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Amiga

Amiga dropping plans for new machine 159

Posted by Hemos from the out-with-the-old-in-with-new dept.
Jesper Svennevid came in with the hook-up to yet another Amiga story (YAAS). It now appears that Gateway/Amiga has dropped plans to build a new computer, and are going to work on creating a "simplified Internet interface". The article also talks about Amiga wanting to go into "home-networking", competing with Sun and others.
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Amiga dropping plans for new machine More

Amiga dropping plans for new machine

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  • Exactly how vaild is this ?

    If Amiga don't come up with something soon they will definitley never be able to come back, to me it seems like their project get bigger and more hopeless all the time, first they wanted a new Amiga with a PowerPC processor and almost had a finished OS. And then suddely they rushed over to Linux and X on some totally new hardware, non of it relly existed . But now they want to compete with SUN Microsoft and bet everything on the idea that people would want something Simplified(read: incompetent) instead of just using netscape on a normal computer

  • No Gateway did not kill it. Commodore did. Gateway bought practically useless technology and came to conclusion that the only thing they reuse from that purchase is the name itself.
    Amiga was long dead and will stay that way. There is an end to everything.
  • Strangely enough, while the Amiga hardware is long outdated, the Amiga OS still has many features that would be useful for a first-rate multimedia machine. Hint: virtual memory is not ALWAYS a good thing.

    -E

  • Well, now, Gateway, you have turned the Amiga community against you (save for some unforseen pleasant news released by Petro on Tuesday). I will never buy nor recommend, nor specify for purchase at my company, another Gateway computer in my life... We true die-hard Amigans won't give up because you have. We know what the machine is to us, both on a technical and spiritual level. Our community has survived thus far without a company producing under the namesake. We will survive again (although, I'm sure, in smaller numbers). I've been holding off on pre-ordering the G4/Neutrino combo. I still hold a faint glimmer of hope that Tuesday will bring good news. But if not, my order will be placed. Enough venting. To Jay Miner, Dave Morse, Dave Bertman, Bob Burns, Mitchell Gass, Dale Luck, Tom Cahill, Rick Geiger, Jeff Taylor, Gary McCoy and all the others (even the unnamed dog whose footprint is on the inside of my 1000) - Thank you. This little piece of engineering and ingenuity has forever changed some peoples' lives (mine included). The King is dead... ...Long live the King! Digz -Back for the future?!?!?! I never left!!!!!
  • I'm sorry, but I must dissagree. Petro is a very nice guy, and the very fact that he is still on board assures me that even if this rumor isn't pure bull there is still hope of something worthwhile going on at Amiga. In the very worst case, going with a Boxer or an Iwin and eventually G4 on one or the other of these will still put my Amiga experiance at state of the art, with PCI, USB, Firewire and Ultra SCSI. And if as is likely Amiga are still planning to make the Linux-cored OE then we will still be set. It really doesn't matter who makes the hardware, and the OE will be portable. It's just to bad you aren't as nice as Petro... (or is it just the frustration talking?
  • Can you imagine having to reboot your Microsoft Toaster 2005 in order to get the bread out? Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "crash and burn" :)

    This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. At one place where I worked there was a sequence of two buttons you could press on the phones which would cause them to lock up hard (the display lights would stay on, but nothing worked). In order to fix it, you had to reboot the phone by unplugging from the wall jack, waiting for the internal capacitor to drain, and then plugging it back in.
  • >Q: What do you say to a Puerto Rican in a three-piece suit? A: Will the defendant please rise?

    Huh. Cute. That's also a Black "joke" too, btw. Either way it's still racist as hell. I'm surprised at you guys.

  • I truly hope it is over and nobody else will try come up with some "new" idea for resurecting Amiga. It was cool machine, I had one but as any technology (specially in this field) it became terribly outdated. It is dead. It has nothing going for it in 1999. Beside name, absolutely nothing.

  • This is a smart move for Amiga.... (Score:4)

    by kuro5hin ( 8501 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @05:12AM (#1690392) Homepage
    Read the article:

    "Amiga will be the Internet-appliance infrastructure company. We don't intend to build anything," says a source close to the company.

    If there's one thing Amiga has proven itself to be incredibly good at over the last few years, it would have to be "not building anything." So this looks like a sensible strategic move, given that they seem to be recognizing and leveraging their core competency.

    PS-- Sarcasm. Humor. :-)

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

  • Hmmm, color me surprised. ;>

    I say give it up, already.

  • How about implementing Article Moderation, so the fine users of Slashdot don't have to read complete crap all the time.

    If you get an account, you can customize your Slashdot at the Preferences page to exclude articles you don't want to read.

