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Amiga

Concept Screenshots Of The AmigaDE GUI 97

Posted by Hemos from the still-deader-then-dead dept.
Mike Bouma writes: "Check out this posting by Amiga`s CTO on the AmigaOne Mailing list. It includes some concept pictures of a GUI for the Amiga Digital Environment, which is being targetted at AmigaDE enabled handheld devices like Sharp`s upcoming Zaurus PDA. Some of the younger Slashdot readers may not be familiar with the classic AmigaOS, however interested people can (re)discover the AmigaOS through emulation, I suggest to check out this easy to setup "Amiga in a box" package."
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Concept Screenshots Of The AmigaDE GUI More

Concept Screenshots Of The AmigaDE GUI

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  • Re:Why oh why?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nah. I think the interface should start out big and fluffy and as you prove yourself competent it should evolve into a nice professional conservative desktop.

  • Re:Jumping on the bandwagon (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Amiga wants to be in any devices. This is why they develop the AmigaDE (ultra fast platform independent OS layer or standalone OS). But for servers and desktops there is a new PPC verion of the classic AmigaOS around the corner. (Within weeks)

  • Re:Amiga is not a horse and is not dead (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    LOL here`s an interesting link [amigaatlanta.org] about NASA and their Amigas. And Disney did do all the animation in Dinosaur on Amiga computers (they bought in the early nineties).

  • Re:Amiga is not a horse and is not dead (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The last TV station to use an Amiga switched over to an Avid 4 years ago

    You're purporting that there are no TV stations in the world still using Amigas? Perhaps I'm outside of the realm of consideration, but our local cable company uses Amigas for the cable access studios as well as to broad cast all sorts of information on the school district, city, and county channels. It's not much, but it's a counter-example to your presumtuous statement.

  • Re:Wow!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Apparently you're a troll and didn't actually read the page, since he stated that the DE mockup (presumably the one you refer to) is 9 months old and is (repeat with me) resolution-fixed. He specifically said that it is quite the opposite right now.

  • more pictures (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14, 2001 @07:52AM (#151255)
    you can see more pictures of the new GUI on: http://www.aug99.com/exclusiv/guiamigaos.html
  • It looks like OSX with Motif grafted onto it, dithered down to 8 bit color and with antialiasing turned off! Dig those jaggies!!!

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • It's still fugly.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • Yes, I read the article.

    They're using amigas.

    They also use 386s.

    See the similarity?

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • what do they use them for? I guess the 1571s would make nice napkin holders. The power warts make okay paperweights once you snip the cords off.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • They also use 386 laptops on the space shuttle and in the ISS.

    Nasa uses OLD, OLD, OLD technology because they know EXACTLY how it works.

    You will NEVER see a Pentium 4 on the space shuttle, unless it belongs to Dennis Tito.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • Like the Internet, Embeded Devices is the next major shift in the industry.

    Sure, some people would say that statement is crap, but then they said the same thing about the Internet. Companies are trying to make educated guesses on where everything is going. Right now, the embedded market is wide open and full of opportunity--and if it pans out, companies can win big. Of course, it could all get flushed down the tubes like NCs ;-) But remember that consumer devices/embeded devices are all the rage outside the US--especially in Japan.

    Why fight MS on the PC if the PC is going to be a marginal market at best? That's what these companies are thinking.

    I for one, agree. I don't think MS is stupid (i.e. they won't let it catch them off guard like the Internet did), but it will be a good market full of great opportunities. If you are just starting out and looking for a technology wave to jumpstart your career, my advice (which makes me in no way responsible for your life or your own stupidity) is to get cracking on the Palm SDK and churn out some apps. Proving you have skills will get you in early. This is from someone who successfull got on the Internet Gravy Train :-)

  • This is sad. (Score:4)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Thursday June 14, 2001 @08:02AM (#151262) Homepage Journal
    I mean it. There is a plethora of OS' at the moment, any one of which -could- be easily either used as-is, or extended to suit the purpose of the Amiga.

    Let's see... there are:

    • Linux (and RT-Linux, L4-Linux, MkLinux, MOSIX, SE-Linux, etc)
    • The multitude of BSD's (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, SecureBSD, TrustedBSD)
    • QNX
    • Roadrunner
    • MIT's Exokernel
    • The L4 microkernel
    • The Mach microkernel
    • BeOS
    • The OSKit development kit
    • The ANTS distributed OS

    The idea of writing a whole new OS, unless something new, some new itch has been found that just needs to be scratched, seems somehow crazy.

    (Now, the SIMTICS idea that I'm working on is at least half-way sane. I'm merging two existing concepts to produce something that is - in theory - better than either could be, alone. I'm still not writing a "new" OS, though. There's no delving into re-inventing the wheel. The wheels I can use are already more than sufficient for any need I may have.)

    Worse, the idea of exploiting the name of a very good system (for the time) in an effort to promote this new product is marketting abuse at its very worst.

    (Now, if they were to derive some/all of their concepts from the original Amiga, or follow the Amiga philosophy in some significant way, then it could be justified. I've seen nothing to suggest that.)

    As far as I can tell, this is a *One company that will happily seduce the populace, before collapsing under mysterious circumstances.

  • a Mail Icon that shows how much unread mail you have.

    That's hardly an innovation. exmh [exmh.org] has been doing that for years.

  • once the masses realize that a 100x100 close window button is not really nessecary, and in fact a really bad idea.

