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Gateway Sells Rights to Amiga Name
kman writes "I just read the news on ABCNews that Gateway Sells Rights to Amiga Name - Personal computer maker Gateway Inc. signed a deal to sell its Amiga trademarks and computer systems to closely held Amino Development Corp. " Ah, the saga of Amiga continues - terms were not disclosed, but Gateway has decided to "wrap Amiga's software
engineering function into Gateway's product development
systems" making it sound like GW is considering continuing to make the "information appliances" they were originally planning.
Or something.
WORST POST!!!
NAKED AND PETRIFIED
Fleecy, I knew you were going to make it... ;)
Nutti - who's emailing you tomorrow with juicy stuff
Amiga freaks - you officially have permission to obsess over Be now.
Totally agree -- I really can't imagine what Gateway was thinking when they did this. And especially that they held onto it so long when they've really had their hands full in the regular PC market.
lol
like, are any of the original amiga people there? is there anything left other than a name? a meaningless and empty name like if some actor suddenly decided to call herself "steve mcqueen" well its just not the same now is it... is there anything even of the same spirit in this? as far as i can tell the amiga spirit is alive and kicking in the basements of the world and it doesnt care what name you give it.
Assuming that Amino/Amiga have rights to the OS, open source would be the next logical step, to encourage improvement of the existing OS and to more easily transition to the QNX kernel. Amino has been pushing an open platform they call AQUA (Amiga QNX something Architecture?); I gather it will be aimed at creating a platform which is not owned by any one company but which will put together different parts (Amiga, QNX, IBM's open sourced PowerPC motherboards, etc) to create a successor to the existing Amiga platform and its associated userbase and legacy software.
That was close! Almost made it out of the 1900's without yet another Amiga story! The soap opera continues.
AOL *today* is still similar in many ways to Quantum Link on the 64. Is there anything of Commodore functionality, hardware architecture, etc. still present in Amiga computers?
Opinions?
Flame bait for sure, but does whatever happens to amiga really matter that much? I really DON'T get it. I am totally clueless about it. I mean it must be a very religious experience using amigas, since I am totally clueless why some folks foam at the mouth over amiga news.
... what was the last count of amigas on a LAN/Internet/WAN?
Let's see
first it was beating a dead horse now it is beating a dead ghost?
oh well....it is truely amazing.
I hear ya brother!!
Buy Siliconfruit? Buy iMacDV? ;)
I'm amazed that the Amiga name is worth anything anymore to anyone.
Who cares?
Heh, now look what you've done, A.C.
I see the lick of flames coming closer to the tinderbox.
This is the nicest news I have heard in a long time.. and a great beggining of the next millennium, there Amiga will RULES like it always has done before.. Way to go!
Actually, I used to do the same thing (boot from RAM) all the time on Macs. I wonder if there's a BIOS limitation on PCs which prevents persistent RAM drives. Unless the RAM loses power, its contents should remain intact, yet, curiously, no PC OSes offer persistent RAM drives (as far as I know).
...there's a company in Germany (Milan, I think) which makes an Atari TOS (ST,TT,Falcon) clone. Granted, it's a tiny market and its user base is not as large as, nor as vocal as, nor as organized (if that is the right word) as the Amiga community. But it is still viable enough for a few companies to make some money off of it. I believe the latest version of Milan has leased the rights to use the Atari name, but Hasbro still holds the Atari copyrights and trademarks. There's still some activity in the Atari Usenet groups. Hell, there's still activity in the GEOS newsgroups on Usenet...GEOS (under the New Deal Office name) is still a viable desktop OS (albeit a niche one). There are a lot of OS's out there that people think are extinct which still have active user groups.
"Amiga was a computer designed for games." Umm, and now they say that alternative platforms are not viable because there are not enough modern games available to play on them! Hence gamers must use Windows. Well, in fact the Amiga was, and still is, used by video professionals and animators (SeaQuest, Babylon 5). Not bad for a "computer designed for games" whose last official upgrade was in the early 90's. "PC hardware platform is much more customizable than the Amiga platform." Not true. Amigas have been hacked and modified to an extent unimaginable in the PC world; the problem with the Amiga is not upgrades and expandibility. The problem is that upgrades cost too much due to the tiny size of the remaining userbase.
