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Amiga

Amiga's president unexpectedly resigns 116

TuxDaddy writes "Jim Collas has resigned as president of Amiga-however no details are available yet. " Well, let the speculation machine run rampant-is Amiga serious? Is there anything happening with them?Update: 09/01 07:42 by H :Well, they've announced their new president as Tim Schmidt. Collas has left to "pursue personal interests".
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Amiga's president unexpectedly resigns

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  • by Om ( 5281 )

    ... and this one time... at band camp.. we were talking about bringing back the Amiga.. and it was.. like.. so cool...

    ... Hey guys!. I know what we could do... we could like... tell lies about the Amiga.. but this time.. say the lies backwards... that would be so cool... like: "Revolution new the start will we." That would be sooo funny..
  • The TI-994/A had this, much along the lines of the Amiga.
    There was always interesting projects done by people in the TI field doing revolutionary software or hardware, but then, suddenly out of nowhere, the author dies, or gets completely fed up with the TI scene, and disappears altogether.
  • The classic Amiga is doomed in the long run by its tight coupling with NTSC/PAL video and custom hardware tied to that legacy.

    Just one nit to pick... the Amiga isn't tightly coupled with NTSC/PAL at all. Many Amiga users with graphics cards haven't seen an Amiga chipset screenmode in years. Heck, the Draco Amiga clone didn't even have all that hardware. The Amiga does indeed have a few problems with being held back by legacy concerns, but graphics/display isn't one of them.


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!
  • Are any of the real (read: original) Amiga people still with Amiga? Are Collas and/or his replacement longtime Amiga people, or were they brought in in the last few years? It'd be nice if they still had some of the original people around. What would really suck is if they make something completely unrelated to the Amiga but slap the "Amiga" name on it just for the hell of it (and because they own the rights to the name).
  • I hear Collas is heading to the new Atari Computer, a division of SGI that will be using intellectual property from the 400/800/XL/XE series, the revolutionary "poor man's Mac" ST series, and the mighty Jaguar to make a new 4-processor system, each processor completely different from the others.

    It's going to be amazing stuff. They've been demoing a prototype running a new version of Star Raiders at 1600x1280 on stereoscopic goggles. It's fully immersive, especially if you use the full-body tactile suit.
  • I'm not sure what this guy was exactly doing (look like some sort PR/evangelist)...he quit today, too:

    http://www.realdreams.cz/amiga/local/31_8mcewen. html
  • They can't, the A2000 is already a compute they made! :)
  • Captain Kirk and the Amiga are walking, and Kirk is about to go into his, "you must sleep with me because I'm a captain and it's in my contract" spiel, when suddeny..

    Steve Jobs: There you are! Revenge!
    (Stabs Amiga with new G4-virus poisoned Klingon Knife)
    Amiga: Ahhh!

    Kirk: Emergency beam up, now!
    (Weeooohoowoo)

    (In transporter room)
    Bones: 20ccs of Torvaldsisol...
    (Injects Amiga, Amiga seems to struggle for life, but then stops moving).
    Bones: She's dead, Jim...

    Jim: Damn. I guess I find a new job now.

    So much for Jim's job :-)
  • Except of course that Jay Miner is still dead... Who else could they get?

    Still dead, you say? Ahh, but that's what Transmeta's really working on!


    Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org [berlin-consortium.org]
  • ...for he is tattooed with the number of the BEAST! He just looks like a troll. ;-)
  • Step 1: Witness your business struggling. Step 2: In a last ditch effort, embrace Linux. Step 3: Watch your company leader leave posthaste as your company crumbles.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Hmmm.. Maybe it's time for another Freedows article. :)
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Well, then they better hurry and start shipping dual and quad PowerMac G4s. And MacOS X too. Once they have all of those things in place then they can truly compete with SGI and Intergraph.
    As for the supercomputer thing, well, it's obvoulsy marketing speak BS, but it will be intersting to see a P3, Athlon and G4 benchmarks.

