Slashdot Mirror
Quadruple Interview With Amiga 4.0 Developers
Mike Bouma writes: "diff.org has done an interview with some important developers involved in the development of AmigaOS 4.0 PPC. These developers also helped to realize AmigaOS 3.9 which was released at the World of Amiga show last december. AmigaOS 4.0 will be available later this summer together with the release of new PPC based AmigaOne mainboards." I'd like to see a robust OS marketplace -- the more the merrier -- but I wonder if Amiga can ever really succeed, what with the continued promises, delays, rearrangements, direction changes ...
Seems like a logical choice. They've already trained themselves to look the other way and buy in on the interim solution while a company points at their new vaporware coming any day now. "We wrote a kick-ass operating system! And companies will have apps out within 6 months!" (4 months later) "We're changing focus! Sorry to piss off all of those almost-finished developers, we've changed our mind.
No, I'm not bitter.
Sure, Grandma isn't senile anymore, ever since the brain transplant. And so what if 98% of her body has been replaced with prosthetics at one point or another? Why, she now has a IQ of 200 and is an Olympic contender, and lord knows thats all that really matters. ;P
McEwen, you do us all a disservice in presuming to call your company Amiga. You look down at us as if we were just another fringe market to milk for all the cash we're worth, and if you don't even have to go to the trouble to throw us a few bones along the way, why should you care? After all, if we wanted a modern computer, a real computer, we would have switched to the Windows PC long ago. The Amiga is truely dead now, with no hope of yet another buyer who might do that name any honor. And it shouldn't be that way. Is that all you see, a trademark with brand name recognition, an opportunity to foist ill-concieved and irrelevant technologies on us? No Amiga fan that I know has ever said "Hey, if only my toaster ran Workbench 5, I could play Populous and have breakfast at the same time!". AmigaDE is a copout, some sort of lame-brained notion that since most people's exposure to the Amiga is UAE, then it's only fitting to release the entire system as some trumped up emulator. Macintosh owners have Macs, because for some reason they want them. Ditto for PC/windows owners. As a matter of fact, they are probably happy with the variety of games available to them. So what, you're marketing to developers, some sort of crossplatform development tools? Only not calling it such?
Drop AmigaDE. Drop it now. Apologize for it. Quit saying how software is all that matters, you sound like a bum making excuses about why he doesn't work. Give us first-gen neo-amiga hardware with legacy zorro3 slots AND PCI. Kill Zorro after you've had at least a bit of token continuity. Show us a computer that will never, NEVER EVER have only one CPU again. Entry level dual G3/4's, with quad cpu on the high end. Market it to power users, to computer nerds, and those who have to have the most powerful of everything. But make it the first multi-CPU computer marketed to users ever. If there was one thing Be did right, it was the Bebox. But almost as soon as they did, they changed their minds, and decided "software is the only important thing". Look where that got them. License the OS, the hardware specs, but make some yourself. Send a couple hundred freebie systems to Adobe, to Macromedia, to all the hotshot graphics companies. Offer free hawaii vacations to their programmers, if they spend those extra 15 minutes they linger at the donut table actually porting code to AmigaPPC. If it's already written, there is no reason not to sell it. You can make money off licensing development tools after you've got some apps to show for it. Give free "I resurrected Amiga!" T-shirts to shareware developers who can prove they wrote something for it. Bribe Tucows to put up an amiga section. Do whatever it takes, but concentrate on making it the system to envy. Carve out a niche in the graphics and video market, and go from there.
I worked at a company that was the last major consumer of Amigas in the United States. Remember the Prevue Channel, now the TV Guide Channel. It use to be the blue scrolly thing and now it's the gold scrolly thing. Well, the blue scrolly thing displayed half or quarter screen video in the top half and the bottom half had the listings for your local cable channels. The satellite video feed was passed through but the listings were displayed locally from the Amiga.
They had over 2,000 Amiga 2000's in the field at cable head ends across the country. Two years ago they finally replaced them with NT boxes that had a special video card in it. They kept the Amigas going by remanufacturing them and buying up old Amigas and parts wherever they could scrounge them. Forgotten warehouses, flea markets, Amiga bounty hunters, etc.
The reason they got stuck with having to keep reusing the Amiga 2000's was because the custom demod card used to receive the listings data would only fit in the 2000's and wouldn't fit properly in the 3000's or 4000's.
So rather than getting stuck with a dying computer they switched to a platform that they felt wasn't going to go away ten years after they adopted it. They chose Microsoft and Intel. I doubt Linux or Mac was seriously considered when the R&D boys were architecting the new system.
I enjoyed working for them when I did, though they thought Microsoft was the answer to all their problems.
