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Amiga

Amiga Executive Update 153

Posted by CmdrTaco from the rumor-of-the-week dept.
Metaphysicist writes "According to a new Executive Update, Amiga's new Prez says: "The reports of the Amiga's death are greatly exaggerated". While he didn't really say much about what AI will do, he did seem to say that AI won't be building any hardware: "we have decided to work with business partners who will deliver our software technology on their systems, rather than enter the hardware business directly." " So insert your random amiga theory here.
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Amiga Executive Update More

Amiga Executive Update

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  • This story is fascinating to me, and I say /. should follow it to the bitter end. It has all the elements of "Edge of Night" or "As The World Turns," or any of the old daytime soap operas. Like a soap, the story keeps morphing around, reminiscent of my boss trying to explain at review time why I don't make as much money as the idiot down the hall.

    There are elements of heartbreak: the happy story of the QNX engagement, followed by Jim Collas' devious Victorian trick of disappearing out the opposite door of the four-wheeler on the way to the church, leaving our Canadian friends holding their Canadian private parts at the altar.

    There are elements of humor: the vain attempt to annoint my toaster oven's Internet interface as, somehow, "Amigan." Amiga in the fridge, Amiga in the microwave -- gimme that bouncin' ball!

    There is betrayal: the sudden departure of once-friendly and communicative executives, to be replaced by mindless drones of a mechanized society, spouting biz-speak from both sides of their mouths.

    And there is overall "Dallas"-style incompetence, as the idiot children of a once-great empire recklessly spend all the carefully-built-up good will of the legions of loyal fans who cut their teeth on these wonderful machines.

    I say, bring on the next chapter! More! MORE!

  • I cut off minivans with a Porsche 914! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm very agressive driver, you'll just have to scrape me off the front of that damn van IN FRONT OF YOUR DAMN KIDS!!!!!!!
  • Yeah, the 80's sure were great. Remember Defender and Tempest... remember mohawks... remember Punk rock...

    oh, yeah, and remember that guy who had some weird computer that wasn't an Apple or and IBM who got all religious about how great it was?

    Whatever happend to that guy?
  • I still use my amiga because it's still the only alternative I have to this smelly, noisy, oversized, overpriced, power hungry, unreliable, BIOS-dependant junk under my desk commonly known as a PC.

    Linux is nice, but it's FAR from being a joy to use. Windows doesn't even come close. Every day you're downloading the latest drivers, waiting for the next update of something just so you can use your PC.. And what about what amigas were REALLY about.. GOOD GAMES? How fast is a "PC"? what graphics card does a "PC" have? How much memory does a "PC" have? How the hell are we supposed to write decent games on the things when the goalposts keep moving? There's about 18 different SDKs designed just to open a window on the PC.. by the time you've learned one API everyone's using the next.

    Admittedly the days of blatting the palette registers at $dff180 and expecting it to work are gone, but there are limits. I also had an Atari ST which I loved. It doesn't HAVE to be an Amiga, but will somebody PLEASE bring out a decent desktop box that we can be productive on? All they need to do is put a keyboard on a PSX2 and I'll be there. Acorn's Phoebe looked promising but it arrived 3 years too late.

    Waiting to see what phase5/QNX produce.
  • The U first stood for Unusable (because it was so damn slow), but then hardware got good enough to invalidate this description ;)
  • Well, everything had device names like

    dfx: for the floppy
    cdx: for CDs
    zipx: for Zip drives

    etc. x stands for a number, 0 to whatever. Now when you accessed a file like
    more df0:readme.txt

    if a floppy was in drive 0, it would look for it there. If not, it would put up a requester saying there was no disk in df0:
    But - there's more. Devices also have logical names. So the disk in df0: could also be known as MyStuff:, so the above command could also be
    more MyStuff:readme.txt
    and if it wasn't there, you would get the reqeuster, Please insert volume MyStuff

    Now, the clever thing is that MyStuff could be a zip disk, CD, or floppy (in ANY mounted drive) an logical assignment to a directory on your hard drive or whatever. (It could also automagically tell the difference between two removable media with the same logical name!)

    An illustration of the power of this system is the fact that people have written handlers for ftp, so you could
    more FTP:ftp.mysite.com/readme.txt

    As far the window manager is concerned (Workbench), an icon to browse the media appears when you insert it, and goes away when you take it out.
    Cool, eh?
  • Personally, I've never used an Amiga box, but I've heard some very good things about Amiga, and I'd love to try it.

    It's true that the original Amiga was an astonishingly good machine in its time, and indeed was the machine of choice for people who in the mid-90s would have been Linux geeks.

    But the only thing the new Amiga, should it ever appear, will have in common with the original Amiga is its name, so you can't really hope to compare the two. Different companies, different designers, different world, etc.
  • You may want to check out this link. [realdreams.cz]

    It's about a committee of Amiga users who intend to come together and decide on future hardware and OS requirements. Normally, I'd take this with the pinch of salt these sorts of grass-roots movements deserve, but it has some very interesting signatories, such as people who made the original Amiga HW and SW (like Dave Haynie and Carl Sassenrath), people from QNX and various other luminaries. Basically, it's like a who's who for the current Amiga world.
  • Absolutely.

    Amiga was a better computer not some wafty newage-sounding marketing bullshit.

    Who is this Thomas J Schmidt sheister anyway. At least Jim Collas had a vision of something real that real people really wanted.

    "The company's [Commodore] early vision was probably too limited for the vast potential that Amiga offered. "
    Commodore was run by fuckwits. Ain't it funny how history repeats.
  • Some nerds use Acorn computers. I didn't see anything about RISC OS 4 being released. Some nerds use just about anything under the Sun [sic] come to think of it. But Amiga gets a disproportionate amount of coverage.

    The problem isn't the Amiga news. I love hearing Amiga news. Nothing would give me more pleasure than hearing that a new Amiga machine was available and would blow everything else away. (Actually, I can think of quite a few things that would give me more pleasure, but still, it's pretty high on the list: right below the immediate destruction of all sources of decaffeinated coffee).

    The problem is the Amiga not-news. It seems like every press release from Amiga Towers spawns a Slashdot story. Which is a shame, because all the real news appears to be is "Hello! We're still here! We're still not doing anything! Don't forget about us!"

    What's tragic is that over the last few months there have been more Amiga articles than Mac articles (looking at the first page of results from the topics page). That's more 'news' for a dead platform that isn't going anywhere than for a live platform that is. Hell, there's even an Amiga article [slashdot.org] that actually says nothing more than "Nothing's happening over at Amiga". That can't be right, can it?

    Perhaps the solution would be to add another topic instead of shifting the Amiga stuff elsewhere or killing all news from that topic. How about an 'Amiga actually do something for a change' topic. I'd quite happily view news from that.
  • Arent you the former Amiga Engineer who knew all the nitty gritty about the NG but were bound by the NDA ?

