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Amiga Inc. Reveals Further Info About Amiga OS5
Amiga Gamer writes "Amiga Inc. Acting President Bill McEwen has given an update to Amiga OS5 of sorts. In a previous interview Bill had said of OS5: "The product that we are going to ship is going to be much better than OSX from Apple". "OS 5 is ahead of schedule, and we will be making public announcements concerning the product in the 4th quarter of this year.""
They heard it won't work with their 1000's.
Commodore is making new computers, Amiga is making a new OS, all we need now is a next-gen version of the Oregon Trail and we can successfully bring our childhoods into the 21st century.
OS 5 can't be but half as good as OS X!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are three dominant OS's out there. Windows is the most dominant desktop, followed by OSX and then Linux. What is Amiga going to bring to the table?
Hell, IBM resurrecting OS/2 would make more sense.
and no i didnt read the story.. cant get to it.
1 - what hardware does it run on, generic PC's? Generic Macs? If its still on custom hardware, its DOA at this stage of the game.
2 - software: is it all custom, or can i run Word, Acrobat, etc? If it cant run commodity software its also DOA as far as the big picture is concerned. ( X11 will help.. )
While it may be great technology, there are 100s of 'good' OS's out there that are niche markets. That doesnt make them 'better'. Even when they had a chance like Be. You just hve to have a level of compatiblity of both hardware AND software of the 2 big players to really make it and be 'better'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Let me be the first to welcome our Amiga-friendly, Commodore-centric, TI-99 riding robotic overlords.
They visit our earth once more.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
"I can't answer any of your questions due to pending litigation and NDAs, but keep the faith, Amiga is and will be the best platform, ever. Oh, and 20yrs old sources to historic versions of AmigaOS is our core intelectual property asset, so the release of them is never going to happen."
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
...will immediately follow the release of Duke Nukem Forever and the return of Elvis in a flying saucer.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
When BeOS came along 95 I think I understood that AmigaOS would never be good enough again. So I switched to Linux, there has never been any reason to switch back even though the Amiga workbench is still a lot better than KDE/GNOME are, and Final writer kicks Open Office writers ass any day.
Amiga fanboy forever.
I was at the August meeting of the Berlin Amiga Users Group. There were 130 people there. We had to move to from the pub we started at because there were too many of us! I talked to one guy there who was in the Rotterdam Amiga Users Group, and they routinely had 90 to 100 people show up to their meetings. Those are significantly larger crowds that I've ever seen at Linux user group meetings. Amiga was always big in Europe, and still is, even many years after the demise of their mainstream products.
None of the questions presented here matter, even if they are serious. Amiga has produced nothing of value since OS3.9 several years ago. Bill McEwen went on the record a while back saying that he put a great deal of his own personal money into making sure that OS3.9 was released. If that is true, then that is the last act of heroism we have seen from the Amiga camp. OS4 is working but stuck in litigation. OS5 will be free from the shackles of hardware dependence, so they say. But we all know that nothing from Amiga ever materializes.
...article is posted to slashdot. And that began many blue moons ago.
Is it a slow news day? Did murphy firehose it up?
Is it intended to be humor or is it to expose the remaining gullible?
Seriously, the company now known as Amiga has worked very diligently
and persistently at securing its reputation as a company intent on
keeping the Amiga off the market and deceiving what ever followers it
may still have with what amount to as soap opera antics.
Now about Amiga being better than OSX.... Think about it!
You can have the best OS in the world but if there is no software
being written for it.... who is going to use it for what?
Don'tcha think someone would have heard about software developemnt
for the Amiga if it were going to be better than _____________
(fill in the blank with any reasonably used OS)
Bill McE. is financed to be a nut... How better to keep amiga off
the market and the open source clone dev (AROS) less supported and
concerned enough about Amigas legal antics to remove "Amiga" from
all mention?
There is nothing in the last 7 + years, of which the current
"ownership of Amiga IP" has done anything beneficial for classic
Amiga users, the consumers, or for the Amiga software development
market. If fact they have done just the opposite.
And as other Blue moons have passed with little to no fan fare,
so will this one.
Only the gullible would mod this down or as flamebait.
Its honesty based on the history since before gateway sold all but the patent IP.
.. Infinite Improbability Function.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Improved hardware independence?
:-p
So far, AmigaOS 4 is a bit like OS X being built for special hardware, just that this one lacks the hardware.
I can understand if Apple doesn't want to let go of OS X like that, because they after all sell a lot of hardware this way, but isn't AmigaOS 4 is in such a horribly sorry state that Amiga Inc would only win on having it support other hardware platforms better?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I don't want the technical details if he can't share. I want him to give us use cases. Why would we go buy their computers and OS when I can run OSX, Windows or Linux?