All your problems begin to look like nails when all you have is a hammer.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
True, all those BeOS users may wind up looking for a home, but if they didn't amount to enough users to sustain Be, how will they sustain Amiga?
I think the Mac (of which I am a user) has about as small a market presence as you can get and still be viable (as a hardware-oriented company) - Apple will always have a built-in market just by defining themselves as "the alternative" to Windows hegemony. Linux is an operating system, and development costs are minimal if you want to have your own distro. This gives the companies that do nothing but press CD's a chance to make money (with no costs), but the bigger companies like RedHat and Caldera need to make money in services and integration (as the FSF intended), rather than on code alone. Because Linux has a use in the server space, this is feasible - Amiga isn't looking like a server OS to me, it's looking like a "power user" OS. And they plan to make hardware as well, tuned to their OS and using PowerPC processors.
Be tried that, too - and if you look up, you can see Be's flame trails heading for the ocean as we speak. Other than the more well-known name, I don't see anything different for Amiga, either. I do wonder, though - will this coming Amiga death finally be the last one? Their corporate logo should be a cat, since they've gone through so many lives.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I type this from my PPC604e/233-based A4000(Elbox Tower w/7 Z3 slots). It's my primary machine and is also the fastest machine in my house. I don't have a single Wintel box here. The 604e also happily runs Linux at a decent clip so I don't see the need to grab any Wintel hardware thankyouverymuch.
Now, by modern standards my 604e isn't exactly fast, but it's certainly liveable. At Hyperion (Yes I work there) we've benchmarked an identical system to mine as being approx equivalent in speed to an AMD K6-2/450. This is not fast but it's not dirt slow either (unless you're running Losedoze 2000).
There are things I do want, however. I want a fully PPC OS (parts are still running on an onboard 68060/60). I want a newer motherboard with a nice PPC7450 on it that will put me up in the performance range of the latest Athlons. I want these things so I can keep moving forward. Why is it that certain assholes want to stop me? What is so wrong with wanting this? Who the hell are *THEY* do decide that my computer should go "quietly into the night".
*FUCK YOU*. We will *NOT* go "quietly into the night". This is my system, my lifestyle, and my home. I'm willing to fight for it. So a pox on all those who tell us that "You're dead, get a Windoze box."
I want a machine that does what I want it to do, and my Amy does this. Damn you all who think that her future should be destroyed.
Jim
P.S. For those who don't know, AmigaOS 4.0 is not some "other OS". It is a direct evolution from the current AmigaOS. Yes it will have elements of Tao running hosted on it, and the basic kernel will of course be rewritten (it's running on a different CPU after all, even the Linux kernel has low-level stuff that has to be rewritten for different CPUs) , but all the things that make the Amiga nice to use (Tightly coupled CLI/GUI, Intuition, ARexx, Datatypes, BOOPSI, etc.) will still be there. It won't be an Amiga "in name only".
This guy has it cold. The amiga was about the hardware - the people that dared to laugh when they saw what current state of the art was. I've been waiting for someone to do this for a long time, be it under the guise of Linux, of AmigaOS. The trick is getting someone who's willing to put out specs, drivers, and all the required hardware until the market catches up (As amiga did).
..don't panic
Since when are you the authority on what everybody thinks?
------
The Amiga is a computer that's not a PITA to use. One of the rare Amiga commercials said, "What does it do? Well, what you want it to do," and this is so blatently true it's hard for an outsider to imagine. No other mainstream computer has ever had this property, so people will continue to admire the Amiga until this happens.
The Amiga is not dead because there are too many Amiga users who are too dumb to know that their computer is dead. ;-P
------
I'm getting tired of these "Amiga is Dead" posts. A product dies when it has no support from both users and manufacturers. Since neither of those is the case, Amiga is not dead.
------
You've pretty much answered your own question. BBEdit is the #1 stand-alone text editor on the Mac, for HTML and for programming in just about any language. I personally use the built-in editor in Codewarrior which is not quite as feature-complete as BBEdit as a text editor, but has source-browser integration.
Try the Video Toaster NT in your PC, then say the same thing. Its not particularly fair comparing dedicated video hardware with a general purpose CPU. If youre going to compare old hardware to new hardware, at least compare old apples with new apples. That being said, the original Video Toaster is certainly a useful piece of equipment, which changed the world of broadcast video. Newtek we salute you.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Dude! You gotta stop hitting that crack man.
That means (in my mind) : 1) fixed hardware; a GForce 2MX or Kyro II board, 300 MHz PPC or ARM CPU, soundblaster live, I/O for television/video, embedded joypad ports, embedded DVD ROM, 10 GB hard disk, 56K modem etc
>>>>>>>>>
What? The Amiga was one of the most powerful machines of its day. That shit (comparitively) hardware you have listed could never be called an Amiga.