    Anyways, this is totally offtopic, I can't wait for the next installment of the Amiga soap opera.
  • I didn't buy a Mac until 2 years after Commodore closed it's doors. I just bought a new G3 system. Yet I look forward to seeing a new Amiga... some day. I'm optimistic because I have a feeling that Jim Collas didn't leave because he wanted to. Lets look at the past couple of months... There's all sorts of odd messages coming out of Amiga. Nothing really fits, and nothing is very consistant. QNX to Linux in a couple of months??? Where the heck are they going?

    Fast forward to today. I imagine a room full of Gateway execs looking at the goings on and deciding that something has got to change. I also imagine a bunck of Amiga execs wishing that the spotlight would go away so they can get some work done. So they get rid of Collas to return some sanity to the workplace. Anyone else out there buy this?

    If the Amiga is so dead, why are we all still here talking about it? I was a great concept that we refuse to let die.

    Although, I am really enjoying my G3! ;)
  • ya ha.. that was the signature.
  • Thank you.
  • O: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I adn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

    C: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!

    O: No no! 'E's pining!

    C: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

    :s/Parrot/Amiga/g

    Shamelessly stolen from Monty Python

  • Hey now there's a good question.. is there source to this wonderful Amiga OS? Even now?
  • or read the reviews on slashdot.
  • There's no absolute proof that they are using a Transmeta CPU. There's also no proof that Transmeta is even making CPUs, so therefore it must be true!

    Seriously I had read an account that a presentation that Amiga was giving used the name "Transmeta" in it. The people giving the presentation would not comment on it.
  • well when I posted, I had just finished checking the NASDAQ for Gateway. The stock was down something like 1.1 % for the day and there was 852,000 shares traded. If someone dropped 118,000 shares (as mentioned in the ZDNet article) that would normally cause the price to dip. Granted 1.1 % ain't much, and could have been caused by other market forces, but its a good chance that his sale had something to go with it.
  • Ok, that one cracked me up! =8^)
  • by drwiii ( 434 )
    Just FYI, there's an Amiga section [osonline.org] currently getting underway on the new osonline.org discussion site.
  • Of course, of computers are "doomed to failure in the long run", we'd still be using Altairs & 4040 cpu's (or valves) if it didn't.

    Well, that is true, but then again, when doom came to those products, the companies quit building and selling them.

    But then no-one has said they will develop the Classic hardware, but they will support it as long as it is feasible.

    Actually I've seen more than a few Amiga fans suggest that (at least as an interim step) they more-or-less reintroduce the 'classic' hardware with a few hot-rod type features. Personally I don't think that would be a very commercially viable thing to do since it is unlikely anyone other than a few Amiga diehards would buy one. Especially given the retooling costs, I don't think that they could be built at a reasonable price and still have enough features and performance to be competitive with current PC clone and/or Mac hardware.

    Also, there are several Amiga companies working on PPC systems (although IMHO the early "PowerUP" cards are rather poor), with 68k emulation & porting parts of the OS to PPC.

    That sort of approach would have made sense to do around the time that Apple made their 68K->PPC transition, but it seems a little late in the game to do it now.

  • ...he pulled the plug on QNX and now there isn't a snowballs chance in hell of making the deliverables any time soon.

    QA? What's that?

    Transmeta? Don't hold your breath - VC sponsored wankfest with no product to be ever delivered.

  • Well, we are talking about Amiga, aren't we? No possibility to wrap an even weirder theory around their behaviour...
  • Well, maybe amiga -is- dead =P
  • by Anonymous Coward
    It is absolutely obvious that the introduction of the Apple PowerMac G4 has caused the President of Amiga to resign. Amiga is no longer the king of multimedia and Amiga knows that there is no possible way that they can compete with the new Apple consumer supercomputer. I expect the presidents of Compaq, Dell, Micron and Gateway to follow suit very shortly...
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Wow...the "curse of the Amiga" takes yet another victim. Even if they were to bring product to market today, would anyone have enough faith in the company to purchase it? Somewhere, Mehdi Ali is laughing at all of this...
  • I always thought he looked [amiga.com] a bit smarmy.