    Well, 100x100 isn't that bad if you screen resolution is 2048x1536 ;-)

    --

  • No, what's sad is that someone who isn't even involved with Amiga and doesn't plan on using it is criticizing others for doing something. I'm a linux bigot -- but I don't begrudge other projects out of hand (even including the cool stuff that Microsoft does)

    Besides, you forgot about Darwin.

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • The hand-holding-disk was indeed the prompt to insert the Workbench disk (or another bootable disk) in AmigaOS 1.2 and 1.3. (Later versions had an animated disk beside the checkmark logo.) The original Amiga (later named the Amiga 1000) loaded the OS kernel from the Kickstart disk at power-on, and the prompt to insert that was a 'doodle-oot' noise.

  • This is what every Amiga advocate used to say - because multi-tasking was just about the only thing the AmigaOS had going for it to start off with, along with a reasonable (but slow) file-system. For a long time it was horribly buggy, and it had a hideous and inconsistent UI. I was once Amiga advocate, but I doubt I would have been if I hadn't started out with OS 2.0.

    Windows NT and all versions of Windows from Windows 95 onwards most certainly have real multi-tasking and multi-threading. On Windows 95 this can be crippled by Win16 apps, some of which were part of the OS distribution, but I don't believe that's true of later versions. So I think you're going on out of date information.

  • Why not? Are you against competition in the market? Would you rather all "alternative" platforms gave up hope and M$ took over 100% of the market?

    No, but it is clear that most of the alternative platforms can't survive, and so spending energy on them can only hurt the chances of success of more viable alternatives like Linux. In fact, promoting such dead-on-arivial systems like BeOS and Amiga would be an excellent strategy for Microsoft. Divide and Conquer!
  • What's up with this sudden drive for all ailing OS companies to write OSes for palm-like devices? Be had a great OS that they seem to have basically abandoned for BeIA, and Amiga is going embeded too. Do they think they have a better chance against PalmOS and Wince? I would much rather leave my PDA running PalmOS and let the other companies work on their mighty-cool bigger OSes. Unfortunately, I guess we are still stuck with the stuff from Micros~1 even though there are much cooler things out there...

    (as a side note, I do believe that BeOS is the coolest desktop OS I have ever used. On the other hand, I havn't played with Mac OSX (and its NeXT core) much yet, so that possbily could change. Probably not though...)
  • It's no use, flogging a dead horse...

    The Amiga platform is dead for commercial applications, the brand name has changed hands many times because it's still being associated with "cool technology" and some people thought they could exploit that for marketing purposes.

    It's really sad to see the disappointment of old Amiga freaks when they see announcements about something new related to Amiga, only to find out that it's just a marketing gag or whatever.

  • That was my first thought too... It looks more like the Gnome panel than the Mac OS X Dock.
  • Does it really matter what the interface looks like? If its themable, you can make it look or act however you want.

    Other than Amiga colors and the boing ball, what does it have in common with the classic Amiga?

    Myself I perfered MagicWB and Magic User Interface on my Amiga, I cant even use UAE without it...
    http://www.sasg.com [sasg.com]
    Some examples for the click impatient
    MUI - http://www.sasg.com/mui/preview.gif [sasg.com]
    MWB - http://www.sasg.com/pic/mwb_preview.gif [sasg.com]
    Gallery pics - http://www.sasg.com/mui/gallery/Stefan_Stuntz/Pref s.jpeg [sasg.com]

  • Hey, if you're gonna troll, as least do it right.

    I'd say he was trolling perfectly, considering that 2 nitwits bothered to flame him about getting the model numbers "wrong".

    I bow to your Uber-ness, Wakko Warner.

    But he's right, those Amiga 200's probably would make fine paperweights...
  • Did the original Amiga GUI have curves like that?

    Nope, never, not even close. This has very little in common with Amiga of the past. The original Amiga ruled because it had an operating system that was suppported with several specialized IC's that would augment the OS. These new devices have no such hardware. I'm not 100% sure that the hardware is neccessary anymore (one was a graphics processor, one was a sound processor, &c) but that makes me wonder just how relevant Amiga OS is any more.

    Makes me believe that they are just playing the nostalgia and pseudo-nostalgia card as a marketing ploy.

  • Re:Amiga is not a horse and is not dead (Score:3)

    by Mike Buddha ( 10734 ) on Thursday June 14, 2001 @09:22AM (#151275)
    Several major companies, including Disney, still use Amigas regularly to create effects.

    No they don't. See, I can match you one for one with worthless anecdotes, let's try it again:

    Almost every TV station in the world uses Amigas.

    Nope, wrong-o. Lemme try something new: this time I get to make up the "phacts".

    The last TV station to use an Amiga switched over to an Avid 4 years ago.

    Hey, I see why you do that, it was SOOOO easy!
    Now for some good 'ol derision of your "phun phacts":

    NASA has been known to use Amigas and claim that Amigas are (still) the most versatile machines around.

    Yeah, they use them for doorstops and as reaction mass for extra-atmospheric maneuvering. I think that Mars probe that smashed into the surface was powered by an Amiga reaction mass engine. Apparently they don't even function well in that capacity...

    ;P



  • Allright..There's something i've been meaning to ask here. The biggest question that haunts the whole Amiga picture is: why bother .

