in the hands of people that want it on the market as much as the community does, and that's what the new Amiga brings, because it's staffed by Amigans, and you're not going to screw yourself over.
My brain: sounds like *BSD/Linux
Slashdot: What's the best thing about being a part of the Amiga community?
Wayne: I think being able to go anywhere, and knowing that there's somebody there who knows what it's like to be an Amigan, who has been through the same things. It's like having a giant network of friends all over the world. You can go and stay at people's houses, if you want. You can be sitting on a bus, and talking to a person, find out they're an Amigan, and instantly, you're friends. You don't get that on the PC, if you're sitting next to somebody on the bus, and 'Oh, you use Windows, too!' It's not exactly the same kind of thing. When you're an Amigan, it passes being a computer user. There are some Amiga users who use it and they love it. There are some people who go much further than that, and it's more of a religion. It's coming even closer to a race of people, in a way, who all seem to think the same. They're very stereotypical, fanatical in some cases, but I think it's all generally there that the people have the right idea, and they're there for the long haul.
My brain: DEFINETLY sounds like *BSD/Linux.
Slashdot: What is the stereotypical Amigan?
Wayne: A stereotypical Amigan is fanatical, loudmouthed, doesn't shut up about the Amiga, somewhat like me, I'm a perfect example. If you can possibly realize why we are so like that, you can see. It's like having this brilliantly cool toy, and nobody else can experience it like you have. It's almost like having a divine experience to search for words, something like this. You've got to tell everybody about it. They may not understand, but if you can get through to one more person, wow. That's them helped out, especially in the world of the Microsoft monopoly.
My brain: Nothing more to see here..
BilldaCat
--
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
I'm feeling a bit nasty this morning so those of you with warm fuzzies may want to look away... The quotes are all from a VP-of-something from Amiga.
"The concept of an operating system has been dying for quite a long time.
Wow! Now that's an introduction that doesn't take prisoners. I guess we should be thankful for the guy telling us. I mean, it's not like OS implementations suck, it's the whole concept of the operating system that's dying. See, we are not going to have operating systems any more. We are going to have, like stuff, and then, like, other stuff will happen with it, and then, see, it's digital content in a Gibsonesque environment and we geeks will want to get nasty with it. But not an operating system, no sir, nothing like that. That concept is dead.
What we're looking at is creating a dynamic digital environment, in which the most important thing is the producers and consumers of digital [content] matter, and they don't really care how they got there, or what they used to get there, they just got into this environment.
Ah, yes. "Dynamic digital environment" -- sounds good, doesn't it? Of course we all here are stuck in a static analog environment, but the new Amiga will lead us into the new world.
Now, take producers and consumers of digital matter. These are free-wheeling guys, they don't care about anything. They don't care where they are, how they got there, what they are doing there, what kind of shit they are producing/consuming -- but, man, they got into this dynamic digital environment -- let's party!
You know, you can take it anywhere, you should be able to use any hardware with it.
Take what? The no-OS-digital-dynamic-whatever-something? Of course, since there is no OS the hardware doesn't matter. It's digital dynamic, baby, who cares about hardware! I'll just make a Beowulf cluster out of my toaster, microwave, and can opener and run it. I won't know how I got there, but, hey, it all doesn't matter, does it?
For the lynxey type, the hackers, the geeks, whatever you want to call them, they would want to get down dirty and nasty with the stuff. But even a lot of that stuff, a lot of them would rather get on and actually produce and do stuff, rather than having to go down and find that driver, and change their config files and all that stuff.
Ah, we get to the interesting bits. The wonderful lynxey type -- I presume, long-time users of lynx? Yee-haw, we really want to get dirty and nasty with that dead operating system concept, you know, hack that corpse to pieces -- that would be nasty, wouldn't it? Or is "stuff" some other stuff? Is it that dynamic digital thingy? Let's see... "But even a lot of that stuff, a lot of them would rather get on and actually produce and do stuff". Ah, I see. Now it's crystal clear. It's THAT stuff. Now I understand. And I really want to get dirty and nasty with it, oh yeah... Wait, there is more: "do stuff, rather than having to go down and find that driver, and change their config files and all that stuff". More stuff! How wonderful! And, of course, all these lynxey people just hate going down on a driver, err, scratch that, they hate finding drivers and changing config files. Changing config files is eeeeevil. Everybody who does this should be shot. Or dumped into the dynamic digital environment where they won't know where they came from or where they are going.
We're really trying to create this higher environment for developers and for users. It really is where we're moving towards the Gibson dream."
Higher? Oh well, I'm not even gonna ask. But I am really interested, what is the Gibson dream that we are moving towards?
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. `It's not like I'm using,' Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. `It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency."
Ah, I see.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
To 1984. Apple has just shipped Macintosh, and the realization is just hitting everybody (even the Apple II division - remember the IIgs?) that "you know, mice, pointing, and graphics are the One True Path". Microsoft starts working on a program called Windows (which doesn't surface until 3 years later, starting a trend for the company), Atari starts working on the ST (the legendary "Jackintosh", and Commodore gets the Amiga project underway.