    I guess this press release means you can tell all now :) as they are no longer in the hardware business.

    As a user of Amiga forever I couldnt agree more with your post. Its more compatible than my A1200 was. I played Robocop for the first time in about 8 years the other day.
  • Some nerds use amigas. Amiga stuff matters to them. See slashdot title.

    Yes, an awful lot of amiga-specifice software on the aminet is GPL or BSD-style licensed. There's a wealth of code that could "add to linux's perfection"...

    A disproportionately large number of current European Linux developers started out on the amiga, and the amiga architecture always had a lot more in common with a unix than with ms-dos/windows, thus getting people off to a quick start on "real" systems.

    I hava a 50MHz (ca. 100MIPS) 68060 amiga (that can run linux) that is a serviceable box for my family's internet access needs. My last amiga, before I went and got a 400MHz PC running linux (I'll hopefully swich to an alpha or PPC again when I get the money...).



    The amiga OS is what the BeOS draws most inspiration from, in terms of design - i.e. media friendly, data streaming. The amiga os was a message passing-by-reference ( thus killing any hope of easy memory protection, but that's another story) microkernel-like (not a true microkernel, but the core executive's about 38K), preemptive multi-tasking, pervasively scripted(arexx) object oriented OS, years ahead of its time (at least in the home market).


    That said, there's little likelyhood of the current amiga trademark owners using anything much other than the amiga name.


    And if you don't like amiga news, its possible to go to your slashdot preferences and drop it...





  • I think the 'spirit' got downsized years ago, in the final stages of Commodore's ownership. That article is just empty PHB-speak, and doesn't give me any hope for the future of the Amiga. Rather than waiting for a magic box that may never appear (and might suck even if it does appear), Amiga enthusiasts could try to pressure developers into improving Linux to a point where it would be an acceptable replacement for the Amiga OS. I can think of a couple of obvious items, like the handling of removable media or the Amiga's concept of "screens" (though Linux's virtual consoles are similar). However, I'm sure there are many more.

    Amiga fans: What are the features that you miss the most when using Linux?
  • "the Amiga still does a lot of things better that most OS's (including Linux)."

    Were it 1994, I would probably agree with you. However, 5 years later, it's pretty safe to say that there's nothing significant you can do today on an Amiga that can't be done faster and better on a PC. Graphics? Nope. Video editing? Nope.
    The Amiga OS is badly dated by today's standards and it shows no signs of being "updated" any time soon.

    Those who would maintain that the Amiga has anything to offer over the current crop of 1999 PCs must be living in a time warp.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • I agree with the ban on Amiga news articles, it's clear that they are utterly full of shit 90% of the time.

    Is it just me, or does AI sound like they dont even know what the f' their doing, and they are just trying to capitalize on the name.

    Maybee their waiting for an IPO or something and hope that the buzzword of the week 'amiga' will reap them billions.

    I'm sick and tired of hearing about amigas plans, when they dont have any plans. This is getting to be worse then the OJ case.
  • Funny that Atari is mentioned here. Atari seemeed to be the king of Vaporware, much like what seems to be happening with all this Amiga hype going on.
  • Video was one of the things the Amiga did best. The reason it did it best was that the video chip had it's own language(the copper list), and could be made to do things when the raster reached specific locations on the screen. This makes for very smooth animation as you can guarantee the image won't be updated while it's in the middle of being drawn.

    While I agree that the Amiga was a cool machine, it wasn't the copper list that made it cool. Other systems without such a feature could also get "very smooth animation," and of course copper-like features were standard in coin-op hardware of the 1970s (yes, the seventies).

    What made the Amiga great was balance. It didn't just have a spectactular sound system or a spectacular graphics system, it was a good overall system. The bus was well thought out; the different chips shared system resources in a smart way; there weren't obvious heavy bottlenecks. The end result was that you could put together applications with sound, graphics, and general processing that, using late 1990s logic, shouldn't be able to run on such a lesser system. That's also been the key to console systems over the years, as opposed to "stick a top of the line graphics card in a system with a horrible bus" approach that's common on PCs.

  • Hey, we're almost there, and have been, for years.
    Take the Palm. Any 3Com Palm. Add the graphics
    unit from an Atari Lynx (4096 col, remember?).
    You've basically got a double-speed A500 with
    shitloads more money.

    (Should I patent this? ;)

  • Good... (Score:1)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    Let's hope they deliver an Amiga box sometime soon. Personally, I've never used an Amiga box, but I've heard some very good things about Amiga, and I'd love to try it. Maybe in a year or so, I'll be rich and I will be able to afford an extra box... yes... that would be nice.

    --

  • great idea (Score:3)

    by vyesue ( 76216 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:00AM (#1682759)
    I have a great idea - how about a ban on Amiga "news" articles until they do something newsworthy? In the past weeks we've seen them tout products that don't exist, cancel programs that were never started, revamp their leadership, and now, they are alerting the world that they aren't doing anything yet.

    jesus, when does it end? enough with the Amiga trash already. we don't care, and we won't until they actually do something.

  • If that is what this new "Idea" is - a better way where? to what??

    In the begining there was a very small group of people (not a marketroid among them IIRC), and they had an idea to make a really interesting and fun tool.


    That was the Idea (of course, I am sure that they hoped to make a good living at it too!)


    "The Box" and its OS were the embodiment of that idea.

    And it was a pretty cool tool/toy for quite a while...

    Now, we have a large consortium of "partners" (Both HW and SW!) a committee of committees...
    Together, they take this Idea...
    and we will get the lowest common denominator filtered through the gastrointestinal tracts of a dozen committees.

    I don't think it is going to be very pretty.

    I don't think it is going to be very elegant.

    Maybe I'm wrong - I hope so, I own a number of Amigas and I enjoy using them. But design by meta committee does not seem likely to produce anything I'll want to buy. Especially when each committee is working more with an eye to shareholder value and market positioning, not elegance, not the creation of a really cool tool.

    "It is an exciting new mega trend in the industry and we are excited about being at the forefront of this next great wave in computing history." - great, a "mega trend" and a new wave to surf... I think I see where any great "Idea" will be lost at sea.

    Its been said before - "sigh".

    I wonder if the Amiga would have been quite so good if Commodore had ever had a live marketing "brain" on staff. Perhaps the quality of the tool would have decayed so quickly that there wouldn't have been time to develop the community that it did.

    There is an "Amiga Curse" but it is a peculiar one:

    first too little marketing, now too much.

    or perhaps more precisely:

    First too much cool tool and no marketing, now too much marketing and no cool tool.

    Oh well, enough "what ifs", time to see if I can get my hands on a copy of BeOS, get a nice NetBSD install going on an old Mac, and finally configure my Linux box the way I'd like it. I'll still check in on the Amiga scene from time to time, I'll still keep my HW. But I no longer expect anything from Gateway... let alone anything good, cool, or elegant.

