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Amiga Growing Silent Again?
Dr. Mabusa writes "Seems like Amiga is starting a new period of silence. The executive update section of their site, where Amiga president Jim Collas used to pledge "openness to the community" until recently, has been shut down "for the next several months".
" The rumor is pretty impressive: A Transmeta CPU, a Linux Kernel, released by Amiga within the next 2 months.
This makes me suspect that there is no actual Amiga product, after all, at least not in the forseeable future.
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If they knew they would produce something in two months they would be shifting their publicity machine into overdrive.
The fact that they're not saying anything indicates that they're not sure what's going to happen and want to keep their mouths shut until they have something coherent to say.
It could be Gateway is shutting them down or forcing a change in direction. Or maybe they're looking for capital. Or maybe they're being sued for dropping QNX. It could be lots of things, but it's bound to be bad.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Either that, or the DOJ told the people handling Linus' case that they had 30 seconds to give him his card, or the entire American economy would collapse.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
When amiga showed a demo movie at some big show, they also had a part where they showed all the logo's of all the companies that are helping to build parts of the new amiga systems. One of these logo's was Transmeta's ... this video was available online as wel, and is thus a good source. It did not describe the role however that transmeta would play in the new amiga machine. But since transmeta's current patents all relate to CPU's, it is a very educated estimate, but a estimate non the less.
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
I think Amiga has enough of a history with the nerds of the world to justify being mentioned run as a topic on Slashdot. I never had one, but I knew I know more Nerds who did then who didn't.
Yes, there is a measure of pitiful in these attempts to resurect it, but we should at least feign interest - if not otherwise then out of respect.
And consider, if the best case scenario does happen, this good be a Very Good Thing (tm).
btw, I don't believe there are computers at all in most BMWs. German cars are still centered around solid engineering.
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Is it just me, or does this seem unlikely? I know, I know, if it does happen you'll all be thinking "We told you so," but Transmeta seems to thrive on mystery... if they actually released a product, their popularity (such as it is) could disappear. I'm not saying it will, but where they've been keeping whatever it is they're doing a secret for so long, could it be too little, too late? Just a thought.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
I mean really,
Amiga? The Toy right? Not to bruise anyone's ego (I am a former Amiga and Atari ST owner), but let's see - a company whos'e fastes product claims to be a 60840 @ 50 Mhz? They've been out of it for a while.... Let's face it, Transmeta would be bett'n the farm (pigs and all) if they expect Amiga to launch them into the next millenium...
My answer is: if a machine and it's users can continue a market for Amiga, without a functional parent company (the fastest Amiga is as fast as whatever PowerPC chip you care to mention), and people like the doubters still have to ask that question 5 years after Commodore fell, you know that there is something about Amiga that will never let it die.
It had *principle*. Jay Miner did it right first time around - the linux kernel this time will make Amiga no longer conceivbale as a toy by the uninitiated (it is far beyond toy OSs like Windows and Macs, but lags behind the *nix's). CPU is irrelevant - as are the latest fastest graphics cards with xxxmillion polys/sec.
It will undoubedly have impressive hardware - be it the MIPS+ATI graphics core, the Transmeta or PPC CPU. All these things are readily available. What makes Amiga live on is not the original hardware or software, but the vision of design.
WIndows and Macs are dying for the underlying power of linux. But they lack robust design. Linux has the power, but as Torvalds has indirectly said on many occations, due to it's development implementation, it never *had* a design.
Amiga combines it all - and adds the special sauce that makes it Amiga. :)
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better