    Maybe (if there was enough demand/support) the AC's could get their own preferences through cookies.. it wouldn't be completely reliable (especially on systems where anyone can delete/change the cookies) but it is one solution to your suggestion/complaint.

    pez

    "It's all about the Pentiums" -- Wierd Al
    --
    I try to take life one day at a time, But lately several have attacked me at once. -- Unknown (to me)
  • There already is article moderation. Get an account. Log in. got to: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edituser. Click the little "don't show me any amiga stories" button. [slashdot.org]

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

  • Re:Article Moderation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This may come as a suprise to you but your request for article moderation has already been implemented! True, it is in beta at the moment but I've been successfully using it for sometime now. Here's how it works: 0) Look for a new story to read. 1) Look at the topic icon. If you don't like it, go to step 0. 2) Look at the story title. If you don't like it, go to step 0. 3) Look at the quick take. If you don't like it, go to step 0. I know it is a bit crude, I hope you find it as useful as I have. One other piece of [free] advice. Please, please try not to become enchanted with Slashdot or Linux or BSD or any other chunk of technology. Glassy eyes tend to miss the important details. Enjoy them but do keep it in perspective. (I should be sounding suitably like your mother now so I'll be shutting up ;)

  • Gateway just yanking people's chains. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm really fed up with the way this whole thing has been handled. Every once in awhile they'd let out a leak on something. Then it would change. Then you wouldn't hear about it, and then another rumour would be leaked out.

    As far as as I'm concerned, they've just been leading people on. That's something I really can't stand.

    Its too bad, when the Amiga was alive and well, it was the most amazing machine I'd ever used. Now when I see the word "Amiga" I think of the words "Vapourware" and "Lies".

    Its hardbreaking that my A2000 will be forever doomed to be a serial link to my home network.
  • JLG's license plate may have read "Amiga96", but it looks lime he was actually trying to court Apple. Be oversold itself to Apple which spent that 400 million JLG was asking for on an established complete OS instead. Ever since, Be's momentum has all but ground to a standstill. There's no such thing as "only one direction" for Amiga people to go. There's the various flavors of Linux running on hardware ranging from Apple G3's to Nintendo, there's QNX, or whatever might come out of those EuroAmiga folks. And there are places like slashdot. The computer might be history, but Amiga's greatest contribution, the community can not only just live on, but progress as well.

    As for Gateway....The Amiga seems to be like those serial villains, just when you think it's finally gone......
  • "Petro is a very nice guy, and the very fact that he is still on board assures me that even if this rumor isn't pure bull, there is still hope of something worthwhile going on at Amiga."

    Ah, but how much longer will he remain on board? We shall see.

  • Geez (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Another installment in that ongoing soap opera-- "As the ball bounces"
  • I guess maybe Amiga may have had it. They even gave us pictures of the new machine to gawk at and salivate over. Maybe they should just give it up and start making games for the Nintendo or something. I would have bought one just cuz I need a change of pace, something new to play with. This is really just too bad
  • Surely "As the ball bursts"?
  • Even nice guys grow bitter after a while. Petro's been in this game for much longer than anyone else in his right mind would. Raises the question, is Petro just barking mad? I've scrapped my A 4000 for good now, I've waited for too long now for something productive to come from Amiga, I've had enough
  • How interesting that a post that starts out grousing about "TOTALLY uninformed speculation" thereafter indulges in same as freely as possible. Okay you may have had what YOU see as an ANALAGOUS situation, but what do you know EXACTLY about the ins and outs of the Amiga at Gateway? Do you work there? Have you? Do you know ANY of the insiders? Doesn't sound like it. For just one example, what business in the world would lay out $13 million just to sate an exec with a yen and not expect to get some actual economic return? Maybe they can indulge such fancies at Micro$loth, but Gateway is a fur-piece away from being a half-billion-dollar company. It's been widely reported that Gateway picked up the Amiga for the trademarks and patents in order to accumulate licensing fees. Then the Amiga faithful struck and a little light went on over Ted Waitt's head (especially since he was already looking to get out from under the vast thumb of the Wintel duopoly). Where it all went wrong from there, I don't know. Perhaps the old "Amiga curse" story isn't the falacy I'd thought. I surely can't see how or why all these fits and starts have plagued Amiga development since nearly its inception. If Gateway goes under anytime soon, then I'll guess we'll have definitive proof! Still, I wonder about the idea that there won't be ANY Amiga MCC or market for same. If we'll all remember back to March when Collas started outlining his vision for the Amiga, he never said Amiga itself would knock out machines. Rather, they'd determine a "reference" platform and leave it to third parties to produce the actual hardware. And lest we forget, Corel has already announced support for an Amiga OE compatible version of WordPerfect 8, with WordPerfect Office to follow. Granted that software is as currently vaporous as anything Amiga's been talking about to this point (save OS 3.5), but why would Corel even announce this if they didn't feel that there'd be a machine to run the app on? For that matter, why, as the recent Business Week article speculates, would they even bother to name an Internet networking OE "Amiga" without a computer system of some sort to go with it? Let's face it: the mainstream press is notoriously inaccurate about the Amiga with only a few notable exceptions (Wired). Since Petro says we're going to get an official announcement this week, let's wait till then to bemoan the Amiga's latest fate. And hell, even if what's rumored is true, how can this kill the Amiga if the already announced third-party developers follow though with their promised soft/hardware? If these companies felt it was up to them before to pursue the Classic Amiga market without Amiga, then the Boing ball will be definitively in their court if the worst occurs.