  • If we look at the events of the past few weeks we'll notice they have:

    1. Changed management
    2. Changed CPUS
    3. Changed OSs
    4. Changed their platform (desktop to consumer)
    5. Given up on hardware

    So, like, why are we even bothering paying attention any more? Yes, I loved my Amiga 500 too, but this has nothing to do with the original.

  • sigh. (Score:2)

    by dougman ( 908 )
    As much as it pains me, a long time boing-ballin', workbenchin', CLI-hackin', Guru-Meditatin' dude to say, I think we've come to the point where we can call for the replacement of the boing ball graphic in the Slashdot/images directory with the humour foot one.

    (deep, heavy sigh, followed by somber trek to cafeteria to wallow in a tall glass of sasparilla and a few Lorna Dunes).

  • In general, I shy away from conspiracy theories. But in this case, I see only two possibilities. You are right (or at least very close to right) or else these folks are absolutely, positively nuts. *shrug* Personally, I'd rather think you are right.
  • Does this mean that the warranty on the Amiga computer I bought in 1987 is void? What ever will we do now that Amiga is out of the hardware race???
  • The best ideas and intentions are oft laid waste by clueless management and political bickering.

    Just another reason why Open Source OSes are the only way to go.... no PHBs can ruin them.

  • I've been a die-hard Amiga fan for years, but that's changed over the last 7 days. I'm not going to sell my Amiga [smsu.edu] or put it on mothballs, but neither am I going to spend another penny on it.

    Amiga has lost my loyalty forever. I need to get things done, and I no longer have faith that we'll ever see new Amiga hardware. No matter how Gateway spins their announcements, I won't believe in miracles until I'm sitting in the same room with one, watching the 21st century's answer to the Boing Demo.

    I'm kind of bummed about it, but it looks like instead of getting that shiny new AmigaNG (or whatever they were calling it at any given time), I'll be spending my money on a nice dual Pentium board.

    See ya, Amiga. It's been a blast for the last 14 years, but I'm just not in love with you anymore.

  • The U is for Unix or Ubiquitous, depending on which port you ask.
  • You waited until now to say 'see ya'? Jeez...you'd think most amiga users would have said 'see ya' *years* ago. The only consistent thing about Amiga since CBM went under is that they've been yanking peoples chains. They've been doing a damn good job too. I fell for it for awhile then got my PC. Havent missed my Amiga since.
  • Try this:

    Go to preferences and turn on the two "slashboxes" providing sidebars on OS/2. Now read them for a few days. You will see a steady stream of announcements about events, products and IBMs ongoing support of OS/2. Yes, Amigans, OS/2 is a shipping product with real users and new products and new OS releases.

    Now ask yourself,"Why don't any of these news stories ever show up in regular slashdot rotation?"

    The original poster is spot-on: the Amiga is a dead product with nothing to report. We'd all love to hear it when it or if it does actually do something but until then, how about a little equal time for other technologies that real nerds love?

    As an OS/2 user, I am grateful for the slashboxes that are provided. The Amiga already gets more attention than it deserves. Stop whining.

  • While I dislike the Wintel platform, I once thought that the Amiga perhaps may have been better off building on the PC platform -- add a graphics card (with the Amiga chips) and a separate OS (co-resident with Windoze).

    They did it the other way round - you could buy a "Bridgeboard" card that contained an 80x86 processor and some interface logic. You had the option of sharing the Amiga RAM and hard disk, or installing dedicated ones for faster performance. There were also a few ISA slots to add PC accessories like video cards (since the graphics were *slow* when emulated through the Amiga OS).

    I had a 486 Bridgeboard in my A4000, and it worked, but in the end it was just way overpriced and underpowered compared to the PC market.
  • Am I right in assuming that this move officially declares all Amiga technology outside of Gateway's labs officially obsolete? Those that held on to the absolute latest models in the hopes that the technology they already own would be extended have just officially had their last hopes dashed, no? No Amiga software or hardware will be of any use with whatever they come up with, right?

    Yeah, the Amiga *used* to be about a better way, but now that we have no idea what "way" is supposed to be better, how the hell can we support it?

    I'm still curious how Gateway hopes to capitalize off its investment in Amiga technology, because it sure sounds like they just threw it all in the back room and are starting from scratch. (For this reason alone, I'm not against continuing to report Amiga news on /., though I deeply sympathize with everyone's frustrations.)

    Now we *really* need a Linux port of Deluxe Galaga...

  • Well, read through the statement. Yegads.

    It _was_ about a box. It was about a _box_ that did multimedia faster because of innovative hardware and a decent OS. (Caveat: Never much of an Amiga user.)

    Don't tell me I missed the point, that's just condescending. Don't try to justify yet another change in direction by telling me that it wasn't about a box.

    So what do you think you'll have running on other platforms on top of other OSs? (Hmm, there's an idea-a portable run-time environment. What should we call it? I know! Jabba!)

    Geezo.
  • ...go to themes.org and make you Linux box look like one.

    That's as close as you're going to get!

  • Looking at the other 50 or so comments today, I'm obviously not the only one fed up with perpetual Amiga vaporware. The last few months have been meaningless announcement after meaningless announcement, and now the end result is that an executive says nothing is happening currently. You know what I say? Who cares!

    Sure Amiga was interesting 14 years ago. But what about now? All we have seen from Amiga has been one "Breaking News" bit after another. They change the OS, the change the CPU, they even change what the hell the Amiga is. Look! It's a computer, it's a set-top, no, it's Amiga! Think superman here folks. Hearing Look! It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's Superman never amde him real. Reading these releases won't make Amiga reality either.

    Let's all move on to something interesting that might actually happen: Transmeta.
  • :)

    And maybe we should do the same with stories about Linux inevitably taking over the world, or people getting heated up about possible violations of the GPL?

    Yes, Amiga have had some interesting publicity recently - though lots of the problems have been caused by the users assuming things that aren't supported - or are even denied - by what Amiga themselves have said. Can't blame us really, with no substantial developments in 6 years.

    The point is, people care about this one and Amiga are going to produce an interesting platform from the sounds of things. Give them half a chance, for goodness' sakes.

    Greg

  • I've been a die-hard Amiga fan for years, but that's changed over the last 7 days. I'm not going to sell my Amiga or put it on mothballs, but neither am I going to spend another penny on it.

    Aw Kirk, I don't understand how the last 7 days can have disillusioned you about your Amiga Classic. If you believed Collas and Amiga Inc, then you've known the ol' A3000 was a dead-end for several months. Collas never led anyone to believe that the Amiga Classics would be able to play any part in his plans for the future.

    If anything, the last week has improved the situation. Now that Amiga Inc has totally blown its credibility, Amiga Inc's so-called plans are no longer a serious distraction. And that means the True Path is now clearly illuminated: QNX Neutrino! Well, guess what? Your old A3000 (thanks to your PPC board) will run Neutrino. You don't need new hardware. So why despair?