Of all those, Amiga does something truly different, using nifty custom chips to give the machine a rich color palette and animation capabilities far ahead of it's time. The OS is pretty slick, too, and uses the hardware well.
Years pass. Commodore and Atari join the dustbin of history along with the Berlin Wall. Amiga survives briefly, being passed from owner to owner. After exhausting the capabilities of Motorola's dated 68000 processor series, PowerPC upgrades start hitting the marketplace, but few notice the improved performance possible. Thanks to a neat product called Video Toaster, Amiga has enough of an installed base that the market doesn't die completely, but it starts the long, slow fade into oblivion.
Cut to a couple of years ago - Gateway buys the remains of Amiga and potimism flares up that, in fact, they'll take the plunge into a new platform and out of the Wintel business. These plans, too, fizzle - Amiga instead becomes a "set of technologies" and an "information appliance", and it dies again. A handful of Amiga division people manage to extricate themselves from Gateway's clutches and split Amiga back away from Gateway.
Today, Amiga is now just another OS for Intel-based PC's. Whoopee do. As a platform, Amiga had the promise of continuity to the installed base, plus the opportunity to pick up converts from the weakened Microsoft monopoly. Apple's continued existence and profits prove that there is still a market for different platforms, if you give people a good reason to buy them.
The catch here is that Amiga now will have to compete with Be, Linux, Microsoft, and perhaps even Apple (if Darwin/OS X makes the jump to Intel) for mind and market share. It's not the same box anymore - it's just another Intel-based OS, though one that old Amiga software can be ported to relatively easily.
Though enough old Amiga users may buy generic boxes to run the "new" OS-only Amiga that Amiga will survive for a time, I think the ballgame's over. By dropping the hardware plans, they may have conserved capital (developing hardware is expensive, especially non-Wintel stuff - don't underestimate Apple's development costs), but at the sacrifice of long-term viability.
Meanwhile, Amiga remains the Rasputin of platforms. It just won't die!
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Well, setting aside the fact that lots of vendors jumped into business relationships with Be, it seems like he could be describing his own future here. AmigaOS, 2001 Edition, will probably be "not a bad OS at all", but will anybody care?
He mentions the ability to run on older, cheaper hardware as a big advantage, but when I can slap together a killer NT or Linux box that costs little more than the change found in my sofa, or get one of those firewire-based Digital Video iMacs for a little more than a grand, is price really such a massive consideration anymore?
"Back in the day", what made everybody drool over the Amigas, above all else, was the Video Toaster. That's no longer enough to set them apart, because the void that was created by the "death" of the old Amiga has been filled.
This is great news for hard-core Amiga fans, who will finally get to play with their favorite OS on new hardware. The rest of us are happy for you. This will not change our lives much.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
But I just don't think it's possible.
Before I get into rampant "I am a recovering Amigan" me-tooism, let me tell you why Amiga might have a chance, even after all the let-downs.
When I was living in Austin, TX, I got my hands on an A3000 with a good assortment of stuff in the mix for a couple hundred bucks, and ended up fiddling with it quite a bit. I eventually ended up getting a PC with windows on it so I could play games, and the A3000 went into the closet.
A friend of mine who was a former Amigan came over one day to pick up some hardware or manuals or something, and I hauled the A3k out of the closet to show him how far AmigaDOS had come just since 2.04, to 3.1. He just about cried to see that poor sucker boot up in under a minute and be running programs. That pathetic 68030@25mhz did the job just fine.
My point here is that this illustrates what we already all know intellectually; Amiga Diehards will never stop getting nostalgic about the Amiga hardware, AmigaDOS, and so on. If there was another AmigaDOS that was really slick and clean and had all the cool advantages of AmigaDOS back in the day (Like the patchlist, we're all fond of that) then you'd have all those people coming out of the woodwork.
I know we're used to thinking of linux and BSD folks as the big advocates nowadays, but if you gave the Amigans a new platform to get excited about, you could just about have them running around wallpapering buildings with six foot high Amiga logo posters of their own accord. Amiga types are just rabid, and I was no exception.
Keep in mind that I've recovered. I do still have an Amiga 1200 in case I run across a cool AGA game that I want to bust out and play; The A1200 has 2mb ram and a 80mb IDE disk in it, and it's reasonably speedy, but it's also an all-in-one system and it doesn't take up much space. As far as I'm concerned, Amiga is dead at the moment, and until it pops out with a completed operating system, I'm not even moderately interested.
Not that anyone's really interested, but what would float my boat utterly and completely would be a system for the ATX PPC motherboards hitting the market, and really good Athlon support; The mathlib needs support for heavily pipelined floating point, and so on. But that's not so important in the scope of this article, because all I'm discussing here is Amiga fanaticism.
So what makes Amigans more fanatical than the linux and *BSD types? They grew stronger through adversity. While other people were bragging about how badass their PCs were, Amigans were buying accelerator cards and (With the exception of MUI-GUI) were finding more ways to do things smarter rather than by taking the brute force approach. As a result, software on the Amiga had a tendency to do the same things all the other systems did, at mostly the same speed (Unless you're talking about povray) and on inferior hardware. Let's face it, the A4000 stopped being competitive long ago, as other people have pointed out.