  • Not surprised. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This has happened every single time. Is anyone surprised? Get over it guys, Amigas are awesome machines, but they are gone.
  • Amiga has been chasing their tale for years now. They seem incapable of sticking with an idea long enough to create an actual product.

    All the waffling has taken its toll, too. Even the old hardcore Amigans are leaving now. There remain precious few die-hards...certainly not enough to constitute a market.

    --Lenny

  • Neutrino: the last best hope for Amiga values (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @04:38AM (#1690414) Homepage Journal

    Now is the time for Amiga fans to face the fact that Amiga Inc is not going to do anything to preserve or advance the Amiga values. Come with us to QNX Neutrino -- it will be glorious!


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!

  • I don't mean to be a wet blanket... (Score:3)

    by mdemeny ( 35326 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @04:39AM (#1690416) Homepage
    ...but they're starting to seem like the company that cried wolf. In school I used an Amiga and a Video Toaster for compositing, and it was a damned fine machine. Really. But it seems like they can't get their act together. We've been waiting nearly forever for them to resurrect themselves. And it's never happened.

    I think it's time to let it go... flame me if you want, but that's what I think. Sorry.

  • What Amiga *really* is... (Score:4)

    by Frank Sullivan ( 2391 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @04:39AM (#1690418) Homepage
    Remember the article in Wired News about a computer generating better ad copy than human writers?

    Well, they hooked that computer up to the Internet, and have it generating "buzz". :}

    Really, has anyone ever met an actual human being who works for "Amiga"? Or are they just randomly generating press releases based on buzzwords and standard IT industry plotlines?

    ---
  • I'm sure this title sums it up for most amiga folks. I personally would have bought one of their new machines, but now I'm really starting NOT to see a future in the Amiga.

    Yes, it's a fantastic machine. Yes, I will forever feel the Amiga was the best computer ever built. Yes, I still own mine. No, it won't ever make a true comeback; the days of multiple proprietary machines for the home market is gone.

    I now finally believe that the Amiga is gone. Shed a tear.
    --

  • well @ leaat it runs linux and so means will help with the device driver !

    but what platfrom will it be for ?

    what CPU ?

    they have been toying with lots lets hope that they will use an open arch like ARM !!

    (or a VLIW machine whos name I forget ;-)

    oh well

    john jones
    a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
  • Frankly, many other companies have had problems with deciding what they are going to do, but Amiga takes the cake. Qnx kernel then linux kernel, new machine -> internet terminal. The list goes on. Make up your mind!
  • > The Amiga wasn't just about a computer.. to me anyway the Amiga was a community, and a set of developers who we all respected,
    > and some applications that we loved (partly because we all kinda knew the people who were working on them)...

    Agree. Without those people and enthusiasm there won't be another Amiga. It was different, and it's gone...
    Pitty though... For a while I was dreaming on having a new Amiga, real new machine with right spirit and feeling.

    Joanna
  • I agree that Be has alot of the old Amiga flavor, and really I'm beginning to think it's the only way forward for long-suffering Amiga fans.

    Anyway, not sure how many (if any?) Amiga people are working at Be, but Jean-Louis Gassee's license plate used to read "AMIGA96", I believe.


  • Amiga newer dies! It gets faster! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, we have to "settle" for the G4 accelerators & 4gigaflops... (more: www.phase5.de & amiga products)
  • Here's a thought... maybe they had to dump their plans because they actually WERE planning on using Transmeta's chips, and those just aren't hacking it yet.

    I mean, really, how can they expect to come out with a new super-duper system that fast, when the supposed supplier for the processor has never even talked about the chip, much less demoed a simulator, or gone to silicon.