    Besides, I can't stand to see you so sad, when your A3000 is even niftier than mine [rt66.com]. You tryin' to demoralize the rest of us?!? ;-)

    See ya, Amiga. It's been a blast for the last 14 years, but I'm just not in love with you anymore.

    Oh well. If you ever wanna sell your Micronik case, lemme know... *drool*


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!
  • Let's hope they deliver an Amiga box sometime soon

    What did you read, anyway? Not the same executive update I saw...
  • > At Amiga we are designing next generation
    > Internet-ready, consumer-oriented digital
    > appliances. The Amiga name is associated the
    > world over with user-friendly, low-cost,
    > powerful computing. We are taking this
    > philosophy into the next generation, enabling
    > products from hand-held Internet appliances to
    > high-end graphics computers that help the user
    > rather than frustrate them.

    This was taken from their "Engineering Jobs" page at http://www.amiga.com.

    Now, I realize that there had been a lot of marketroidian speech in the announcement, but you might notice "to high-end graphics computers" in the above statement. The fact of the matter is that Amiga is not abandoning the computer platform, but probing the market, since Amiga IS a commercial venture.

    Even if the "Amiga Appliances" fall flat on their faces, it can still be believed that the Amiga computer might survive yet again.

    I have never managed to acquire an amiga in my past; since I was too young to be making money at the time, but I am still intent upon getting one before I die... and I am certain that this rather rocky start is not the end for the Amiga... just another stasis until the platform can be revived again. In other words, don't give up on the Amiga just because some loser PHB decides it would work better in an appliance... who knows? You might find the results are better than expected.

    As long as at least ONE of the amiga productions is still a computer, though, it is still likely to survive yet another Moore generation.

    I'm not sure who said this, but it applies well:
    "It's not over until it's over."

    And, for god's sake, DON'T assume that just because it's not using Workbench or AmigaOS, that it's not going to be as good as the originals... I am betting on the possibility that BeOS could actually revive it to it's former glory.

    Now... all we need is a Video Toaster NG... :-)

    --
  • And maybe we should do the same with stories about Linux inevitably taking over the world

    Perhaps not, since this actually has more than a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

    The point is, people care about this one and Amiga are going to produce an interesting platform from the sounds of things. Give them half a chance, for goodness' sakes.

    How long should "half a chance" last, though? So far we're at 5 years and counting! When will it end? What's considered a fair shake? I personally think we crossed the line separating "half a chance" and "give up already" a couple years ago. We ride Microsoft and Intel all the time for not having products out the door in time -- why the hell should we be lenient when it comes to Amiga, who hasn't shipped anything at all yet?

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • What's laughable is just that Gateway honestly expects us to take them seriously after all this. The rest of it - the years wasted, the technology they're just SITTING on, the resources they could have put into developing and marketing the Amiga (or some like-minded alternative system) to bust it into the mainstream in a big way, which they are now throwing away in order to make some kind of software-only "information appliance", is not humor - it's tragedy.
  • With that kind of "spirit" it should spit pea soup, levitate off its desk, and spin its monitor through 360 degrees constantly.
  • "Stuff that matters" - to Slashdot anyway. It's news for nerds, stuff that matters To SOMEONE. Yes, I agree Slashdot has gone overboard with a Boing ball on the icon bar at least once a week. No worse than some of the other silly off-topic stuff that goes up there, I guess the red and white just flags more attention.

    But it DOES matter. Some of us want new computers that are not Windows, are not Mac, and are not UNIX. (Yes, this is an alien concept for some people around here.) Some of us LIKE how the Amiga works and would like to see a memory-protected, multiprocessing-enabled, theme-configurable version of it running on quad 500MHz G4's - or as close to that as we can get within our price range. Some of us were hoping Gateway would actually do something meaningful with the technology - and if anything, the Iwin "Amiga clone" hoax has proven that PEOPLE ARE VERY INTERESTED in buying such boxes if someone bothers to build them. Gateway has the clout, the resources, and the people (or HAD the people before they all resigned in disgust) to make a kick-ass computer for people who WANT kick-ass computers, and instead they have reduced it all to a contradictory-sounding software-only information appliance that will have far less of a market than the Amiga itself. Notice each successive press release has been a diminishment of the strategy.

    Now, frankly, I don't want Gateway to manufacture anything with an Amiga nameplate - I just want them to stop being condescending and insulting to the Amiga user base, and continue to piss on us by acting as though WE should still be waiting with baited breath on THEM.

    Perhaps most importantly, my A1200 still runs and is still VERY much in active use, for Web surfing, email, word processing, and 3D work. For me the Amiga (the classic Amiga, not the crap Gateway wants to sell me) will continue to be "stuff that matters" until the last Amiga on earth fails to power up. I acknowledge its limitations and I wish for better - but it also continues to be useful, while my Linux box rusts in the closet.
  • I have to agree, this does seem to signal the end. I was never an OS coder (but I always knew we had the best), more of a h/w coder, and I now know that the Amiga is finally at rest. I'm just looking for a cool OS (QNX/Be) running on a cool platform (umm? are there any any more - dreamcast/AMIRAGE?). Anyways.

  • I've known that my 3000 was dead-end for a long time now - probably before I even bought it, in fact. But I was so looking forward to a new Amiga series to spend my money on, and now it's blindingly obvious that it just wasn't meant to be.

    As far as QNX/Neutrino: yeah, that sounds like fun, but IMHO misses the purpose altogether. If I want Unix, I'll run Linux on cheap Intel hardware. My Amiga is for AmigaOS and fun, and not for competing in an area it just wasn't designed for.

    As I said, I have no intention of parting with poor ol' Honeypot anytime soon. I have too much money wrapped up in it, not to mention love and time. But my relationship with Amiga as a whole is over, and I don't see anything on the horizon that is likely to change that. P.S. Hell, no, you can't have my Micronik. ;)

  • I am very patient man, and I used to be amused by Amiga-articles, but this is too much now, even for me. Here is what I am going to do now:

    • Press tha "Preferences" link
    • Find "Exclude Stories from the HomepageExclude Stories from the Homepage" part
    • Press the button next to "Amiga"
    • Go to the bottom of the page
    • press "saveuser" button.

    Goodbye Amiga. Pitty, it is such a nice machine.

  • OK.
    But what do we do next. I need clever h/w, for clever tricks. What OS/hw platform will let me do that. Can I turn off Linux/Win 9x/Win NT/Mac OS? to let me get straight to a standard custom h/w.
    No.

    I want a clever 2d platform.

    If you know what it is, please tell me.
  • Or you could buy the Amiga Forever CD and get UAE and all the ROMs from I think 1.2 to 3.1( the online edition now comes with 1.3,3.0 and 3.1).