Who's the target, business users, video producers, prosumers, gamers, developers, mythical moms and dads, and how will Amiga make a difference to those people compared to OSX, Windows, Linux.
I must definitely not be the target, since "Better than OSX" means precisely nil to me. OSX runs my desktop software, Windows runs it as well. Hell, Linux runs some of it. I don't just install an OS and marvel at how good it is, I run apps on it.
Amiga doesn't run anything right now, but they have a checkerboard sphere. They better have made this the best checkerboard sphere in the world ever.
I don't trust Bill McEwen more than Steve Ballmer.
No apostrophe on 1000s. If you were to say, "The picture of my girlfriend's vagina via my 1000's GINA chip is a nice looking one" then all right. If you were to say, "The picture of my girlfriend's vagina via the other four 1000s' GINA chips is a nice looking one, too", then that, plural and possesive, is all right. "On their 1000's (sic)" is not all right. It is plural, not possesive.
There is an ongoing lawsuit between Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion-Entertainment, VOF. The Amiga, Inc. that was chartered in Washington went belly up but never signed the insolvency papers. Hyperion has, as part of their contract, a transfer agreement similar to the one between Novell and SCO. Hyperion claims AmigaOS 4 is theirs because of the former insolvency of Amiga, Inc. Washington. On the other side of the coin, Amiga, Inc.'s name and IP rights have been bought out by another company called KMOS that changed their name to Amiga, Inc. and is chartered in Delaware. Amiga, Inc. Delaware is claiming to own the rights to the name AmigaOS 4 as a result of that situation. As soon as Amiga, Inc. Washington went belly-up Hyperion started letting their third-party contractors get by with binary-only licenses of their contributions to the AmigaOS 4 code-base and so, even if Amiga, Inc. Delaware buys Hyperion they won't have the source code rights to AmigaOS 4.
I bought the Amiga Hardware Reference Guide before the computer was even released, read it cover to cover, many times, all about the sound, video, and other hardware, and I knew had to have this hardware. The Amiga legend was really born because of absolutely the best documentation any computer system has ever had, and, then fostered by the execution. I read the documentation. I walked into a Sears, saw the King Tut image in Deluxe Paint, and I so blown away that I literally shook in my shoes. It all came together - great documentation, beautiful hardware, and an ok operating system, in one moment, where I could see the demo, understand completely what it meant, and I had to have one. I opened up a credit card that I couldn't possibly pay for and I bought the thing. It was one of the best days of my life and I feel fortunate to have lived solely to have been there for that moment.
But, those days are gone. If anyone could make anything like Amiga, it would be AMD (Apple is more marketing than any real hardware expertise on its own) - but AMD would also have to hire not just good, but great writers, and document everything the way the Amiga was documented. You would have to have AMD rolling out with a pretty good CPU, next generation hardware, all in a consumer friendly case with a completely new operating system. Part of Amiga's appeal was that the whole thing was different. For AMD to pump that kind of money into some new consumer / geek box would almost certainly demand that it run Windows or Linux, and we already know enough about both to not really get excited over either. A souped up / updated version of BeOS is what that kind of hardware needs - really, the coolest new OS ever made, and I doubt seriously that AMD could take that risk.
But, a man can dream.
This is my sig.
On Vista, it's more applicable to consider the whole Windows environment. You forget that for the people who would've bought Vista, the reason was not so much it explicitly sucking, but that XP suits their needs fine and they don't see the point of going to a slightly different setup and spend money to do so when they have a working solution today. For the Windows people that took the time to evaluate it and declare that it sucks, it's generally because either drivers for Vista were lower quality than XP, and the resources the Vista fluff takes up drags the system down more than XP. So in essence, Vista if anything is losing to XP, not driving people significantly to non-Windows systems. The people blowing it up in the media and declaring Vista sucks are these people plus the people who dislike Windows no matter the incarnation, but are there to revel in what failings they can.