    And you know there's not much chance they could go to silicon without people finding out. Its not like they're going to build their own fabrication plants.

    So maybe its not really Gateway's decision. Maybe they've been making plans based on assumptions that have turned out to be incorrect.

  • This makes me mad. Now with the new Amiga apparently shelved as a relic of hype media and misguided R+D, we'll never find out what goes on behind the cloak and dagger routine at Transmeta.

    But what really makes me peeved is that we will have to live with the honoured name 'Amiga' plastered on what amount to WebTV clones. 'Information Appliance' is just a nice way of saying 'We'll sell you this non-upgradeable, inflexible unit, and you'll need our $479 Appliance Exchange Unit, and you'll have to pay us $29.99 a month to connect to our Information Appliance Network'. Could I expect anything less from GW2K?

    Throwing away a hungry market for the new Amiga can hardly be considered a good move. Getting our hopes up with a fantastic media trip and then delivering the news that they've decided to toss out the whole idea in favor of a media 'buzzword' amounts to user rape in my opinion.

    I really wanted one of the new machines, if only for the fact I could look my co-workers in the eye and tell them 'my Amiga can beat the pants off your cruddy PII.'
  • As an owner of the A1000 and then A2000, I was looking forward to an Amiga MCC... It sounded like what I want for my living room. Now, screw them. I'm going to homebrew my own. D*mn Gateway, I'd say that was the definitive nail in the coffin.
  • BIG BROTHER BILL has Gateway by the scrotum....

    "IF IT'S FREE YOU AIN'T GONNA GET IT !"

  • BIG BROTHER BILL has Gateway by the scrotum....

    "IF IT'S FREE YOU AIN'T GONNA GET IT !"

    Try starting 6 or 7 proggies at once on a Win.. machine....BIG HANG-UP; but slick as slick on an Amiga. That's my problem I Can't go backwards !
  • A2000
    Big box
    Stll expandable (G4-PPC) (64 bit graphic cards) etc......
    What other 10 year old computer can demand 200-400$ (check E-Bay)
    If you think your multitasking on a Win.. machine then you need some Amiga education.....
  • Here is a copy of my E-Mail to Thomas Schmidt, the new President of Amiga Inc. I am certain that if any Amigans read it they will agree and help to spread as big of a boycott on Gateway as we can.

    Greetings,

    You emphasize that the Amiga is not about a box or an operating system. It most certainly is. Gateway has destroyed what was left of the Amiga, because like yourself, no one there has any idea what the Amiga is about. It absolutely is about much more than a box and an operating system, but the fact of the matter is, that the spirit that has kept it alive has been inspired by that box you denounce. The problem is, you are afraid. You can't see that if you came out with a product you would sell hundreds of thousands of units before you ever had to spend a dime on marketing. Microsoft embodies your fear. I'll tell you where your fear should lie. The Amiga community. This is a community made up of a group of people with superior computer knowledge in comparison to the morons using Microsoft products around the world. We are also very spread out. We can and will make a great influence on everyone we know who buys PC's. There will not be an Amigan supporting Gateway. You have just put the first nail in Gateway's coffin.

    I work for the military and we buy computers all of the time. What have we bought since I started working here? Gateways. We have purchased over 200 Gateways in the past year. Yesterday I was given the order to find and purchase 50 laptops. I will be getting Dells. I would have made the purchase from Gateway 3 weeks ago. You are a fool if you don't think this kind of thing will be happening all over the place now. You let a few million people down who all hate Microsoft, yet who for the most part make at least part of their income because they work on PC's. We will influence the companies we work for and our friends and families. In one week I have already turned 54 potential Gateway sales into 52 Dell sales and 2 Micron sales. I will be posting a copy of this letter to you on Slash.Dot as well as many other places. You picked the wrong group of people to start a fight with. Amigans have salt. We have been through it. We have stamina and stick to our guns. The word will spread fast and linger a long time. Amigans will not tolerate Gateway's attitude and broken promises, as you shall see.

    Thank you very much, have a nice day,

    Jason Myers


    As you all can see, I am pretty pissed off. You know, there are still very powerful Amigas on the horizon, if not from the company Amiga itself. I don't care what the cost, I am going to purchase the most souped up G4 Amiga 4000 money can buy as soon as it is released. I hope everyone else will as well. Who wants an Amiga in the kitchen anyway? I am going to buy a Video Toaster Flyer as well and then I will have a fantastic toy, with or without the help of Gateway.