2) fixed software; EEPROM with the basic O/S which is transferred to Ram at boot time; after that, rest of the O/S is loaded from hard disk; the included hard disk will contain a pre-configured O/S that is ready to go
>>>>>>>>>
Umm, that describes every computer on sale now. The BIOS image is loaded into RAM (shadowing, remember?) which loads the OS from the harddisk, which (unless you build it) comes preconfigured. Or do you mean they should never release updates?
web-browser price around $300-$400;
>>>>>>>>>
What? Cheap is nice, but an Amiga at $300? Methinks you have Amiga's mixed up with the game machines. The Amiga's were quite expensive machines for their time.
you buy it, you hook it to the telly and voila...cheap web-surfing, cheap DVD player, cheap multimedia, and above all that a computer to do the calculations and write those CVs and letters. And a damn good game machine, too.
>>>>>>>>
Its called an playstation2. At Toys R Us for $300.
It will sell like hot cakes, for two reasons : 1) people are tired of the problems having with the PC and MS Windows/Linux 2) a typical good PC (that is able to run all of todays bloatware) costs around $700
>>>>>>>>>
Really. This explains why all these set top machines and $300 machines are selling like hotcakes.
when DirectX is established,
>>>>>>>>>>
Huh? You mean back in 1997?
we all should cash out for a GForce3 anyway(which costs around the money mentioned above for the home computer)
>>>>>>>>>>
Except it doesn't, it costs $350. Subtraction harder than C++? Maybe...
, because the older cards will not run anything in respectable frame rates
>>>>>>>>>
Explains why my old RivaTNT is running UT just fine? Most games run fine on lower end harware, and only serious gamers need absolutely smooth fps at high res. Still, what serious gamer buys a $300 machine? Seriously, though, a GeForce2 GTS is plenty fast for the next year or so, and is only $127 on Pricewatch. Pair that with a nice 1GHz Athlon ($208 on pricewatch w/ mobo) and some RAM ($170 per gig!) and you have a nice gaming machine that won't cost more than $1200 or so.
4) it would be almost portable (one unit, like the old Amigas 1200-600) but without the propriatery hardware used by todays portable PCs, because it would use standard hardware; I remember a friend who stuffed his A1200 in his suitcase and travelled with it!
>>>>>>>>>>>
Great. It'll be an unpropriatary iMac!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I come to bury the Amiga, not praise it.
In 1994, I leveraged the knowledge I'd gained using an Amiga and Impulse 2.0 to get a job creating 3D models using 3DS for DOS (R2), running on '486. I was lucky. The Amiga was a toy, Impulse was a toy, and I considered myself lucky to have a $3K program running on a $3K computer (at my client's expense) for a change.
Using DOS and WfW 3.11 for the first time, I missed the close coupling between GUI and CLI that the Amiga OS had, and the opacity of the startup scripts (compared to autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, and system.ini).
All the while I'd been using Macs to do digital audio and MIDI sequencing, along with DTP and video editing and Director scripting (since version 1.0). But I missed the control that the AmigaOS command line afforded. Eventually, I discovered MacShell, a CLI for MacOS 7.x, but as a userland app it lacked the speed I craved and the power I needed. The power of "/".
Fast-forward to the year 2001, Dave.
I have a fricken' fast machine with a closely coupled GUI/CLI system...Mac OS X on a G4/466.
It's like an Amiga on steroids, and it runs Photoshop, Quark, and Illustrator, along with Apache, ftpd, gcc, and ssh.
"Nostalgia is a disease of dogs." -- Lenin
Woof.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I for one agree with almost everything you are saying...
But they have to actually SHIP it first.
And we've been hearing promises FOREVER.
I reserve the right to say I was wrong later if they actually DO ship something.
Until then... The Amiga is Dead. Long live the Amiga.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I suggest you look at Ardour .
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
http://www.qsl.net/ke5fx/misc/GPAINT.JPG
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Why my video toaster/flyer is still BAD ASS? And edits video like a no limit soldier? No, it doesn't. The amiga is STILL ahead of its time as far as that is concerned. My PC with a SHITLOAD more megahertz STILL can't do real time crossfades and what not. The flyer can.
What, me worry?
I don't really agree that anything not free/open is
evil and must absolutely fail. I believe there is a place
for both free/open software and proprietary stuff.
Besides, there's always AROS which is what this guy
asks for, an open AmigaOS clone that even runs on
x86 hardware.
I've used Linux. I've tried QNX. I use Solaris at work.