    Didnt the U originally stand for Unusable ?
  • I agree that not everything on Slashdot should be Open Source or Linux specific. Many interesting topics concerning MacOS, BeOS, Solaris, BSD, as well as Mac, Sun, and Alpha hardware have been and should continue to be presented on Slashdot.

    some of the posts in this thread declare the final death of Amiga. Well, the Amiga has been effectively dead for some years now, and there is zero chance of any Amiga products coming out. If there was a viable market ( not to be confused by a demand from legacy Amiga users ) those products would have been introduced already.

    Since, in my opinion, we're never going to see anything come from the people owning Amiga, it is a waste of time to continue to cover the issue.

  • It's been a wild ride, but I gotta go... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Amiga Inc., has finally lost its greatest asset: the community. Why Gateway saw fit to turn its back on a built in automatic userbase is beyond me, but that is what they've done. The Amiga is dead, long live the Amiga. I'll keep mine, and I'll probably spend some more dough on it, but only because it's so fun... :) This "better way" crap is annoying as hell, though. Not about a box or an OS. My ass. Schmidt's comments basically translate into "the Amiga is anything you want it to be, only better. A better car, a better tapioca pudding..." Screw 'em.
  • You're right. And you're a troll (Score 0). But you're wrong because you believe that Linux only exists to fight MS. MS -does- produce badly written OSs, and we should dislike them for that. And you're right, Linux isn't perfect. But Linux is at least open. As Amigans we all knew we had the best system, but it died when Ali screwed it up. It's a shame that we are now limited to idealogically good (open), but badly implemented systems (Linux, IBM comp), and propitary (sp?, closed), but well implemented systems (QNX, Be, AMIRAGE, Alpha, CHRP). Neither has cool custom chips. Anyway, when was the last time you played with a copper and thought it mattered. Nickos

  • :) (Score:1)

    by nickos ( 91443 )
    I'm laughing, but I should be crying.
  • Are you real?

    The ST was a 68k + off shelf sound chip + basic frame buffer + MIDI PORT.
  • I was going to rush out and buy a new Amiga when it was released. I liked the sound of Neutrino, and then over to Linux based using Transmeta... i wanted it even more to see just what transmeta can do for myself

    Amiga is not JUST about "a better way". It WAS about the OS, the Software, the Hardware - this is what made it "a better way"

    I bet I am not alone to feel the most dissapointed I have ever been in Amiga and I think I have finally given up hope... that says a hell of a lot coming from me :(

    I want the hardware, the software, and everything else. Considering Amiga want to take a different path, it makes me wonder if they have heard of the word 'diversification'

    Amiga, give people what they want, THEN offer other ways to distribute this technology in what is currently being proposed.

    The only faith I have left in Amiga is that (with their never-ending changing of ideas) they will decide to go back to what was a better solution in the first place. If not, I have lost complete faith. Then again maybe Iwin, Phase5 and QNX can do something...

    Whatever happens, I suppose i'll be happy if I can still play Blazemonger [umass.edu]
    heh
  • I have to agree with you. As an amiga user for more than ten years I probably shouldnt however, all this constant changing directions, changing leadership, changing Kernel etc etc just makes them look mickey mouse. Better to keep quiet until they actually produce something than to be written off before anthing is released.
  • Oh, to make a liar out of me, on their website, they talk about AmigaOS 3.5. I guess that's something

    Outsourced.
  • we don't care, and we won't until they actually do something

    Whose we? I do. I gave up on the Amiga about 8 or 9 years ago, but still like to hear what is going on with it.

  • Were it 1994, I would probably agree with you. However, 5 years later, it's pretty safe to say that there's nothing significant you can do today on an Amiga that can't be done faster and better on a PC.

    Ok, buddy, you asked for it. Get a towel ready for wiping the egg off your face. Ready?

    Web browsing.

    The only web browser on the PC that even comes close to AWeb's speed and user-friendliness is Opera, and AFAIK, it still hasn't even been ported to Linux (yet).

    (Sure, other OSes running on 1999 machines could conceivably be able to browse the web as well as the Amiga, and due to their faster hardware, they should be even better. But they just don't have the software.) Funny that you mentioned 1994, the year that mainstream web browsers stopped evolving. You were saying something about a time warp?

    Anyway, the others were right: If you don't like the stupid Amiga saga news (I'm starting to get pretty bored with it myself), just filter the category. Flamin' the Amiga itself, though, just makes you look silly.


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!
  • Amiga's been dead for years. It's just a shambling zombie, occassionally popping up to eat the brains of another company but still a rotting lump of flesh with nothing left to reccomend it. Commidore couldn't market and the PC industry passed them by. It's dead, Jim. Move on.
  • AMIGA Inc. == CLUEBIES !

    Tons of companies including Commodore Amiga has gone down that road and failed.

    The cool thing about Amiga was that most people had the exact same box (Amiga 500). You could spend a full week fine-tuning 200 lines of assembly to push it to its limits, and it would be worthwhile because you could impress all your friends with it. (same thing is true of sucesses like C64, Nintendo, SEGA and Playstation)

    When the boxes are not the same (like the PC) software runs badly on most machines.

  • I was talking to a friend today while looking at some trendy posters during my annual trip to the mall to remind myself why i dont like it. He said that at the companies that make stupid posters just give kids beer and write down what they say to get ideas. I think that is what they do at amiga. The kids they hire just think its cool to get new execs
  • Thankyou.
    But the Amiga, like any other computer, only really matters if it is up to date. I don't care about processor (x86 is sh*t, PPC, Alpha or ARM is better), and the Amiga OS is good (OS 3.5 is just a hack), but not good enough.

    Let's get real.
    We need a cool computer (whatever happened to the A\Box), with a cool OS (QNX/Be).
    I don't know, but programming POSIX stuff using X is -not- the way forward.
  • what
    http://thor.prohosting.com/~bengy/m_milanii.htm
    actually says

    "Probably the most important step is that the Milan II will have a 060 processor by standard which has a distinctly greater efficiency than the smaller 040 brother."

    68060: now that -is- the cutting edge.

    "Beyond this there will be SDRAM simm banks in the new Milan so that Milan users will be able to use the modern, faster and cheaper memory chips in the future."

    -SDRAM- I never thought that was possible. ;)

    "Another important step is the asynchronous clock which allows to run the bus and CPU clock independently from each other. That means that the CPU will be timed not only with 25 or 50 MHz but in several steps up to (probably) 100 MHz while the PCI bus will be supplied with the 33 MHz which is necessary for it."

    -asynchronous clock- So you have chips running at diffrent speeds. Ohmygod.

    "In order not to loose contact (you can really say that) to future, external devices, the Milan gets 2 USB ports from the start which shall make it possible to connect cheap scanners, printers, digital cameras, Internet phones etc. Further more, the Milan has 3 ISA- and 4 PCI interfaces."

    Please stop; you're killing me.