    I am sure after reading these posts that a lot of people are so fed up that they are giving Amiga up for dead. I am not. If you are one of those who are, please do what you can to boycott Gateway and to have others boycott it as well. The power of "word of mouth" is a strong one. As most people won't even understand your reasoning behind it, there is no real need to go into lengthy explainations, just be sure they understand that Gateway is a company full of hollow promises. They are sitting back saying, "We're making billions of dollars and you're not, so we must be doing something right." Show them that they have done a terrible wrong and will pay for it.

    I also urge you to call Gateway at 1(800)428-3929 as many times as you think you can afford (800 numbers are FREE and cost Gateway!) and talk to everyone who answers the phone. Let them know your feelings and tie up their lines!

  • IWIN? Do you really think that a company of several hundred people who have the ability to produce computers would use their CEO for their HTML programming? It's just one guy pulling our chains.
  • An amigan saying BeOS has no future? Talk about the pot and the kettle...

    -lx
  • I don't think Amiga can capture what they had... regardless of who has the name. The world has changed. When the original Amiga stuff came out.. I don't think even Commodore knew *why* it was great. THEY didn't do anything to get this great following, as a company... people loved the machine... Those things were MAGICAL! They filled the entire room with magic. Never have I seen a platform where so many artist/coders got together to write the most beautiful software I've ever seen.

    The only thing successful about the Amiga was the machine itself. Commodore blew it.


    The machine was way ahead of it's time, cool looking, and was doing really goddamn cool sexy things.

    Nowadays... what does?
  • People who are to lazy to fill in the forms for registration on this website should be the last to complain about moderation issues and preferences. It's not like rob is going to abuse the minimal information you leave behind.

    Registering has all sorts of advantages:
    - you can say you are a slashdot member
    - you can quantify your karma
    - you get to pick your own combination of slashboxes
    - you can filter AC articles and flaimbait

    There's probably more but this is the most important stuff from my point of view.

    BTW I don't use filtering. I sort of enjoy reading lame posts. Hope you enjoyed mine :)

  • History repeats (Score:3)

    by SheldonYoung ( 25077 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @06:19AM (#1690438)
    We've seen this before: CDTV.

    Ages ago they took an A500 and crammed it into a VCR-like consumer device. Sales were a flop, and I suspect they will be again, because of lack of a market opportunity.

    If they want to go after the web-surfing market, then they have problems:

    1. Established low end competition - WebTV $199 and WebTV Classic $99. Very cheap, good enough for light surfing. Even the Sega Dreamcast $199 has the ability.

    2. Bundles - The free or close to free PCs bundled with internet access.

    3. Cheap general purpose computers - Your average $750 PC, except now you also have a general purpose computer.

    4. Higher end - The ubiqitous $2000 home computer. Many people are willing to pay $2000 because it's what they think they can spend.

    Where is there room for them to play?

    Don't mind all the confusion coming out of Amiga lately, they just drunk.

  • If there's ever been a more anti-Free company in existence, I can't imagine who it would be.

    A little background to that statement:

    Phase5 is a outstanding hardware manufacturer. Their gear is good. However, their software side is a bit crazy. Last year, they released the Amiga-famous CyberStormPPC accelerator, which shoehorned a PowerPC 604e and a 68060 (exact CPUs depending on the model you chose) onto the same board. Yes, that's right, many modern Amigas are asymmetric multi-processors. Anyway, P5 released an initial stub API to developers so that lots of new PowerPC apps could be written. Another company, Haage & Partner, didn't like the new kernel, called PowerUp; they felt it was un-Amiga-like, so they wrote their own, called WarpUp.

    Nothing too interesting (except for those of us with new boards on order) - until P5 decided to change their API, cutting the feet out from under their early-adopter developers. PowerPC applications that had been written and tested suddenly quit working, and P5's publicity department went to town blaming those 3rd-party coders. In backlash, many switched over to the competing (and incompatible) WarpUp system.

    This is where it gets really fun. P5 didn't like the migration one bit. In the early days after the boards' release, flash firmware was being constantly updated to iron out last-minute bugs. P5 re-worked those new flashes so that WarpUp could no longer even be loaded, no matter how badly the end user wanted to use that system.

    Their explanation and defense?

    They developed the hardware, so it was their system. If they wanted to re-engineer their firmware in such a way that users were forced to use their OS, then they should be allowed to.

    I, like many other people, got caught in the crossfire. My shiny new hardware could only use half of the software written for it, and the decision of which kernel to use was taken out of my hands.

    No, people, you don't want to rely on Phase5 for your new hardware. They are terribly (and I chose that word on purpose) likely to decide, for you, what software you are allowed to run on it.

    Not even Intel/Microsoft managed to pull that one off.