    For the late 80's/early 90's, nobody disputes that the Amiga was king of the hill when it came to multimedia apps. But by today's standards, its really nothing to bark about. With every Amiga, you got 22 Khz stereo sound (about half the sample quality of a $5 audio card you can buy for any PC these days), and an 8-bit display capable of resolutions considered low-to-average in today's PC market, looking past graphics mode hacks unsuitable for GUIs like HAM. 24-bit displays on Amiga systems are basically RTG kludges that sit ontop of an already overburdoned planar display. Again, in terms of capability and performance, it's beaten by even the lowest of low-end video cards for PCs.

    Next virtue...Small footprint. Sure, you can boot the OS off a single floppy, and it has a remarkably small footprint for an OS with those sorts of capabilities... But so what, so does Linux, so does QNX and others. Why bother with the Amiga?

    When I was younger, I never thought i'd see the day when the Amiga's capabilities were surpassed by a platform as braindead as the PC, but it's happened, and happened a long time ago. I owned one for like 9 years, and I agree, it was a good machine..I just don't see the reason why anyone should really bother with AmigaOS other than pure religious zealotry or novelty.

  • The Amiga DE has little in common with the original AmigaOS besides the name - although the DE is pretty cool in itself -based on the Tao [tao-group.com] virtual machine architecture.

    Intersting that you should mention PalmOS - the old AmigaOS is being Open-source cloned by the aros [aros.org] project, and, it's recently beern ported to Palm hardware - if anything, the old amigaos, let alone the new DE, is better for palmtops than Palmos (which is quite limited - no preemptive multitasking, dodgy shared libraries, yadda, yadda) - then again, EPOC32 is better than either...

  • Mah momma ahlways sayd, if you'n cahn't say nuttin nahce, don' say nuttin 'tall.

  • Granted that the Amiga hardware was pretty impressive for it's time (the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale was still using one for titles and cuts in its video production stidio in 1996).

    And the OS was also very well suited to the platform at that time too. I just don't see how pulling out an old OS and stuffing it on a palmtop can be a good thing. Surely there is another OS more suited for this use? PalmOS, mayhaps?

    --
  • [The biggest question that haunts the whole Amiga picture is: why bother]?

    Because it wasn't the [outside] apps that were important, it was the [inside] *ability to multi-thread tasks on a personal computer* that was important. That's one of the reasons that truly multi-threaded Linux (successor to truly multi-threaded UN*X) is eating fakey pseudo-multi-threaded W*d*z lunch, and why Apple's OS X (based on BSD UN*X) is bringing the Mac world back to life.

  • Heck, I just went out and *bought* someone's old Amiga 500 for $40 just for the 4-voice stereo soundcard. 'Course, I'm still using my old C64 with its primitive SID chip and 6502 machine language to make music, too. Hmmmm, what I really need now is a MIDI interface to the Amiga so I can patch my keyboard into it. (And some way to make it talk to my BeBox.) Let's hear it for lo-fi hacking!

  • Some of the younger Slashdot readers may not be familiar with the classic AmigaOS, however interested people can (re)discover the AmigaOS through emulation

    Or, if you don't have time, just stand next to an Amiga user for 6 or 7 seconds.

    I shouldn't complain, actually. As a Mac user, Amiga folk serve an important purpose - making me look almost normal.
  • I tried out the palm-top version of the AmigaOS a few days ago, only to be frustrated at boot time by a chunky, low-res image of a hand holding a Workbench floppy disk. Palmtops don't have floppy drives!! Until this is fixed, I don't see much future for AmigaOS on hand held platforms.

    <CrotchetyOldMan>Whyyyyy, you young whippersnapper... back in the day, we had to put in a KICKSTART disk and wait - oh, we'd wait and wait and wait - you damned kids think you're so PUT OFF when you have to put in a WORKBENCH disk... whyyyyy, we used ta dream of puttin' a 256k expansion up front, and here you are with your 512k and 1 meg systems, ooooooh... go get me a 1020 to beat you with...!</CrotchetyOldMan>

  • Why are all of the interface designers seeming to go to this sort of "plastic on acid" look for everything. I just installed WindowsXP on a laptop, and the first thing that I thought was the it looked like a first graders toy. All of the buttons were huge, shiny and colorfull. Mac OSX looks like a fourth graders frickin lunchbox, and KDE2 (a little better) still feels toyish.

    This latest trend of making all of the icons (icons are useless wastes of desktop real estate as it is) look like plastic anime jewels is really sickening. Dont get me wrong GUI's are nice, but they don't need to make you feel and look like a retard for using them. IMVHO this is why window managers like enlightenment and DM's like Gnome will eventually be the future of GUI's, once the masses realize that a 100x100 close window button is not really nessecary, and in fact a really bad idea.

    Who ever hires the designers that make interfaces like the ones shown in star trek (lcars) or the one in Swordfish will make the big bucks. Yes I realize that those interfaces are completely fictional and dont really do anything, but the theory behind them, especially lcars, is very good. The world where the application and the desktop integrate seamlessly is the world of the future (not even windows can do that, even with IE).

    Just my $0.02.


  • I just want video toaster back so I can have kiki again. I haven't seen her since high school

  • Kiki worked for Play!, you used to be able to see her on their website pretending she's actually doing something useful with that big blue and orange video workstation of theirs.

    If you buy amorphium, you can also have an extremely poor model of her head which you can squish around with various 3D deformation tools.

    Play! have gone out of business, of course, so Kiki is probably out on the street turning tricks for a hit off the ol' crackpipe.