    "The hardware includes material of well-known producers. The sound card, a SB 64 pnp, is delivered by Creative Labs, the hard disk on the other hand is by Maxtor (8,4 Gbyte), the graphics card is delivered by ATI, the driver software supports the ATI Rage Pro with up to 16 MB. The keyboard will include Cherry technology and, like the mouse, provided with a Milan logo. The latter is delivered by Logitech, one of the leading quality mouse producers worldwide."

    So... Standard sound card, hard drive, graphics chip, keyboard and mouse, all with the -Milan logo- Dunno about you, but I'm impressed.

    Mind you, Pong etc was cool.
  • Oh well, I was going to repost this...
    It seems like this should be posted annually until the end of time (or until Amiga dies, whichever comes first...)
    ------------------------------------------------ -
    Subject: Re: Morden on Amiga Format Cover!!!!
    From: bil@perceived.demon.co.uk (Bil Irving)
    Newsgroups: uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5

    ian@binny.demon.co.uk (Ian Vincent) wrote:

    >: Umm... AFAIK, Amiga Technologies GmbH was bought out by Viscorp several
    >: months ago.
    >Nope, it fell through. Its still in liquidation. Quikpak is the present
    >favoutite (they make A4000 motherboards in Canada). BUT the A/Box is on the
    >way (hopefully).

    Damn and damnation.

    "Hello, I wish to register a complaint. Hello, miss?"

    "What do you mean 'Miss'?!"

    "Oh, I'm sorry, I have Windows '95. I wish to register a complaint about this computer that I bought not five years ago from this very boutique."

    "Oh yeah, the Amiga 500. What's wrong with it?"

    "I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead. That's whats wrong with it."

    "Naw, its just restin'"

    "Restin'?"

    "Yeah! Lovely computer, beautiful operating system..." "The operating system don't enter into it. It's stone dead."

    "Naw its restin'"

    "Alright then, if its restin', I'll wake it up! HELLO MIGGY! I GOT A NICE COPY OF LIGHTWAVE FOR YOU IF YOU WAKE UP! Now that's what I call a dead computer."

    "It's probably pining for Commodore."

    "Pining for Commodore? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did the software dry up the minute I got it home?"

    "Ah well, the Amiga prefers keeping a low profile. Lovely computer, beautiful operating system..."

    "Look my lad, I've had enough of this. That computer is definitely deceased. And when I bought it not five years ago you told me that its total lack of grip in the marketplace was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long 16-bit war with Atari."

    "It's pining..."

    "It's not pining. It has passed on. It has ceased to be. It's expired, and gone to meet Jay Miner. This is a late computer. Bereft of software, it rests in peace. If you hadn't stacked it on your shelf it would be clogging up someone's attic. It's rung down the curtain and joined the 8-bits, this is an ex computer!"

    "Well, I'd better replace it then. Sorry squire, I've had a look, we're right out of Amigas."

    "I see, I see, I get the picture..."

    "I got a PC."

    "Does it multitask in 1MB of memory?"

    "Not really."

    "Well then its scarcely a replacement then, is it."


    Sorry. Much apologisings.

    --
    Moderators accept or reject articles based solely on the criteria posted
    in the Frequently Asked Questions. Article content is the responsibility
    of the submitter. Submit articles to ahbou-sub@acpub.duke.edu. To write
    to the moderators, send mail to ahbou-mod@acpub.duke.edu.

  • Hmm (Score:1)

    by jackal! ( 88105 )
    I have a great idea - how about a ban on Amiga "news" articles until they do something newsworthy? In the past weeks we've seen them tout products that don't exist, cancel programs that were never started, revamp their leadership, and now, they are alerting the world that they aren't doing anything yet.

    Would that be the un-/. effect?
  • The Cloanto software "Amiga forever" is awesome!
    The emulator will run directly from the CD, or can be installed. Versions for DOS, Mac, Windows
    included. Includes ROMs/OS for 1.3, 2.04, 3.1 versions. Includes Picasso 24bit graphics card
    HW emulation that mimics a modern megapixel Amiga
    on your FeeCee at work. It includes a ready to run Sys: and Work: partitions. Connects to the net
    thru the host computers network! Has a pair of programs to run on a real Amiga to transfer files back-n-forth. The product is very configurable, and you can simulate multitudes of combinations of
    CPU/Floppy/HD/ChipRam/16-32bitram/ZorroMemory/Va rious chipsets/Audiocard-VideoHW emulations that allow simulation of unreal machines never befor made. A super way to testSW w/o an arsenel of real HW, or run classic games from the 80's, or Mega-Demos. Diskettes are
    simulated as 901k files that can be located in the any of the 4 virtual floppy drives.

    A Very cool way to make an Amiga Laptop too.
    Bring that CD and a good directory utility like Dopus5 to the network, and you are lord!

  • Not lobotomized - more than half his brain's been cut away by the looks of it. His type of marketing shlingo went out of style with the hoola-hoop, when folks became less gullible.

    Guilding the lilly? Nah - no matter how much he tries, he can't shine sh*t. Nex
  • Hacking clever tricks on standard clever graphics hardware, understanding what -everything- does at the age of 14 in less than a week, having a really efficient OS, being able to make that OS draw something on the screen -quickly- (ie not using X).

    The only good things about Linux are:
    It's open
    Seperate window manager

    Anyway, don't get me wrong. The Amiga's dead. I've just got to discover the next cool hacking toy.
  • U R 4 W4NK3R.
  • Maybe I'm way off here, but the way I see it...

    It's not running on Amiga hardware
    It's not running AmigaOS

    So how is it an Amiga? Just carrying a logo and a name doesn't make it cool. It will have none of the technology of the original Amiga (which has been improved on in other markets anyways).
  • Whatever useful brand name the word Amiga used to carry, all it caries now for me (and I'd wager most other old Amigans) is the pain of being insulted over and over again.

    I'll be so happy when AI finally does something with the name they fought so hard to purchase so we can all laugh at them for being so silly, she done last tear about what they killed to do it, and then move on.

    This is getting as bad as the OJ Simpson trial and the Clinton "scandal". Sheesh.

    --

  • No, no, no, didn't you read the article? It's the same *spirit* as the old Amiga.
  • Ok, enough is enough. Everybody loved his/her Amiga (1000, 500, A2000, B2000, etc.), but now it's over!

    The only reason that could possibly raise any discution is nostalagia. In the days of the Amiga (circa end of the 80's), people were passionate on the war between the Amiga and the Atari ST. Now, we see the same kind of flame wars between Windows and Linux users/advocates (although I haven't seen many ppl claiming to be Win advocates).

    Is there anybody here who likes that vaporware never-ending-story with the Amiga? Haven't we evolved? Or is it the new teenager generation busy discovering the joys of partisanship and computers?

    Boy, we didn't have the net 10-12 years ago! We were congregating at our local computer dealer, arguing about what one of the *printed* magazines had said! At least, we were getting off the 'puter, just for the pleasure of talking about it... Remember the time when Tramiel (CEO of Atari) was openly flaming the Amiga, and vice-versa...?