  • While GW are thoroughly messing up the amiga, there is some development, (mainly in Germany and the UK) for the "classic" amiga line, companies like haage&partner, phase5, blittersoft.
    The aminet still gets lots of uploads.

    The amiga OS is lacking in some (major) areas,
    but it is a platform that many European Free Software coders grew up on, and is much more similar to Linux than windows. The GNU GPL is a popular license for amiga software too.
    It has a good, well-integrated CLI and GUI, and "felt" like a cut-down unix, with some weird stuff thrown in. It, along with linux, and unlike windows and the mac, always encouraged creative hobbyist programming, with AMOS and Blitz for beginners, C and 68k asm for bigger projects.

    (BeOS is basically the AmigaOS done right.)

    It was very,very easy to program for ( 68k asm is much, much, better than x86 -most 68k macro asm projects look pretty much like C), there are 3 freely available, open source C compilers - egcs, vbcc and DICE. (The entire GNU suite was ported to AmigaDOS), and if you've ever read the amigaOS 3.1
    system include files, you'll know what a pleasant architecture to develop for it was. Aahhh, taglists... messages... exec list nodes... devices...

    It was always fun, like linux is, and I for one would like to see some of the slick little features of amiga os make it into linux - maybe not the core os, but the bits people left in the amiga community consider important - i.e. near-realtime multimedia performance, retargetable graphics and sound.

    And little things, like the way disks were referred to by /their/ name, not by the drive they were in - So if you're an application developer, you ask the end user to insert "volume named Shovelware1:" rather than "insert Disc 1 into drive e:".

    This cuts out having to poll, like in the debian installer, which has a file on it saying, basically, "this is debian disk 1"

    It also makes automounting much more sensible. (and yes, I know about vold - but why isn't it used more? - you could have an inserted cdrom appearing in /mnt/cdrom/name_of_cd/, floppy in /mnt/cdrom/name_of_floppy/ which would make working with removable media much less ambiguous...)




  • A truly interesting observation, one that is worthy of hard consideration...

    But even if it's true, it still doesn't soften the effect of the news; and that is that this is another setback for the die-hards (does that include me? I have an A3000 that I still use - and probably will until the PAR gives out and I can't use it for video any more.)

    I think whatever the reason for this latest announcement, the result is that (to the faithful) it's another nail in the coffin.

  • Du you have any links to info about Acorn on the net ?
  • we'll never find out what goes on behind the cloak and dagger routine at Transmeta.

    Well, sooner or later they're going to have to sell something. They can't live on venture capital forever.

  • name_of_floppy makes _even more_ sense :-)
  • This is just silly. We've endured countless Amiga stories and speculation and surprise, surprise...it's vapourware. Now they're network toasters...yipeee (oh wait, I havn't seen any product from them in that area either, so that's probably vapourware too).

    Its too bad really. I wanted Amigas to come out and succeed. But enough is enough; show us something Amiga or kindly go away.

    Sort of puts a whole new perspective on the prez leaving doesn't it?
  • It is amazing to me how often we hear news from amiga, and never see any attempt to finish a product. How do they stay in business? Why do their stockholders not take their money and run screaming away?

    Do they sell stock exclusively to those who have seen elvis making crop circles?

  • I'm not trying to rip warmi, there's nothing wrong with your post, but is it funny? It doesn't sound like you're trying to be funny. Slashdot moderators are getting really weird.

    This will be moderated to (Score:0, flamebait), no doubt.
  • There ought to be a book on how to ruin a brand name -- perhaps if no other reason, people won't refer to the Amiga as the textbook example.

    The Amiga was ruined by three companies overall: Commodore, Escom, and now Gateway. If there was ever the chance that I was going to buy an neo-Amiga box, it went out the window with this latest announcement.

    The Amiga brand name was worth a couple million dollars to Gateway, which was how much they paid for it. They funded it for almost the last couple years, working on it, communicating with the general public. And with today's announcement it almost seems certain that Gateway lost all the "Amiga" market reputation that was left.

    This is/was the final straw for the Amiga that we wished for. There is no more hope. It's all over -- finished. Stick a fork in the Amiga -- it's done.
  • I miss the days when you could try 6 or 7 _fundamentally_ different computers in a computer store and pick the one you like. Now you get the choice of trying Windows machine 1, or Windows machine 2, or...

    The only place I've seen a Mac on display lately is Sears.

    The new Amiga could have helped the home computer stagnation a little bit, except it would have been seen only in Gateway stores and not in places like Best Buy or Sears. Still, I missed it the first time, and now I'm not going to get another chance... :~(
  • Denial-of-bread attacks could become commonplace once toasters start getting IP addresses. I'm not sure that's a world I want to live in :-)
  • In 2001, the Amiga will have been dead longer than it was ever alive.