You wish. You're about as humorous as Joe Piscapo. Not even worthy of "nice try".
Then you must find this story particularly enlightening.
Why doesn't Slashdot buy the Amiga? It seems with all the readers here, each contributing a little of their skills and time, the Amiga would return alive and kicking.
:-)
Running AmiLinux of course.
Ah, "humor" (so called) about Amiga: Slashdot score 2. That's trolling to the rest of us in userland, esp. if the "humor" is directed against a Slashdot sacred cow.
There is no such thing as an amiga harddrive, Einstein. Amigas are using normal IDE or SCSI harddrives. duh
Also known as "the BIOS scribbles all over memory when you boot"; you know, that "memory test" the BIOS performs?
(don't have a log-on yet) In case your not up on the situation, I don't own an amiga right now but as a comment on the lack of product descriptions... Well YOU CAN GET A NEW Amiga with a PPC on board, Amiga Inc. when owned by Gateway actually SHIPPED A PRODUCT called Amiga OS 3.5 which has a kernel that can run fine on a 25 mhz processor. (I know you can with Linux too but this has a GUI too, try running GNOME on a 25 mhz processor, sorry too slow I've tried it on my ol' 386) Flame away but this is the truth! Check out http://www.randomize.com (make new amigaz) for more details, also http://www.amiga.com (find info about amiga 3.5) See you do learn something new everyday --disco_man Send insults/threats via: http://listen.to/disco_man
thats the only rreason we bought them, oggle over the chip names ;)
my A1200 sits here beside my pc, sure its slower in raw grunt but it sure can whip the pcs butt still in alot of areas I use it still I love it still :). My a500 still runs after reading and writing some 10,000+ disks back in the demo swapper days :)
re. Backing. I't looks like they've secured pretty good backing. A number of PPl have allready tried to buy in but are being looked at as "gatecrashers ". I for 1 would be very interested in putting something on.
You don't really need a product description. The product is fine. just try buying into this. I'ts totally closed. They are not looking for anything "worse luck". These people are GEEEEEEEK's with business sense. I have tried to put cash in for about a year now. but to no avail. They don't want to know.
britian is full of sarcastic people too but what does that have to do with slashdot.org?
(Chainsaw sounds in the background mixed with shrieks of agony...)
More than happy to please...
Now if we could just get Hasbro to sell the Atari name and trademarks to Milan, we could restart the Amiga vs. Atari flame wars left pending circa 1992 or so....
It's a shame we'll never really see the Amiga return, if they could only incorporate the best of the Amiga into current machines correctly. It's wasn't the flashy graphics and nice sound that made the Amiga so great. It was the fact that it NEVER ran out, or had a conflict of IRQ's and DMA. It had TRUE plug & play, not the plug and pray we deal with now days. TRUE protected memory. (you could do things like dump the whole OS into a Virtual Ram Drive, reset, and boot out of ram!) The list goes on, of things the Amiga could do, that the IBM will never do, or do as well.
http://www.vapor.com/
Can you tell I have a real beef with this? I can understand announcing a product in advance to generate interest, but phase5 typically does so about a YEAR in advance, and then takes their announced "anticipated ship dates" and adds MONTHS to them.
Dammit Wolf, I know there aren't many hardware developers left for the Amiga, but that doesn't give you and your company free reign to jerk us all around.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Amino is a group made up of many people who have been prominent in the Amiga Community. As any wanderings through an Amiga UseNet group will demonstrate, there are multiple opinions about exactly what direction Amiga needs to go in order to innovate and survive in today's market. One of the first things Amino will need to do is come forth with a single coherent direction for the future. That sure as hell isn't happening overnight!
Secondly, what kind of financial backing does Amino have? Do they have the juice to kick out the kind of development that Amiga users are craving? Maybe not now, but they might develop sufficient fiscal muscle in the future. But until then, we'll probably have to continue the proud Amiga end-user tradition of sitting on our hands waiting for the sun to peek out from the clouds.