    --

  • by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @09:07AM (#1711088) Homepage
    ZDNet has a longer article [zdnet.com]. Doesn't really say much more though.

    --

  • you know, I was really thinking that they might do somthing with this... now? I don't know. It seemed like they had a viable busness plan to. It would be pretty damn funny if Amiga actualy managed to bring down Gateway though :)
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • by Anonymous Coward
    The guy who screwed the Amiga by scrapping everything his predecessors had done and demanding they make nothing more than another Linux Box has gone.

    THANK GOODNESS.

    Now maybe Amiga can get back to developing a WORTHWHILE ALTERNATIVE.

    Good riddance Collas.
  • A good self-consistent paranoid conspiracy theory would be an IMPROVEMENT over the information we (don't) have right now...
  • by belbo ( 11799 ) on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @09:06AM (#1711093)
  • Well this is either real good, or real bad. Maybe both. Collas was big on the linux thing and the consumer-multimedia-box thingy, while the rest of us hardcore Amigans want a computer with a powerfull AmigaOS. Perhaps they decide to lean more towards the computer side and Collas got pissed and left? Maybe AOS 3.5 is a hit. Maybe they just really, really underestimated the Classic Amiga. Maybe they're real scared of IWin and the BoXer and Phase5 and QNX taking all the Amiga's "mindshare" away...

    Or maybe they just fucked up and are about to bankrupt again...
  • by Gleef ( 86 )
    Does this mean tomorrow we're going to find him working for MSN too?

    ----
  • Wow...the "curse of the Amiga" takes yet another victim.

    Hmmm... I am not sure who is victim and who is villan here, according to what some people have said about this guy.

    Even if they were to bring product to market today, would anyone have enough faith in the company to purchase it?

    No way. I never trusted Commodore enough to buy anything from them. I trusted Escom even less. I've been wondering if Amiga will somehow end up killing Gateway since they bought the corpse of Amiga.

    Somewhere, Mehdi Ali is laughing at all of this...

    Laughing while he counts his ill-gotten gains, no doubt. On the other hand, hindsight being what it is, I don't see that things would have been that much different in the long run had Commodore and Escom had less incompetent and/or corrupt management.

  • Just one nit to pick... the Amiga isn't tightly coupled with NTSC/PAL at all.

    Many of the custom chips in the 'classic' Amigas are built to operate on frequencies derived from NTSC/PAL signals that don't make sense if you are running with a PC style video card. This is true even for things like the Zorro bus timing, sound and floppy disk control.

    Many Amiga users with graphics cards haven't seen an Amiga chipset screenmode in years.

    One of the few niche markets that the Amiga was moderately successful in was video production, where NTSC/PAL video modes make sense. Unfortunately for Amiga, as I point out, NTSC/PAL are going to get phased out in favor of HDTV in the next few years so that will be a dying market.

    Heck, the Draco Amiga clone didn't even have all that hardware.

    And how compatible was it with the typical hardware-hammering software of the 'classic' Amiga period?

    The Amiga does indeed have a few problems with being held back by legacy concerns, but graphics/display isn't one of them.

    Unfortunately for the Amiga, if you are going to use a graphics chipset designed for a x86 PC clone as most of the Amiga video cards do, you lose one of the major differentiators of the Amiga hardware, which was all of the video coprocessors. Also unfortunately for the Amiga, its custom video hardware isn't all that impressive compared to the current state of the art in the x86 PC world.

  • 3.5 ain't even OUT yet. I was kinda hoping they'd release it before the $#!+ hit the fan, so at least we'd get SOMETHING from them before they implode... at this rate, the only actual thing ever done at Amiga Inc. (which isn't even true, they OUTSOURCED it) will probably never be released.
  • Still dead, you say? Ahh, but that's what Transmeta's really working on!