  • What are the chances that QNX will actually ship hardware? Probably not very big.

    I know, that's one of the things that makes it so attractive!


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!
  • Oh dear, that line of speculation is worrying. If Amiga Inc had to change their plans because of Transmeta-related "assumptions that have turned out to be incorrect" then that could also mean that Transmeta has hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

    I wish Transmeta would say *something* -- *anything*. I think they may be too quiet for their own good, because silence breeds hype which may end up being very difficult to live up to. It would be awful if they ended up tarred with the Amiga/Gateway vapourware brush just because they allowed total hype runaway instead of making their intentions clear.
  • I completely agree. I think it is simply mistake..
  • Hmmm... Obviously I didn't participate in that fiasco. I had decided that I would wait for a replacement Amiga (which I had hoped was finally going to arrive!). But at least Phase5 has demonstrated they know how to make an Amiga work with a PPC chip, and QNX's new OS sounds like it's pretty much done. I was actually more worried about the two different companies trying to replace the Amiga in two completely different ways than just P5 doing it. At least this time there will finally be a single target. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong. But with it coming just from Phase5 I don't think it's very likely to catch on (other than in Europe, like always). It will be interesting to see what finally comes out of Transmeta now that their version of the Amiga is dead.
  • This reminds me of those damn'd volkswagen beetles... maybe someday soon we'll all see amiga's "new beetle".

    Hopefully it won't look as fruity though.


    -Ecc
    "For I have become Microsoft, the destroyer of stability..."

  • Re:This is a smart move for Amiga.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is a very long expression that sounds impressive enough and is has *Internet* in it, so this will do to attract some more idio ^H^H^H investors so the money keeps flowing.
  • Let's not forget that the original Amigas were the birthplace of the MOD music format, revolutionary for home computer music. Over time, these files have evolved to become more powerful in later mutations, and have been featured in too many Apogee and Epic Megagames productions to count. Unreal used them (well, the recent mutations known as XM and IT.) The artists and coders weren't the only ones having a field day with the revolutionary power of that legendary machine, the musicians loved it so much they took the music format with them into the PC world (and occasionally, the Mac, and so on.)

    I knew from the second the change in OS was announced that the new Amiga was doomed, the whole of its development little more than a feeler for market interest. So I say, let's not grieve the fact that it hasn't been brought back, and instead lern from what was good about the Amiga and work with that on what platforms do exist. The new implementations of MOD-style music are one of the finest examples of that.
  • BeOS is probably the best OS in the amiga spirit but yeah it runs on hardware that has nothing to do with multimedia. In fact there is no computer today designed specifically for multimedia except for expensive SGI's.
  • I'd be very curious in knowing what aspects feel unfinished to you (I'm not picking an argument, I'm genuinely curious). I've used it as my solo OS for nearly six months now, so... I'm interested in a fresh perspective. :)
  • BeOS has a future? That's debatable.
  • Better chance than Amiga shipping _anything_.
  • No. This is the end. No Amiga users should play this game of insanity anymore.

    Option 1: Phase5's PowerPC box
    Option 2: The PowerPC stuff from IBM that someone's going to pickup. Throw on BeOS or Linux.

    This is it, they've _finally_ admitted there will be no Amiga. Time to live in the present, time to create the future.

  • what difference does it make? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ok. when amiga was in full force, they were far ahead of their time. great stuff. the only problem is that it happened years ago, and since then, the rest of the world has caught up, and in many ways past what amiga was. now, amiga is just an old company trying to get back on top without doing anything. what have they offered recently? not counting vaporware os's, promised new machine architectures, networking devices, etc. please - let's only hear about amiga when they actually do something. until then, i'd rather hear about microsoft vaporware - it's more likely to actually be developed.

  • Looks like this is yet another opportunity for those people who make petitions to put one to good use.

    I'm amazed that a company could see so many people get so excited by a product, and then dump it. Maybe they figured the delivery could never live up to the hype. Still, it looks like there is a lot of pent up demand for a new Amiga.

    Too bad the Amiga fans will have to wait again. Gateway shouldn't be allowed to get away with whipping the poor Amiga fanatics up into a frenzy and then leaving them high and dry. I hope they get lots of bad press!

  • I have a friend who's a strong Amiga user. He's been trying to talk me into getting an Amiga. But seemingly 10 year old technology doesn't interest me very much. When the Amiga was big with announcements a while back I started to get excited. Sure I heard what everyone said about Amiga not sticking to a product, but it seemed like Amiga really was serious. Now once again they announce that they are changing their focus.