    But now...wow... I don't think any software community or advocacy group *needs* that kind of childish behaviour. The "my toy is better than yours" is OK when you're 10.

    I'm requesting /. doesn't propagate all those bogus "news" about something that doesn't even exist anymore. It's like trying to bring a dead back to life, even though the dead was great.

    I liked my Amigas a lot, they were ahead of anything on the market then. But, unfortunately, it's the fate of those who are ahead of their times to die poor.
  • Is this Amiga thing becoming some sort of horrid running joke amongs the slashdot admins? It's sort of like watching Jay Leno - you hear the same thing every day and it doesn't get any better the 500th time you hear it.

    Does anyone still care???

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • and the custom circuitry it contained that made Amiga what it was. You cannot just take the Amiga and run it on top of any old OS without losing a criticial piece of what the Amiga was.

    Video was one of the things the Amiga did best. The reason it did it best was that the video chip had it's own language(the copper list), and could be made to do things when the raster reached specific locations on the screen. This makes for very smooth animation as you can guarantee the image won't be updated while it's in the middle of being drawn. The screen could also concurrently show multiple resolutions and/or color depths at the same time by changing the settings via the copper list.

    On PC's there's no way to know where the scan line is, so the image is often changed while it's still being displayed. This is really noticable when an image is moving left/right as the image will appear to have a seam where the motion isn't in sync.

  • Just give me PPC ATX Motherboard. Have it have AGP ,PCI and USB ports.

    Now let me install whatever OS I want, AmigaOS, Be, QNX, MacOSX, BSD, Linux, Winnt351 etc....

    IBM released specs for a PPC Motherboard.. Make a standard PPC hardware platform, (VERY SIMPLE) and then release a modified AmigaOS for it.


    Come on people, I Want a Quad G4 PPC system Running Linux, Dual boot into AmigaOS.. ;)
    (Oh and maybe an NV10 AGP Gfx Card with 128megs of ram)

  • When I started with an Amiga - say, some 12 or 13 years ago - I liked it primarily for its games and its sound. Hey, I still was a kid. I still am, in a way.

    After a while I began to appreciate the simple - though limited - and elegant operating system. And because it could do things that no other machine could: because of its dedicated hardware.

    Let's be honest: that was what made the Amiga. Operating system wise, we've evolved quite a bit in fifteen years and I wouldn't want to trade in my NT 4.0 Desktop against the Amiga - seriously.

    My interest has shifted towards digital audio now and I have a load of professional music equipment at my fingertips. My ideal is to create my own Digital Audio Workstation, but synchronisation - in other words, dedicated hardware - is a problem with both PC's and Macs. BeOS is not going to change that.

    The MCC Amiga would have been a new way of looking at things, at taking the multimedia problem at the root. No longer an office machine doing multimedia things, but a real multimedia machine. I'm going to pay 500 euro for a mere sound card - I wouldn't have minded a more expensive machine.

    The announcement at the Amiga site is an insult to my intelligence. Gateway have payed $13m to have a bouncing ball on a box that isn't Amiga, on an OS that isn't Amiga.

    My choice will be Windows NT/2000, or BeOS if it manages to support my hardware. The Amiga era has finally ended.

  • Perhaps /. should have a cloud icon for any/all vaporware posts. =)
  • If you don't like Amiga news, get a personal ./ account and turn it off instead of whining about it!
    Grrr..

    And ow yeah, I hope the Gateway CEO's will burn in hell!
  • Why would they change their track? The former prez got int trouble for saying the word "Transmeta". He was too loose lipped. So now it looks like they are going to be a bogus run on everything software. The "amiga running on all platforms" line is a lie. I think that we were getting too close to what is going on. They tried shutting up, but nobody bought that. So now they lied. And YOU ALL BOUGHT IT! Sure, us loyal Amigians were dealt a big blow. I think they know that and assume that when something comes out, it will be good enough to woo everyone back. My only proof of this is the list of engineering jobs has not changed. They are still looking for hardware and systems people.
  • The thing about the Miggy was that it was the perfect 2D graphics machine. Planar graphics was great for 2D effects (Street Fighter scroll, SW scroll, 1/4 pixel scroll (that's quarter of a pixel scrolling in AA - thanks all the same), clever fake alpha chanelling, h/w scrolling, multiplexed sprite handelling, dual playfields, and that's not to mention the copper.

    I just feel sorry for all the yanks that never played with it.
  • Limiting Amiga to just one box and one OS at this point
    would be like offering the world a better horse and carriage at the dawn
    of the automotive age.

    Actually, the simile is just wrong. Limiting Amiga to one (Better) box
    and one (Better) OS is like offering a V-8 Cadillac when
    everyone else is still driving percherons and drays.
  • You never owned an Amiga, did you?

    So next time, please understand why we're getting upset. You're running Linux on an x86; a poor OS (cos it's U*IX based) running on a poor h/w platform.

    Nevermind.
  • Make up your mind... First you complain that those systems are proprietary, then you want "custom chips". If you want custom chips, buy a pocket calculator. Face it, the days when one company could design an entire computer+OS, is OVER. Even Apple gave up that idea.
  • There are solutions for this on Amiga. There are a couple of sound cards that have high quality sound,with digital I/O, and SMPTE. Plus I recently saw a NL editing software plus a real nice HD recording solution. All cheaper than & equal to [if not better than] Mac & PC.
  • From the linked statement it seems impossible to get an idea of what is going on. Amiga is not only a box or an OS apparently. Um, yes it is. what the hell else is it? What is there to run on other vendors hardware. no os - no nada. It sounds to me like this marks the end of the game. They have absolutely nothing to market according to that statement, except a spurious vision of 'Amiga' subtracting of course AmigaOS and all the hardware. It must surely be the ultimate in vapourware - hyping something that doesn't exist - even at the idea stage. Hype a vision. Sell it? Hello?
  • Excellent! My amiga of youth will soon be back and widespread in power and versitility running the god of OS's, Linux, and take over those bitches that work at microsoft.

    Of course, i'm only joshing [blockstackers.com].

    Still, it does fell like Amiga was a slut all along, eh lads?

  • Not to sound ignorant (see tagline below) but what is gateway (as in the cow boxes?) doing with amiga?
  • Apple was the first company with an iCEO, Amiga should be the first company with an aiCEO. It's the perfect idea for a tech company, they take a bunch of spare parts and slap together their new CEO to something reminicent of HAL onboard the Discovery loaded with a couple RunCompany algorithms not to mention they can make him as good looking as they want, just change their desktop theme. SGI should think about this too, it would be alot cheaper. As long as it was user friendly and intuitive they wouldn't need a PR department further saving them money.
  • To those of us trying to follow the Amiga, the developments of the past few weeks *are* news. These shifts in political power at Amiga Inc. are every bit as relevant to a final product as pushing that product out the door.
  • I've never owned an Amiga. And I will never get the chance to own one, at this rate...