    They'd be better off calling the 'Psychic Fraud^h^h^heinds Network then. :-)

  • by Anonymous Coward
    In the "glory days" the Amiga totally dominated the home computing, video design and game markets... It was certainly a huge force.

    But that was a long time ago...

    There's still features the Amiga had I miss, and wish there were clean implementations of on Linux:

    Filesystem assigns, datatypes, a graphics subsystem with an easy to use API (X is way to clunky), scrollable "screens" with different resolutions and colour depth visible at the same time (allthough Enlightenment comes close to that one :), Arexx (allthough I hated the language itself, the system was easy to use, and lots of scripts were available so it was seldom I had to resort to writing any).

    And I miss Cygnus Ed.... I've still not found another editor I'm happy with.. Jed is the closest, but I'd still take CED any day. And I miss Asmone etc. too. Simple, elegant and fast - not as heave as DDD, and not nearly as cryptic as running gdb directly.

    Not to mention that I miss programming Amiga E. Now THAT was a nice programming language. Anyone know of a language with similar features? And as clean a syntax? C is a mess... And C++ even worse...

    Sigh. Maybe I'll dig my A3000 out of the closet for nostalgias sake.

  • The difference between the TI-99/4A is that it was a crappy computer! I know because that was my first machine.

    The basic language that came with the machine was alright, but it lacked any sort of peek or poke command. There was no way to program to the hardware without getting some expensive assembler cartridge. It was also dog slow compared to the competition. The an empty for-next loop iterated about 180 times per second.

    And if you breathed on the cartridge when it was in the slot the machine would crash.

    The "curse" of the TI was simply a bunch of pissed off users yelling "FUCK" because they just lost a lot of work in a crash.
  • "Pursue personal interests" is a euphemism if I've ever heard one. They always say that when someone gets the axe.

    --

  • Where In The World is Carmen Sandiago etc was such a hit that Gateway is preparing us for a their new game, Where In The World Will The New Amiga Apear?
  • Hah, they can't even manage the minor eyecandy of 3.5 (the "let's hack some crappy old shareware and call it a new OS release" version).

    Let's just be thankful that no-one asked them to arrange a piss-up in a brewery.

  • by BadlandZ ( 1725 ) on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @10:21AM (#1711108) Journal
    He left because they have nothing exciting going on, and everyone was looking for something new and amazing from them. He's bailing out before he gets pined as the guy in charge when they fall flat on thier face. :-)

    Gotta admit, there is no basis for this guess, but what basis do you have for Amiga using a Transmeta Super CPU, and becoming the ultimate graphic workstation of the year 2000? People seem to believe that with no evidence, why not just accept they are doing nothing exciting at all?

  • by tap ( 18562 )
    In joke for TI99/4a owners....
  • I think the whole 'Amiga revival' is a conspiracy by CmdrTaco to keep Slashdot supplied with stories.
  • Ok, not to found quite insane, but:
    I was a die-hard PC fan, just bought myself a brand-new Compaq Presario 600, 486-DX2 CPU. I was rocken w/ 256 colors. I thought nothing could toast me.
    Then I saw my first Amiga.
    It was nothing too spectacular, an Amiga 3000. Commodore had been bankrupt and gone for 5 months at this point, but this little 25Mhz box was ripping my 66Mhz box a new posterior. I felt jipped.
    What did I do?
    I kept on using my Compaq, upset that it wasn't the coolest or the smartest thing since sliced bread.
    After that, I bought myself another PC, Pentium 166. Thought "Aha, I can beat that Amiga now" so I went to my friends house again. Nope, couldn't do it.
    Guess what I did then... I bought myself an Amiga! Amiga 1200 w/ PPC/060 card. I've had problems with workbench, but otherwise, the machine is fine. I had never worked on such a logical machine before.
    When I'd heard that Gateway had bought the Amiga, I groaned. I knew that Gateway couldn't bring out a decent product. So far, all indications say that I am right.
    Something about the Amiga is different than any other computer. It's not the OS, it's not the hardware. It's the fact that everything works together. No PC or Mac in the world can do the same feat, nor will they ever. They're designed by committe, not by inspiration. The "new Amiga" is no inspired design, not from the likes of gateway. It is yet another "ok folks, what can we hack together to make money with?"
    One day, the Amiga's concepts will live again, in some new machine w/o an Amiga logo on it. Probably won't even be backwards compatable. Actually, I'll guarantee that it's not. But, the ideology will be the same. Integrate, cooperate and distribute.
    My 2-bits
  • those IBM G4's don't look like crap to me...
  • a! I live in Australia and I work on a reverse engineering project. Amiga, open to the community.. open to taking their money.
  • ROFL! I think I took this in the spirit that it was intended! ;) I just want Deluxe Paint back!!!
  • seems like amiga is in the press alot...even though from what i understand they aren't much more than a washed-up company....weird...i guess CmdrTaco likes to cover them