I can't stand Windows. Guess what I use at home? My old
Amiga A4000T, which was manufactured over two years AFTER
Commodore went bankrupt. It's simply the most pleasant platform
I've ever used, and regardless of what people consider dead
or not, I'll use it until it won't turn on anymore. After that
happens, I'll be using the new motherboard due for release
soon. (Using the standard Mac ZIF modules to have a speedy CPU,
pretty darn spiffy idea there... And I don't care if it costs
more than an x86 PC hardware - I already have one of those
and rarely use it.)
Well, your entertaining metaphors aside, what exactly are you losing out of some developers trying to resurrect the Amiga?
If some people want to do something, no matter how stupid, it is no skin off of your nose, right? Unless you fear that Amiga will be the monopoly OS of the next couple decades, which doesn't look likely.
And also, how do you know that the Amiga wants to die? Did it look into your eyes with a look of longing for release from the life support unit is attached to? I would argue that any OS advanced enough to have and express emotions about its own destiny definitly deserves to be kept in development ;)
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I wish the guys the best of luck. But, this sounds like a tale of the underside of the programmers' life:
Olaf Barthel: Probably the same as with 3.5, which is complaining about the things that don't work and then surprisingly ending up doing all the work to resolve the issues I don't see anybody else finding the time to tackle. That's how I ended up rewriting workbench.library and reimplementing icon.library from scratch, plus taking to fixing a gazillion of other bits and pieces. Believe me, I'd rather have spent my time more productively.
Amen, but as they say, the devil is in the details
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How log has the Amiga really been dead anyways (and this is NOT a flame) ? At least 15 years ago, for all intents and purposes. The fact that it has eked out an existence for this long in its little niche seems to be to make the best case for long term survival. Heck, I've been predicting the demise for Apple in the next year, for 15 years now, and finally have to concede it will survive.
...they come up with a truly revolutionary OS. We already have a glut of OSes out there, what with MacOS, BeOS, Windows, UNIX, Linux and a bunch of other free and proprietary OSes. The world does not give a rat's ass about another me-too operating system. Unless a new OS is several orders of magnitude better than what's already out there, it's doomed.
The only way a new OS can be orders of magnitude better than the others is for it to solve long standing problems with software systems. What are the biggest problems in the software industry right now? We all know that software sucks. It sucks because it breaks down all the time and takes too damn long to develop. Does AmigaOS offer a solution to either of these problems? Answer: no.
The Amiga OS development team has only one consolation. All the other OSes suck just as much as theirs. The other OSes have an enormous advantage though. They are already accepted by a sizable fraction of the OS market. Can anyone tell me how many people around the world are thinking of buying an Amiga?
You got to hand it to the Amiga team though. They are true believers.
From what has been said of it, the amigaone board is basically a relatively pc-like board with pci slots, usb, etc., except that it uses a PPC. It seems like this is exactly what is needed as a linux platform, that is, a standards-based, non-apple, ppc motherboard. If its anything like they say, this thing might very well be my next linux box.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
The only way to save it now is to release it under a GNU license to permit it to be moved to more modern machines. If this had been done originally, the loyal user base would have moved it to more modern systems and it would be thriving today. But by locking themselves into a proprietary system, they ensured their own downfall.
The best thing that amiga fans can hope for now is to fall in love with a truly free system like GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd which they can become involved with. With a free system, they can take the future in their own hands and make sure that this does not happen to them again.
Open Source is not Free!
If you consider the big picture of the current OS environment, you see that microsoft is succeeding in getting the normal people of the world to buy their stuff. I'm not talking servers here, I'm talking desktops. Linux can fend for itself on the server, but ask pretty much any smoe who uses windows for general purposes to switch to Linux and remain at the same productivity level and you might have an issue. MacOS is good but it's tied to the hardware so I can't use it, can you? BeOS has abandoned ship. Atheos will work but needs alot of things to succeed. In general, to succeed in the desktop OS marketplace, you need a combination reliable office software + hardware support + usability + easy to use multimedia software + somewhat brainless operation + games. Microsoft has all of these, Linux, MacOS, Beos, etc. doesn't. AmigaOS, although slightly dated, has a viable degree of all of those. Frankly, as a normal person, you can get work done easily on Windows. AmigaOS you can't now with speed, but you will. I don't own an Amiga, but I will purchase an AmigaOne. I am a programmer as well, and I will probably program for it as well. Look at the big picture of where various OSs are going and you will see that AmigaOS has one of the most innovative plans to get into the desktop arena. Better that any company I've seen other than MS. I believe they can do it. None of us can say they won't because (1) there's a hint of bias in everyone and (2) no one whose posted here (including myself) has seen all the NDA'd plans and betas that Amiga is preparing. Recommendation: be skeptical that's fine, but if it shows up, embrace it as one of the few viable MS alternatives.