    Amiga has performed another open-water full turnabout for the umpteenth time in the last two years. No, they're not building a set-top box, they're not building a Linux box, they're not building a QNX box, they're not building a Multimedia Convergence machine (ye gods, what marketing crap), they're building... software?

    What's next, branding their logo onto Happy Meals? Their corporate direction can't get much more emphermal than "...produce software technology that will enable Internet services on an emerging category of products...". Even their plans (because they have no deliverable goods) have devolved to nothingness.

    Guess they don't need to make money to be stupid.

    Despite whatever positive karma they've earned from their first machines, they seem doomed to float aimlessly, never dying off, consigned to wander the halls of computing as a feeble non-entity whispering murmurs of their past glory.

  • Re:great idea (Score:3)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:27AM (#1682859) Journal
    If you look in your user settings you'll find this amazing little tool. You can select which type of news you want to see. So if you wish to not recieve any amiga news, you don't have to.

  • Great Ghu enough is enough! (Score:5)

    by Ledge Kindred ( 82988 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:30AM (#1682861)
    Can we finally put this whole Amiga thing to rest now that it's plainly obvious they're not going to be doing anything anymore?

    Why does this remind me of nothing quite so much as some sort of bizarre Monty Python or Marx Brothers skit?

    Groucho: So, you're going to build the new Amiga hardware?
    Chico: A-yes-a, but-a you see, we was going to build the hardware, but now we no building the hardware.
    Groucho: So you're building the software, right?
    Chico: Oh, no, you-a see, we-a going to build the soft-a-ware, but now we-a no building the soft-a-ware neither.
    Groucho: But you're at least designing the chips?
    Chico: No, we-a thought we-a design the chips, but we then think, no, we no design-a the chips.
    (in rapid fire)
    Groucho: OS?
    Chico: No
    Groucho: Keyboard?
    Chico: No
    Groucho: Mouse?
    Chico: No
    Groucho: I've got it! You're going to just build the hardware specifications!
    Chico: No, we don' going to have-a nothing to do with-a building the boxes and-a we no going to have-a nothing to do with the software that-a running on-a the boxes.
    Groucho: Well, then what in the world is going to make it an Amiga?
    Chico: Ah, you-a see, we put-a the Amiga name on it! That-a make it Amiga!
    Groucho: (pauses) My friend, that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. And I've heard some pretty stupid ones from you.
    Chico: Thank-a you very much! We think it-a pretty good too.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • Amiga Announces "Cloud 1.0" (Score:3)

    by kuro5hin ( 8501 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:32AM (#1682862) Homepage
    To: The Amiga Community

    Leveraging over five years of Amiga's revolutionary Vapor-Tech development, Amiga Inc. announced their first product under the direction of Gateway, Amiga Cloud 1.0. Amiga Inc. will collect large amounts of their previously released VaporWare and place them in the Earth's lower atmosphere, initially over large cities, but later we hope to deploy them nationwide, end even worldwide.

    We at Amiga believe that despite the fact, nay, even because of the fact that we haven't released a product since 1995, we are perfectly positioned to become a market leader in the revolutinary new technology.

    Our Cloud 1.0 product will be years, millenia, ahead of it's time, providing both advanced irrigation services, and also a totally new graphical paradigm. Our GUI interface is so simple, even a three year old child can master it. The user simply must lie down on their back, and observe any Amiga Cloud 1.0 installation, and Amiga Cloud 1.0 will immediately reconfigure itself into a wide variety of multimedia shapes and presentation styles.

    A banana, a horse, a big weasel eating sausage links-- all these and more can be called forth effortlessly by the new Amiga Cloud 1.0. Cloud is fully multiuser and multitasking, features a "form once, rain anywhere" portable architecture, and will soon be available in multiple "flavors" including "original white," "titanium gray," "fishbelly silver," and "tornado plum." And for our customers in Florida, look for "Floyd gray," debuting tonight!

    Yes, Amiga's Cloud 1.0 will be so damn revolutionary, worldchanging, and downright original, that I can barely contain myself! I mean, seriously, this will change everything! Those other companies won't know what hit them! Together, we shall rule the world, and crush all the heretic nonbelievers!!!! They will burn and suffer for all time in their eternal Wintel torment!!!!!!

    oops. I think I wet 'em.

    ----
    We all take pink lemonade for granted.

  • I am asking this seriously.

    In what way is news about Amiga related to the purpose of Slashdot? Is anything about Amiga related to Open Source? Is anything happening on the Amiga platform important or topical in regards to computer software or hardware? Does the Amiga today do anything better, unique, or noteworthy that other systems (esp. Linux) cannot do equally well, or better?

    In short, does anyone give a damn about the Amiga? I don't. Even IF they were available for purchase, I would not buy one. But they are not available, and they are not going to become available. The reason the business strategy of the Amiga-owning companies have been changing so much is, IMHO, that they cannot come up with a business case for selling products based on the technology.

    I'll bet money against a box of rocks that Gateway would like to sell Amiga technology, but that they cannot find another rube dumb enough to buy it.

    So let's ban further coverage of technical non-events like Amiga announcements. There is nothing there to be concerned about.

  • Even if Amiga didn't have the Amiga curse, you'd have to wonder how successful a commercial OS could be if they weren't selling machines to go with them.

    Part of what made the Amiga so great to use was exactly the same thing that made the Mac successful: a company which had control of the hardware and could make it work extremely well with the OS. For example, I could stick SCSI cards in my old A2000 every day and not have a conflict... I had a couple in when I got rid of it, simply because one had a HD on it, and the other had some memory on it.

    But now, we have BeOS and Amiga both trying to market OSes having given up on the hardware. So, they have all the problem Solaris x86 and Linux had (and still have, on occasion) of not having complete or stable support for hardware, and lose the benefit they used to have of seamless integration. Dealing with the morass that is today's commodity hardware market will introduce confusion and difficulty into any OS, so why would a prospective user choose BeOS or Amiga?

    Maybe I'm just bitter, having been an old Commodore fan and a Be-hopeful, but the fact that as of last check, BeOS won't run on any of the three machines we have at home doesn't raise my spirits for its success. I just don't see many people going through the pain of findng a compatible system, for the gains they can give...

  • Re:great idea (Score:4)

    by Twinky ( 32219 ) on Tuesday September 14, 1999 @06:40AM (#1682866)
    But maybe we can slim down the number of categories by sorting announcements from Amiga Inc. into another topic. I suggest this one [slashdot.org].

    Amiga is not dead, but it is smelling very funny.

  • If you don't like it, ignore it. You can even set a filter for Amiga-related messages.
    There is no rule saying that everything covered at Slashdot should be open source. And yes, the Amiga still does a lot of things better that most OS's (including Linux).

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