  • I think perhaps the argument with fewer 'maybe's is more likely to be correct.

    The classic Amiga is doomed in the long run by its tight coupling with NTSC/PAL video and custom hardware tied to that legacy. NTSC and PAL are soon going to be dead as they are replaced by HDTV. The Amiga is also aflicted by goofy hardware driven by compromises Commodore made to be 'cheap' that only made sense in the 80's (like the bizare floppy drive hardware), but don't make sense today. And also by the essentially dead (68K, RIP) processor architecture it was tied to.
    A lot of these things could have been overcome if someone had been working continuously on them (as Apple overcame many of the same problems -- proprietary floppy->standard and 68K->PPC). Unfortunately for Amiga, they essentially stood still from about 1993 until recently. Six years is practically three lifetimes in the computer business.

  • by G-Man ( 79561 ) on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @09:33AM (#1711126)
    All this time I thought they wanted to produce an alternative to Apple products for multimedia content creation. Maybe they just want to be an alternative to Apple in the "corporate soap opera" arena. With things pretty stable in Cupertino, they must see an opening. Of course, they're gonna need to lose a whole lot more money first.

    Maybe they should hire Gil Amelio. He can hire on an original Amiga founder, get dumped, and the other fella can take over as iCEO...
  • Actually, I think Compaq and Dell are in different markets. Right now Apple's drawing concentric red circles on SGI and Intergraph.
  • It could be that the guy went to Amiga hoping it would take less time than working high up in Gateway then found what the Amiga users were like, y'know...

    It's not impossible that he genuinely has resigned for legit reasons, given what the Amiga community's like. I know, I'm still on the fringes of it myself.

    I'm still asking myself whether he was jumped or pushed though. He's annoyed me already with the Linux decision which, realistic as it may be, substantially reduced the probability of it turning out anything revolutionary. Downgraded a near-certain purchase to a fairly likely one. Nonetheless, he seems to have made some good decisions too, so I dunno.

    Either way, this alone shouldn't influence my likelihood of getting one and I can't see why it should for anyone else.

    Greg
  • by MenTaLguY ( 5483 ) on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @09:35AM (#1711129) Homepage

    Last time, Amiga was released from the hospital after a miraculous recovery from total paralysis and amnesia to be reuinted with Jim, her husband. The couple decided to adopt the little orphan Linux. Now, on their first night together after the car accident that separated them, she finds Jim cold and distant...

    [Amiga] What's the matter, Jim? Don't you love me?
    [Jim] No... Amiga... I'm sorry, but you're just not the same woman I fell in love with ... not since the accident...
    [Amiga] It's that hussy Apple, isn't it?! Her and those flashy G4s...
    [Jim] I ... I ...
    [Amiga] ADMIT IT!@#$
    [Jim] I can't lie to you ... your vaporware just can't compare to her firmware ... yes, yes, I'm having an affair with Apple!
    [Amiga] You bastard! GET OUT#(@$&*(@# GET OUT OF MY HOUSE(#@*($#@
    * Jim slams the door
    * Amiga sobs

    Tune in tomorrow for another episode of As The Workbench Turns...


    Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org [berlin-consortium.org]
  • by Anonymous Coward
    As a person who owned an A500 and a A2000 back when it kicked the PC's ass, who learned C on it and who got good at 68k asm, its sad to see this lingering, dragging death. Amiga was built around very capable hardware and a lean and mean kernel. Its UI (intuition) was pretty sweet as well. I remembered compiling demoes using aztech c and cygnus editor, shuffling floppies in and out on that A500. Remember I was a destitute african student. let it go. the best we can hope for is to open up all the source code so that emulator folks can really implement a full machine. just my opinion, but its really degrading seeing such a soap opera continue.
  • Last ditch effort = months of research, does it?
    Just because QNX decided to pretend that they'd not been dropped and bring out their tech just before the Amiga was finally announced properly, doesn't mean that was a last minute decision.
    I think it was quite a wise decision personally as linux has more developer mindshare (to coin a phrase), there are fewer licence restrictions and if you believe the rumours it is not as if Linus Torvalds is not too far away to get advice from, is it?
    Why don't we al wait till November to see what is released, or if you're impatient, the next press release? Might save premature obituaries.
  • The secret mysterious processor, the sudden silence, and now the departure of their president.

    When an Amiga is released, everyone will be so amazed, that we'll have to buy one just to see that it is real.
  • "I think it was quite a wise decision personally as linux has more developer mindshare (to coin a phrase), "

    you did not coin that phrase. Someone else did, you are just using it. don't be exspressionaly illiterate! (to coin a phrase)
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • After cashing out his Gateway stock ( which is selling at about $95 now, down thanks to him) why would he need to work on the "USS Vapourware" as someone else put it.

    BTW, the math gives him something like $11.2 million from that stock deal.
  • by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @09:38AM (#1711140) Homepage Journal
    Jim Collias is to replace David Duchovny in the X-Files. The show will be re-launched as the A-Files, with Skinner being played by Mr. T.

    In other news, Sapphire and Steel (the British version of the X-Files) will also be returning, this time as the new joint presidents of the Amiga. Apparently, mixing the old and the new was causing a timebreak, and will require the sacrifice of AmigaOS and two christmas party hats.

    The new Amiga was last seen in the Bahamas, in the company of Gillian Anderson. Rumours of an electronic affair were denied, but reports suggest Gillian may be getting a surgically-implanted network port for her left arm.

  • yeah. like a web tv clone box for example.
  • Maybe they should hire Gil Amelio.

    Hey, Gil is still available I think. :-)

    He can hire on an original Amiga founder, get dumped, and the other fella can take over as iCEO...

    Except of course that Jay Miner is still dead... Who else could they get?

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Well, it was gonna happen sooner or later (and preferably near the time of the OS 3.5 release). It's clear that everything AInc have been saying for the past few years is just hype so that the remaining Amiga users left will still buy what's left, in the faint hope that something will emerge. Amiga has been dying since 1992 with the release of 3.0, everything since then has been either minor bugfixes (3.1), or additional eye candy (3.5). Having been an Amiga user myself for 7-8 years, I know how people can get entagled in the whole Amiga world, but you gotta step back and get into the real world people. Hopefully this might shut up the fanatics who are *still* saying AmigaNG is gonna be revolutionary and gonna take over the world in, like, 5 days - that's just plain ignorance. Lets just hope that the partnership they had with QNX hasn't plauged QNX with the Amiga virus, cos I would like to see what they can come up with :o)
  • Here's the news just 1 hour later from ZDNN:

    Amiga said Wednesday it had appointed Tom Schmidt as it's new president to replace Jim Collas who unexpectedly resigned from the company. A spokesman for the company said Collas had resigned to persue personal interests.

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it. -- Franklin P. Jones

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