We all know what killed Amiga, so I won't go into that here. If you don't know what killed Amiga, I'm surprised you've read down this far. What Amiga can't afford (Then again, they couldn't afford this a year ago, five years ago, etc) is to alienate the people they have left. I think a lot of people will come back to the fold, as it were, from linux or *BSD or what have you if AmigaOS is just cool enough. That's a big part of what made it work before, and it's the single thing they have to leverage now. It's necessary to do everything right... A journaling filesystem, good SMP support, driver support for the most useful hardware immediately (That means everything big; DVD cards, Nvidia and 3dfx graphics cards, and more sound cards than just the soundblaster line.)
But finally, it is absolutely imperative that it maintains all the benefits of the original AmigaOS; Autoconfiguration. Immense amounts of configurability at the user interface level. A wonderful flow of information from Amiga corp. to the users and developers. And let's not forget another badass ROM Kernel Manual... oh wait, never mind :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Please, dear fellows... let the Amiga rest in peace. Soil no further my memories of that great machine, and let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s and the Atari Jaguars...
Right. First of all, lets take a look at your list of machines:
Sinclairs, Apple ][s, TI-99's : Lovely little 8-bit machines. First computers for many a hacker. Fun for cutting your teeth on, and (largely) had BASIC in ROM. Then, when you were done with that, you could strip out the BASIC and start learning about programming the hardware directly. This was cool, but they all performed the same purpose, equally well by and large. You can do that on a Linux box today if you want to, so for hackers, these machines are fondly remembered. But there was no large user base of non tech-savvy people. Most of those who had these machines programmed as much as used commercial software. Very few just used it for games, unlike the Amiga. As for the Atari Jaguar.... Nice idea, crippled by a market that had no space for it.
The Amiga had it's chance to rule the world and due (partly) to Commodore's incompetence missed its opportunity.
Have to agree with you there, however, it still hurts that businesses seemed reluctant to use a machine that wasn't produced by Big Blue. On top of that CBM wasn't known for pushing the envelope on anything other than games machines (C64 etc). At least Apple was fondly remembered by the geeks who'd programmed the Apple ][s in school (I don't think the million-dollar Ridley Scott '1984' commercial harmed them either). The Amiga's only major failure in 1985 was on the marketing front. Of course, later came the interminable management cock-ups, but don't get me started on them.....I personally believe that the Amiga was strangled at birth, and never given a proper chance.
Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc. Hell, I can even simulate any of those machines with UAE.
Actually, UAE still doesn't emulate quite quickly enough (scrolling and audio sync still not right on my Athlon 700!). Last I heard, no-one had come up with an implementation of the Amiga's multiple screen function, although Be came quite close. Until I can word-process, edit graphics and create music at the same time, switching seamlessly through the tasks, I remain unconvinced that the ol' Miggy can be replaced in my heart.
I owned an Amiga 1000 in 1987. Back then it crushed any other machine like a grape when it came to multimedia and games. I even went on to buy an A500 and an A1200 AGA.
The points you make are valid, but the machines you describe use ancient hardware. They are the legacy that the new Amiga has to live up to. The evolution of the mainstream x86 operating system seems to make every new hardware iteration perform at exactly the same rate as the previous OS on the older hardware. The jump from the A500 to the 1200 felt much more tangible to me than shifting my dual-booter from my (95/RH6.0)P200MMX to my (98/RH6.2)Athlon. I genuinely hope that the new AmigaOS removes this feeling of stagnation that I feel is rife in the computer world right now.
OK, sorry about the rant. The reason I miss the Amiga most is that it allowed you to go as low-level as you needed. If you just wanted to use it for games, you did. If you wanted to be artistically creative, you could. No nasty installs, no registry. However, (and this is my pet peeve with the Mac) if you wanted to dig deeper, you could. It allowed you to learn how a modern computer worked at your own pace. Sick of games? Bored with being creative? Let's go into the CLI and find out how this thing works! And then later, you dig a bit deeper, finding out how to program the thing, first in maybe BASIC, then PASCAL or C, and then, if you were feeling really brave, in 68K assembler. However, if it got really heavy going, you could save your work, reboot the machine and it would be ready for gaming and productivity again.
Now, I'm not saying you can't do that in Windows, but everything you install and uninstall leaves a trace, usually in C:\WINDOWS, until your system gets bogged down and doesn't work anymore. Reboot, Reformat, Reinstall. In Linux, you generally need to be quite tech-savvy before you can do the most basic of things. (Although this is changing, there's quite a way to go).
The Amiga was the only machine I know of that catered for the whole spectrum of computer users, and coached those at entry level all the way to being coders without making them feel it was all too much for them. None of this had to do with the hardware, it was all how the OS used it. This is why I feel that there is still a great need for an Amiga-style OS, to bring new and experienced users together as a whole.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.