I'm not telling you (other Amigaheads) not to be thrilled at the news. Nor am I trying to be a complete pessimist. We've been burned repeatedly in the past by news developments which serve to inflate our hopes, only to leave us disappointed in the end. You'd think that after so many such experiences, we'd learn to approach each news story with a little more realism/skepticism.
I wish the Amino group the best of luck. This Amiga 4000 could use some new toys. :^)
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
I'll be more interested in Amiga news when there is a product description.
Oh, the descriptions were there all the time, right since 1994: Amiga with Super DSP, MMC, PPC, whatever...
The actual *products* however..
The new owner of the Amiga brand announced today that they would be changing their name to Vapor, Inc. Company President, Nopra Duct, said it signaled an innovative new strategic direction for the company. "People accuse Microsoft of selling vaporware, but we haven't released a new product in years! That puts Microsoft to shame, and they're the most powerful company in the known universe. Just think where we will be in two years!"
The company also announced plans for an IPO, including gratuitous use of the words "Internet", "E-Commerce", and "Linux". They plan to trade under the ticker symbol NULL.
(Editor's Note: The above is what is called "humor". Look it up in the dictionary.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
its all linked together, dont worry
I'm glad they finally gave up the ghost on that. Let's face it, the Amiga was awesome, but the name wasn't going to sell PC's. I mean, think about it - if you're Gateway, what name do you want to use? Gateway, or Amiga? They've got a heck of a lot of money invested in the Gateway brand, cow spots and all, and they'd be foolish to dilute that investment by adding a second name.
What's your damage, Heather?
Of course AOL looks like QuantumLink, where do you think AOL came from?
Umm... duh.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. Why do you think that the poster mentioned Q*Link in the first place?
Finally, I know that %s will make the Amiga powerful again.
In the history of Mankind? I would have thought that, if any wrestler, it would have been the Undertaker. [Ha Ha]
Metaphysicist
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"
- Cu
Does anybody know whether Phase5 (www.phase5.de) is really going to build their new equivalents of the Amiga? They've been bragging about such a product for _years_ now, regularly changing the name and extending the introduction date.
What concerns me (and likely other Amiga enthusiasts too) is the rights for existing and new Amiga technology - are these part of the deal? Will they ever be released? What does a company making an Amiga clone (as several are in development, it seems) have to bear in mind or licence?
The Amiga still isn't dead, and has a good community, which deserves better support than being shifted from company to company in business deals. How about some new hardware or licencing?
Fross
Gateway still holds the patents, the licences and all of the cards. It did not originally buy Amiga in order to resurrect it, only to gain that technology. But holding those trademarks ment that a gigantic community was built around it, and Gateway had to deal with them. By selling the trademarks and not the patents to Mr McEwan's Amino, they solve that problem. They keep the technology, and loose the community. Amino gains the community and not the technology (except maybe the OS, which is copyrighted not patented)
This could be good yet.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Atari is what I call REALLY dead.
Having choices matter. My Amigas are my main systems, used for WEB, an IP gateway, music, video and others. I've used several other systems and Amiga work for me best.
I guess this was for the best, because Gateway haven't been logical or coherent in their management of Amiga. But then again, who has? The Amiga must be the most mis-managed computer in the history of Man Kind. It's totally unbelievable that such an incredible succession of inept businessmen have laid their greedy hands on the Amiga, just to ruin it a bit more. By now, miracles are needed if the Amiga is to resurrect.
Sad but true, I'm afraid.
1. It obviously increases the number of companies with any amount of investment in Amiga.
2. Gateway is a company in flux (i.e. Waitt's departure, etc.). Gateway does some good things, but I don't think Amiga lovers want to rely on them to carry the torch.
Unfortunately, this doesn't address the primary problem--Amiga needs a prime player (e.g. Dell, Compaq, even a newcomer like Red Hat) to get behind it and push it back into the limelight. As it stands, I fear that as the months pass without any new Amiga hardware or major developments, the Amiga becomes increasingly marginalized, cool as it is/was.
It was about time Gateway let the people involved in the "Classic" (daft title, I know) REAL Amiga community get on with developing the successors to this elegant platform. Personally, I think it was about time there were some positive Amiga news, and I think this is the best piece of info I heard in a long time.
Stelios Kalogreades