    Perhaps if you drive round the seedier part of town, you can pick her up, and 'have kiki again'

  • I don't see using FreeBSD and KDE being a problem. Who cares, Linux doesn't do anything any of the other wanna be unices don't do. So know we have all these branches of OS' and everyone tries the GUI, OS, etc of the month. Greeeaaat.
  • Is it just me or does this little write up seem totally contradictory to what we last heard [slashdot.org] from Amiga?

    I mean, first they are working on a hardware independent, OS independent "Environment" called DE, THEN they are reverting back to pushing forth development of AmigaDOS 4.0 as a whole stand alone system because as they said "That's what Amigans wanted". NOW they are showing us ugly little pictures of this Digital Environment that nobody wanted, as if they've forgotten the promises they've made.

    Let me set one thing straight as a one time owner of 3 Amigas (1200/2000/4000)...

    We don't WANT Amiga DE.

    We don't WANT a new, unrelated hardware with the Amiga name slapped on it.

    We WANT AmigaDOS 4.0 ported to modern hardware with a good mix of legacy software support and modern OS features.

    If you don't WANT to give this to us, curl up and DIE already, it's long past overdue!

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
  • And why does once owning 3 Amigas make you such a serious voice on this topic?

    It doesn't make me more special than anybody, but it does show that I had a strong love for the Amiga. The fact that I ran a 10 line Amiga BBS with Cnet Amiga 3.05c out of my own pocket for nearly 10 years in a town where there was almost no Amiga support also shows that I cared.

    I also wrote a lot of my own software, and indeed learned the vast majority of my programming skills on the Amiga. I don't think this makes me "more important", but it did put me into contact with a large number of Amiga lovers and I think I have a pretty good idea what most of them want.

    Do you want new hardware, or do you NOT want new, unrelated hardware with the Amiga name slapped on it?

    It was a poor choice of wording on my part. New hardware of course is a must, but I think most Amiga users would hate to see a run of the mill PC running Windows or some form of Unix with an Amiga name slapped on it just because a cruddy GUI is being shown as a software layer and being passed off as a next generation "Environment".

    A totally new Amiga would be fine -- if it were a totally new AMIGA, not just a new machine altogether with an AMIGA name.

    By Amiga, I mean the OS should be functionally AMIGA, the things that we (and you yourself apparently since you owned 5 Amigas in total...) fell in love with. Draggable screens. AutoConfig. Dynamic Ram Disks. An excellent and easy to develope for set of OS Libraries. A low OS footprint giving most of the resources to the APPLICATIONS (this is a concept seemingly lost now days).

    ...

    Companies can make more than one product you know...

    I'm well aware... but somehow everytime Amiga Inc. mentions Amiga DE I get the impression they're trying to sell us on the concept that the Amiga brand doesn't need to be a stand alone platform, and I really get the overwhelming feeling that Amiga Inc. doesn't even really intend to try.

    I fear they may be baiting us with the promise of future version of AmigaDOS just to drag us along long enough to hook us on this "OSless" concept.

    I hope I'm wrong.

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

  • Everytime slashdot has an Amiga article some people feel an urgent need to post a couple of Amiga's dead posts. They always point out that the Amiga of 1992 can't really compete with modern machines.

    Well surprise, surprise! The various plans and products under the Amiga logo (HW and OS) are not the same thing as a 1200 from 92. They have changed and evolved too! You're correct, the Amiga of 92 is dead, just as well as the Mac or PC of 92 is (even more so in the latter case, I'd argue). But this is, if you look close, not that thing.

    Duh!

    --
  • Every alternate OS post results in a whiny rant about the necessity of abundance. So, please, allow me to preempt all these time-wasters with the new and improved Slashdot(R) TrollTemplate(TM). Just cut-'n-paste into your favorite Linux-based text editor, and save for all those annoying alternate-OS postings that foul up your favorite website:

    begin included text

    I don't mean to start a flamewar, but why is [Amiga | OS/2 | NetBSD | OpenBSD | FreeBSD | DeadBSD | AtheOS | Atari TOS | BeOS | HURD | GeoWorks | Darwin | xemacs | CPM | DNA computers | the human soul | ant colonies ] better than Linux? Really, seriously, why? I have everything I need with Linux (doesn't everyone?), and I don't recognize the need for any other [Open Source | GPL | BSD-licensed | commercial | forced labor-licensed | mandatory genital-mutilation-licensed] operating systems. Ever.

    Is it just me, [and | or] am I [a complete moron | a lifeless cretin | a useless troll | completely intolerant of the sun and everything it represents]?

    end included text

    Repeal the Sodomy laws! Get the Man off our backs!

  • Hmm....if 10 years ago Linus said hmm....you know Windows isn't that bad and I can use it until I can afford that UNIX box, Besides there's already 10 other OS's out there...then we would not have Linux right now. That's what frustrates me sometimes about people on here.....why do this when blah blah blah exists. Well, because they think they might have a chance! If Linus thought the way you say that the AMIGA folks should, well....you know. Same goes for GNOME. They could have said, well KDE is nice, and we don't care that qt isn't free (as in speech)...so let's not make GNOME. I dunno about you, but I am GLAD these folks poured code out of their brains for us and if the AMIGA folks have something good, the market will tell them. Good luck to them! It looks good to me!
  • Looks more like a GNOME panel to me. Now, how long do we have to wait for gtk and Sawfish themes! :)
  • Some of the younger Slashdot readers may not be familiar with the classic AmigaOS...