On Linux, I disagree that for most common non-gaming people, that Linux has to be too geeky anymore. There is the great potential on a Linux system to geek out to extraordinary degrees, but if you don't elect to and the hardware vendor providing your platform explicitly tries to work with Linux, the experience can be quite straightforward to people who never want to 'pop the hood' so to speak. Claiming Linux is too geeky is to an extent like claiming OSX is too geeky because of the BSD core, the fact you can start terminal and get a *nix shell, and it uses the NeXT defaults system for configuration. A vast majority of OSX users may never realize these facts (or if they do, what they mean except to bring up to defend their platform), and the same can be true for desktop linux users. The exception is when trying to use hardware whose drivers are off the beaten path, and the way the Linux market goes, it's far more common to have the system vendor not paying attention to Linux, and therefore pushing this evaluation to the consumer I have seen in the x86 world system vendors switch components because the Windows drivers the hardware vendor wrote not be able to perform reliably. That's a huge part of what's biting Vista today (people ugrading their systems may have components where someone couldn't have possibly known the Vista driver quality for). I can pre-select a set of hardware, assemble it barebones, and hand the install disc to a non-technical person, and they can be up working with documents and surfing the web without significant assistance.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ubuntu passed the 8m mark abouut 9 months ago, based on the number of people updating from Ubuntu servers.
Note that updates can be cached, there are probably people sho do not update (for example because they have slow internet connection), and there are people who update from mirrors, so it is probably an undercount.
Ubutntu and Linux are growing, so the numbers are higher now
If Ubuntu alone has that many users it seems probable that desktop Linux is ahead of Mac OS's 20m+.
I agree. This guy has made repeated promises and broken them. Most recent? ACK controls is making our new PPC hardware for 9/07 (and this was in 5/07). 9/07 has come and gone and guess what? nothing.
This guy is a sneak oil salesman.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
When your release date is set for the Fifth of Never, being ahead of schedule is a simple task.
it will be the only platform to run Duke Nukem Forever.
It's not tagged "colddayinhell" because nothing could be better than OS X.
It's tagged "colddayinhell" because Amiga is vaporware. Since Vista has actually been released, consider the new joke to be, "Amiga 5 WILL be released... and it will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yes, I remember my Amiga.. I started a bit late...picked up my brother's old Amiga 1000 when he left it for the MacIIfx (I believe he paid 2k or 4k for that? wow!) and I was in love with Defender of the Crown, Marble Madness, Battlehawks 1942, etc. WOW!
...... "Flicker fixer" which allowed me to connect a RGB PC Monitor and run things at a higher resolution without "flickering". Remember Newtek's Video Toaster? I heard (not confirmed) that Babylon 5 space scenes were done on it. Amazing stuff I tell you!
Then, I upgraded to a 2000 and the 8mhz CPU just wasn't enough. I had to upgrade it with a 68030 running at *gasp* 25mhz and wow things were great. I ran a 2 phone line BBS (using C-net) with my prized USRobotics HST modem and a regular 2400 baud on the other line. Sure, it was a warez bbs but wow those were some great memories! I could multitask the BBS (with 2 users uploading/downloading/posting), write my homework using Scribble!(a wordprocessor), print my homework and have Monkey Island running at full speed while printing. No slowdown. It was amazing at the time, esp. compared to Windows (3.11? Or 3.0? Not sure, barely remember those things then).
The full screen program multitasking, which let you pull up and down a full screened program like slides, was quite amazing and powerful. The games, the sounds, all amazing. Of course, this is compared to AdLib soundcards and CGA/EGA. At the time, there was no reason to "game" with your dad's expensive PC other than the fact that it was "all that is available at home."
But now? C'mon! I soon had to let go of my Amiga when no further developments came along. When Doom came out for the PC along with Wing Commander, Strike Commander, etc., the Amiga just started to look antiquated. Sure, the multitasking element was nice, but it just lost the gaming advantage when no advances in the graphics department were forthcoming. There was just so much potential but the management just took the potential and threw it down the drain. The only graphics update I got was a
Anyway, sorry for the nostalgia. Back to topic: Workbench (the Amiga OS) 3 looks about Windows 3.1 level still, maybe a bit better. It's pathetic. I don't know about Workbench 4 and good lord how could a BRAND NEW market untested and long development dormant OS be better than OSx? C'mon! That's like creating a new model of the DeLorean and saying "This is better than a Ferrari. Trust me!"
It ships with Duke Nukem Forever preinstalled.
Sounds like the AROS Project is making more progress than Amiga Inc. is.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The GUI of OSX is a clone of the Amiga as possible, including the "replicative fading". Sure it has a few more colors, and much newer hardware to drive it, but functionally, it's the same, but weaker.
...
Same:
Menus at the top of the GUI, rather than the application window.
Brain-damaged limitation on the location of the window resize controls.
Task bar/dock.
Drive icons.
Really usable command line interface.
Drag'n'drop,
Missing:
Public/shared/private screen feature.
Better:
???
BTW, anyone got a "stickies" (on-screen Post-It (tm)) equivalent for the Mac or Gnome?