    Am I getting that old? Lines like this used to be resevered to references to a PDP or something similar.
    I guess once I break 30 I'll be considered ancient. : P
  • Amiga is not droping its core OS in fact they will deliver 4.0 and 4.2 along with the AmigaOne 1200. The idea behind de AmigaDE is to people to use the same media content and apps regardless of the platform OS and procesor. So that you could play your games in your 3G phone with your pals at their SGI box running linux.
  • I use my Amiga regularly to run Bars and Pipes. The day B&P becomes usable under UAE is probably the day the A4000 finally goes into the loft for good.

    It's such a waste, what happened to Amiga, but for me at least, it's still the best tool for one particular job.
  • Ohh boy! It just couldn't get better. Someone with an xyz@atari.org is complaining about an Amiga article. Time to dig out the old waraxes, ehh? :) Seriously though, Amiga is still a nice system lagging behind in functionality. Name one OS which can adapt so easily to the users skillevel, I dare you.
  • No, you now have the Tao operating system with kludges to let it run ten year old software. Congratulations.

  • Re:Amiga?? (Score:4)

    by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Thursday June 14, 2001 @08:07AM (#151299) Homepage
    You are wrong for many different reasons. If Amiga is dead, then how could I have cut a commercial with one yesterday? If its dead then how come my work has two, my school has one, and the local university has a whole lab of them. Amiga is dying, no doubt about it. But the video toaster and flyer were/are such incredible products that they have prolonged amiga's death for ages. Is anyone buying Amiga's? I hope not, that would be pretty silly, but Amiga is not dead, it is just taking a long time to kick off because of the video toaster and flyer. Now that they have come to NT and have been there for a while, people are starting to migrate over when they have the money.
  • ... calling an apple orange doesn't make it less an apple.

  • With every Amiga, you got 22 Khz stereo sound

    Bzzt. Wrong; there was no fixed certain sample rate; rather, the rate was chosen by dividing a certain delay between subsequent samples with a suitable number. The maximum rate that was possible to play with DMA was about 28KHz while in video modes, more with the modes introduced in ECS and AGA chipsets. You could also push values directly into the register with CPU if that wasn't enough. Although I guess that the other limitations of audio hardware started to show by then. Usually the rate used in games was something like 8 or 16 KHz, mostly because larger rates obviously used more memory for samples, and most games were written with 0.5 or 1 megabytes of memory in mind...

  • No need to switch there; you just needed to perform the legendary dropping it four inches onto a bed trick. Many an Amiga fixed with that one.
  • Come one, let it die... it had a good life. Move on to something modern, like BeOS. You would still get to fight an uphill battle, constantly claim (rightly) that your OS was better, and complain about the idiots that keep it from succeeding. Sounds perfect for an Amiga fan.
  • USers need MS-OFFICE to stay in bussiness or keep their jobs. Explain to the CEO who sent you a .doc file, that you can't read it because you bought an amiga? Uhm, I can't read M$ .doc files at work, and they supplied my Sun Ultra 5 workstation... I don't even have a PC to use. Besides, this PDA/Amiga news has nothing to do with anything you Linux nazis are thinking of. This platform isn't ancient, old or dead. It is currently only available in the Sharp Zaurus comercially, and as a development kit for developers. It's completely unrelated to Amiga hardware or the older AmigaOS in the same way that Windows, Linux, or Beos or QNX is unrelated to Amiga hardware or older AmigaOS. I almost cringe when there's Amiga news posted to /. as all you morons all start crying "it's dead, forget it" when the news is completely unrelated to what you're whining about, other than the brand name on the label. /.ers love talking about the latest science or useless Linux utilities, but any post with the word "amiga" in it is immediately bombarded with uneducated comments. This situation seriously degraded my opinion of the /. community, as you all have absolutely no respect for anything not Linux. Guess what? I use an Amiga at home, I have plenty of apps and games, and am very happy with it. I don't really need Windows or Linux or BeOS to be happy, as I already am. Why replace something that still gets the job done well, "just because it's old"??? Your same argument works well against Linux BTW...
  • And for all those Amiganoids out there: STOP PUSHING FOR AMIGA RELATED NEWS!!! Slashdot is a Linux site, nothing more!

    Yea, that's why there's all that Linux related black hole/origin of the universe/what real estate web site is best news on /. right? It seems /. is a community happy to talk about anything except the new Amiga platform, which is not related to what they claim is "old and dead" in any way other than brand name on the label. AmigaDE is no more old and dead than any other brand new technology, which AmigaDE is. Now go and make Linux as easy to configure and use as my computer at home is, all you /. nazis, if you do then maybe I'll get it working right someday on my junker PC. It doesn't seem to like having two NE2000 cards installed.
  • I mean it. There is a plethora of OS' at the moment, any one of which -could- be easily either used as-is, or extended to suit the purpose of the Amiga.

    You obviously don't know what Amiga Inc. are doing then. AmigaDE can be either a new OS or hosted on some other OS. Some PDAs or set-top type devices may get "native" AmigaDE, with no other OS involved. Others, like the Sharp Zaurus, and desktop class computers, will use some other OS and AmigaDE will sit on top of that, be it Linux or Windows or whatever. In this way it acts more like an API than an OS, an API available standalone, or on top of Windows, Linux, etc. to make cross-platform development easier, sortof like Java does. One advantage it has over Java is that it's not interpreted, DE code gets compiled natively to multiple instruction sets, so should run faster than JVMs do on x86, PowerPC, ARM, MIPs, etc. And for you "Amiga is dead" nazis, DE doesn't run on the old Amiga hardware you're thinking of! It's totally unrelated to that! It's barely born yet... (though they claim t will eventually run on new Amiga hardware which is also yet to be released) DE currently only exists outside of Amiga Inc. as a Linux and/or Windows hosted development kit or in the Sharp Zaurus PDA.

    "It's not dead, Jim, I've never seen anything quite like it"
  • Allright..There's something i've been meaning to ask here. The biggest question that haunts the whole Amiga picture is: why bother?

    Why not? Are you against competition in the market? Would you rather all "alternative" platforms gave up hope and M$ took over 100% of the market?

    If Amiga Inc. had put the exact same product together that they are currently working on, but named it anything else, the /. nazis ould probably be all for it, as it's not M$, it's usable on multiple platforms, and makes life much easier when "porting" code to another machine/host OS. Why does /. like anything and everything out there (in the non-M$ category that is) except Amiga? I'd just like to know why other smallish platforms like QNX (another good product with a relatively small market share) and BeOS (a nearly dead company) get so much respect, but the word "Amiga" does not. Please explain... Why is it OK to ask what the best real estate web site is, or talk about some obscure book, but any true news happening related to the brand name "Amiga" immediately gets frowned upon so severely here???

    With Microsoft owning most of the known universe, why should anyone bother with Linux? It's harder to install and configure than Windows is. It has less apps available to use. It has far far less games than Windows. Yet you're allowed to talk about Linux here but we dare not mention the A-word, when Amiga has less apps and games than Windows - just like Linux. How many Linux IPOs are now bankrupt? Amiga Inc. is still in business... How is the Linux market such a better place to be?
  • We don't WANT Amiga DE.

    Maybe you don't, maybe other Amiga hatin' /. nazis don't, but some people do.

    We don't WANT a new, unrelated hardware with the Amiga name slapped on it.
    We WANT AmigaDOS 4.0 ported to modern hardware with a good mix of legacy software support and modern OS features.     Uhm, make up your mind. Do you want new hardware, or do you NOT want new, unrelated hardware with the Amiga name slapped on it? You can't have it both ways... Personally, I'd much rather have new hardware than not.

    AmigaOS4.0+ is not totally contradictory to the DE announcements. They're seperate product lines developed by the same company. Companies can make more than one product you know... (All next week, on Ripley's believe it or not!) Heck, Even M$ does it. Amiga Inc. claims that AmigaDE will run on AmigaOS 5.x. That's ain't contradictory to the previous DE announcements, it's just additional stuff, not instead-of stuff.

    And why does once owning 3 Amigas make you such a serious voice on this topic? I currently have 3 Amigas (2000, 1200, 4000T - my main computer at home) in operation, many not in operation (1000, 500s), but that doesn't make me any more special than you, or Joe Schmoe who never owned one, on this topic.
  • Kiki was in the group that left Newtek to make Play! Inc.
  • No, you now have the Tao operating system with kludges to let it run ten year old software. Congratulations.

    Uhm, no. DE doesn't run AmigaOS software from 10 years ago. Not 3 year old AmigaOS software or even brand new AmigaOS software either. AmigaDE only runs AmigaDE and Java software. It has no capability to run Motorola 68K code.
  • on all systems looking more or less the same nowaday?

  • Hmmm, that's a cure taskbar I see...
    It loox quite a bit OsX and I like it!
    Say we give up those window widget bars sitting @ the bottom of our screens (soo very M$ win puah) with sickening buttons a la windoze and clock on the right. Cool eh? A cute & smooth transparent boxy thing (beveld gives an even better 3Dish look) that holds BIG & COLOURFUL icons for the apps running... click & select on the popup the instance you want (with many konq instances there's no way you'll read the name of the URL it's pointing so it's just useless clutter)

    0.02 euros

    Edo
  • AmigaOS is not some open source project. It doesn't have to scratch any itch other then to get whoever owns Amiga these days (Amiga Inc?) some money. The thing about PDAs is that every person does not have to have PDAs with the same OS for them to functional, unlike with computers where it is handy. Also, as has been pointed out already, AmigaOS is not a new OS. It is an OS already running a low-powered hardware and that can be an the primary OS, as well as a VM. The latter feature is what makes AmigaOS orginial and different from other OSs. I least I can't think of an OS that has a VM to run its software.

  • You are correct.

    However, to make things fair, you have to get rid of all extra stuff in a PC, like sound cards and the like. The Amiga had (and has) builtin audio, and PC still hasn't. (Some PC motherboards have integrated audio, though.) There have been many graphics cards for the Amiga too.

  • we had to put in a KICKSTART disk and wait

    Errr..whoops! that's what i meant (not workbench). i never actually owned an Amiga...just tooled around with the ones they had on display at the local KMart store. those bastards never did anything except turn them on...so they were always displaying the Kickstart screen.

  • Damned Workbench disk (Score:3)

    by oingoboingo ( 179159 ) on Thursday June 14, 2001 @07:45AM (#151316)
    I tried out the palm-top version of the AmigaOS a few days ago, only to be frustrated at boot time by a chunky, low-res image of a hand holding a Workbench floppy disk. Palmtops don't have floppy drives!! Until this is fixed, I don't see much future for AmigaOS on hand held platforms.
  • Okay, I hear a lot about, for instance, how GUI A is better than GUI B. I beleive it is all person experience/preference. Who does the human-computer interaction research that could possibly back up claims of one GUI's superiority over another? And please don't tell me "Company A does TONS of GUI research" without a link or something.

    Some of my concerns are that, if GUIs are more than just a personal preference based on past experiences, why are succesive desktop environments from the same vendor so different? or If GUIs are building on computer-human interactions, then why do they often dumb-down the new GUI so people familiar with past versions can use it?

    In short, are these screens developed by a graphic designer, and then programed by a techie, or are they based on some research that might make Amiga easier to use rather then just look better?

  • The whole point of the new initiative is to have a "digital environment" that can run hosted on other OSes, on everything from a Palm or Sharp palmtop to a Windows or Linux desktop to their own brand of hardware which they have licensees building right now. The old OS is being re-written (in stages) to be a high-end media warehouse system and they are merging their current AmigaDE (Digital Environment) layer into it for what will be one heck of a powerful and user-friendly OS.
  • .. although marketting will be part of it.

    The "New" Amiga ideology is to have a 'Digital Environment' which can be either be hosted on another OS (Palm OS, Sharp's TaurusOS, Windows, Linux, etc, etc), or run on their own native hardware (due RSN). Couple this and the write-once-run-anywhere abilities of their core programming languages, and you have an amazingly powerful system for emersing yourself in digital media and content, which is where the industry is moving.

    And yes, you'll still have a command line interface if you want it :-)
  • I had the same problem with the Fat Agnus in my A500. All you need to do is pick the whole case up and bang it down on the desk a few times. The erratic behaviour you are talking about is probably a green screen, black screen, and a constantly flashing red light on the case. Don't worry about it. Just bang it a few times and it will come right (without filesystem errors like "modern" OSes like GNU/Linux and Windoze).
  • Several major companies, including Disney, still use Amigas regularly to create effects. Almost every TV station in the world uses Amigas. Some of the top serials on TV use Amigas to produce their work. NASA has been known to use Amigas and claim that Amigas are (still) the most versatile machines around. Modern languages such as Python and E have been ported. AmiNet has the largest collection of free software on the internet. Nope, even if the Amiga was a horsey it would be alive and running.
  • AmigaDE enabled handheld devices like Scharp`s upcoming Zaurus PDA.

    It is not Scharp, it is Scharp.

  • Um, while I'm glad Linus got Linux going, and I'm glad that someone felt strongly about freedom and worked on GNOME (although I like KDE a lot more at the moment)... how is it we're supposed to cheer for Amiga? Are they releasing this code under the GPL? Will this really be any more useful down the road than Palm OS? I didn't see anything in the screenshots to indicate anything other than some developer has a very cool looking GUI.
  • Amiga is dead. I mean really really dead. Like so dead, that........ well lets just say its very dead. I can't think of anything more dead besides multics, ITS, and cp/m. Even os/2 still has more active users and is probably a biger market for software developers.

    Come to think of it FreeDOS probably has more users today then amiga. IT doesn't matter if its any better. If it died 10 years ago due to the lack of apps, then how do you think it will go today when all the old developers left?

    If I was an old software company who wrote apps for amiga back in the 80's I would avoid the new one like the plague. Microsoft and Apple are the only real players in town when it comes to video editing and graphical applications. USers need MS-OFFICE to stay in bussiness or keep their jobs. Explain to the CEO who sent you a .doc file, that you can't read it because you bought an amiga?

    It can be as fast as a supercomputer and people still wont buy it. Its a sad world we live in but politics will always determine which platform to oick.

    Now I will cringe as I watch my karma go straight down to hell for speaking the utter truth that no one wants to hear.

  • I don't care that even one makes money with it

    This is exactly why it will fail miserably.

    Time is the ultimate commodity: we get paid at work for our finite time.

    If you spend your time on something that doesn't make money, you've wasted it.

    Simple as that.

  • Hey, /. - long time listener, first time poster...

    Amiga? Dead? No, just been wheezing a bit in the corner for the past decade. It's not running wild, but there's still some juice left yet. I keep mine tucked away in the corner when I need something I can rely on working as I want.
    There seems to be a general discomfort in the /. community (as pointed out before) that whenever an Amiga story pokes it's head outa the barrel, it gets shot at. The fact some readers and critics seem a little confused over the matter doesn't help.

    AmigaDE. "It's nothing to do with AmigaOS" ... well, yes, quite right. It's a "new" approach to a problem. Very little to do with the Classic machines. Get over it.

    AmigaOS is Dead. Well, no. The fact Haage and Partner [haage-partner.com] are still selling products like StormC proves there is still a whsiper of life. It is a great system - I've yet to be impressed by other OSs like Linux and especially Windows in quite the same way.

    Only Amiga by name ... well, yes, yet again. It's the company [amiga.com] that is called AMIGA now, not simply the machines. A fact oft overlooked here, it seems. Might as well call Linux by the name of Corel and be done. Same difference.

    Yes, the classic boxes are old - yes the hardware can be considered almost obsolete in comparison to modern stuff; almost like the somewhat nasty and almost archaic x86 boxes that a lot of Linux systems run on. But we're not simply talking about the old boxes. At least give the guys a chance to produce a system and then slag it off.

    All IMO as I understand it, of course. :)

  • How Can This Be Obsolete when FORTRAN is still in use?
  • Anyone else notice a similiarity between what appears to be an app switcher/launcher here [elwoodb.free.fr] and the one found over here. [apple.com]

    Its even complete with a horizontal seperator, little arrows for running apps, and a Mail Icon that shows how much unread mail you have.

  • Amiga forever! I've always respected a modular system. FIRST POST!
  • The Amiga was, and still is, an awesome box. The extremely customizable OS and tight integration with the GUI and the CLI made it the most productive, user friendly box I've ever played with. I have several Amigas and love them. Unfortunately I have not been using them much lately as they are a bit behind in things now. It took the better part of a decade for them to fall behind. I just hope that the new OS does justice to all of us Amiga fan(atic)s who have truely enjoyed the OS for years. If the concept website wasn't already /. ed then I'd be staring at the concept screens instead of writing this lousy comment.
  • Or go to the store and buy a pc/mac with this configuration right now instead of waiting until Amiga ships and this config is as obsolete as a 1992 ami...
  • Exactly. I could say the very same thing about my old Atari 1040ST. At the time, it was great, but it's gone now, so on to bigger and better things. For video editing, look what you can do with Final Cut 2, for the Mac. The reviews say it keeps up with $100,000+ Avid workstations. Time to move on.

    "What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
  • As history has proven if software(OS) confines itself to a particulary device(PDA), the development of that platform is based on the demand of the device. And in a market as saturated and funded had handhelds, I doubt the Amiga OS will become the superstar without multiple(more than 2) device vendors(successful). To bad though, I would have liked to see it suceed.
  • Maybe somebody makes an OS ( wich is not POS ;) and integrates everything in it including decent AI wich could hack up applications based on users' wishes. How do you make an OS wich allows to do anything with just one command?

    "Oh no, only 5 minutes of this episode left and we're still in the middle of a battle... Computer, do something and make sure it has a happy ending!" -Jean Luc Picard

    That'd be funny to see for a change and not some 'kedian pulse' mumbo-jumbo saving the day again.

  • The MagicWB "XEM" look never was the original classic Amiga Interface, it never became official. (I'm glad about that, I never like the look of MagicWB.) The "official" look of the classic Workbench is based Matt Chaput's "GlowIcons" that are part of the AmigaOS since Release 3.5 (see the Screenshot atAmiga.com [amiga.com]. However, I'm rather interested in the supposed-to-be-coming-soon new Amiga Hardware, I hope we'll see a renaissance of the early 90's system diversity. Remember, we had Macs, Amigas, Ataris, NeXT, Windows, OS/2...now we have Macs, Windows, Unices and a bit of BeOS, the majority running on the same (wrecked) x86 hardware. Damn, I want more choises than intel or AMD!

    --
  • It is not Scharp, it is Scharp.

    Where'd you....
    Nah. Too easy.
  • I think part of what Apple is trying to do is coax the AOL/neophyte crowd into actually using their machines to do things other than surfing and chatting. Their current OS/hardware is good enough to do these things, and will be for some time. Apple is dangling the upgrade carrot at them with super easy video editing, just like they did with desktop publishing. One of the things they have to do for this to work is make the OS simpler, or at least as non threatening as possible. They, and therefore MS =), are going AOL-style at the desktop.
    Whoduthunkit?
  • I thought you all were pro-competition... The more choices, the better.. all that jazz. What I'm getting from you guys now is "There are already enough OS's and GUIs." *sigh*
  • Nice, clean interface with gentle curves. Pretty sweet. Did the original Amiga GUI have curves like that?
  • the world needs a fast and cheap (and kind of portable, too) home computer, that is easy to operate and play games and write letters and all that minor stuff. Maybe Playstation 2 is the Amiga of 2000+...
  • It's only time to move on when each person feels it's time to. Just because you moved on years ago, does not mean that someone else cannot still find enjoyment and productivity in an Amiga now. The Amiga may be dead for YOU, but it is not for everyone.
  • I'm with a almost nation wide television network. Everyone of our station has atleast 2 amiga's, and production has 5 or 6.


  • OS developers are jumping on this opportunity because they know they can't compete on the desktop/server market. However, the embedded OS market is WIDE OPEN. PalmOS and WinCE are both nice, but they have limitations, and they're still rather new and underdeveloped. So there is plenty of opportunity for companies with good ideas and good designs to come up with something that really works well on a PDA or other embedded-OS device. Personally, i love the fact that microsoft really won't have a corner on this market...it opens the door for some real innovation and competition between companies.

  • You guys!
    We all know the ST beat the Amiga hands down and only the more efeminate among us truly prefered the Amiga. I mean. The ST had an Atari logo on it. That was the same logo as was on all the cool arcade games!
    That seems as good a reason to ressurect TOS, or even MINT as anyone has come up with for the current AmigaOS nonsense ;-)

  • There is room for all (Score:3)

    by wolfywolfbitz ( 460233 ) on Thursday June 14, 2001 @03:09PM (#151346)
    I am not an amiga user and don't know if I every will be...

    But I don't think that lampooning amigans with "It's dead let it go" everytime /. has an article about amiga is that helpful to anyone. (not to mention quite boring)

    They aren't saying that we all have to run out and buy an amiga now. It's just an interesting news item about an alternative OS... what's so wrong with that? if your not interested then don't worry about it, if you are then it's nice to get some up to date information on it.

    I personally think it looks interesting, I don't know if it'll take off, but I think it could work if given a chance.

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