    They do need a product. They just need to find a good one to base their future one, and stick too it. That's the only thing they need to do now.

    -Brent
    --

  • Here's what I think really happened (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is TOTALLY uninformed speculation, but I lived through an experience just like this once. When egos and business objectives clash, strange things can happen.

    Basically, I think Amiga got bought up because some exec in Gateway had a soft spot for the Amiga. The Amiga execs were then under pressure to produce something - anything - that would justify the purchase. The only thing they had of value was their name, so they traded on that.

    Shrewd negotiations led to the QNX deal. Only one problem: while the left hand was making deals, the right hand didn't have any money to pay. So Amiga was forced to drop QNX; their only alternative was something free.

    Enter the industry buzzword of the hour, Linux. They needed an announcement fast (to keep Gateway at bay), so they announced they'd be bringing out a Linux box. Problem: they don't have any real expertise with Linux. When it became apparent that bundling this "free" OS would be a lot more expensive in terms of talent than they had thought, that plan died too.

  • Re:Geez (Score:1)

    by Axe ( 11122 )
    Or "As your balls hurt"?
  • Amiga generate publicity by putting their Amiga black boxes (that were shown) on eBay for public auction. I'd go $126.50 plus shipping.
  • My big bro', who's been using an A/4000 since '94 for 3D animation and the like has been wondering these past several months weather or not to go over the Mac side of the Force. I had advised him to wait, as it looked for awhile like Amiga, Inc. was really rolling and that we could all look forward to the second great computer industry resurrection of this decade, Apple's being the first. When I saw the concept drawings of the new machines I drooled right along with him, though I'm a Mac/Win98 man myself--hey, I like competition in the comp industry!--and I had high hopes, too for the clones/PPC variants being touted by the likes of Phase5 and Genesis. [randomize.com] But then months passed with lotsa hot air and no real product on the shelves, except for the afrementioned Genesis; then their President and some other Amiga bigwigs suddenly resigned and it became clear to all who have eyes to see that the handwriting was on the wall. And now at last, as the end of the whole sorry tale comes this "Ha ha, fooled yaz, we ain't releasing any new machines after all! We'se nuthin' but Vaporware Unlimited, and all y'all can just suck the big one iff'in yaz doan' like it!! Bwahahaha!!"

    Sigh. . .

    Even back when I hated them, I wouldn't have wished this kind of fate on friggin' Micro$oft. RIP, Amiga. You deserved better, by Babbage! And as for my brother, I'm recommending that he save for a G4. And yeah, some may think I'm a fool for saying this, but I still believe it: were it not for Steve Jobs, Apple would be today where the Amiga is right now. Dead.

  • I bought an Amiga back when the Amiga 1000 first came out. I still remember the thrill of reading the Byte article on it.


    Alas, those days are long gone, but new days await.


    Here's a magic wand - what does your dream machine look like? What sort of innovative hardware/software would you create if you could?

  • I agree that those earlier events were pretty scandalous, but it's all in the past. There hasn't been any evidence this year (yet) that they are still up to these shenanigans. Personally, I'm willing to give 'em the benefit of the doubt one more time, because in my experience, their hardware products really have been quite good, and because of some things Wolf Dietrich posted earlier this year.

    What we need to watch out for is a repeat of the PowerUP/WarpUP fiasco, and thanks to experience, I think it will be pretty easy to detect and avoid such traps. We just need to make sure that our Neutrino apps are not dependent on Phase 5's version of (or extensions to) Neutrino. The Extend phase of an "Embrace and Extend" attack will only work if app developers allow it to, by using the extensions.

    (BTW, keep in mind that part of the reason Phase 5 had to write all those extensions in the past (PowerUP, CyberGraphX) was that AmigaOS was rotting, and it lacked some important stuff that was needed in order to fully exploit new hardware. With Neutrino, that situation does not exist. Neutrino is still being actively developed.)

    This is the beauty of having separate hardware and software companies. If Phase 5 were doing the hardware and a lot of the software (like the situation we had with Commodore, and what the Mac people are currently enduring), there would be a risk of getting locked in to one hardware manufacturer. But as long as QSSL sets the standards and we program to their API, as opposed to some Phase 5 bastardization, we will be Ok. (Yeah, we'll be "locked in" to Neutrino, of course, but I can think of worse things. :-)

    It's a hell of a lot safer situation than what Amiga Inc was planning.

    If anyone from Phase 5 is reading this, listen up: Don't invest a lot of time/money in OS-level software (except for drivers), unless you're willing to give it away, and see it used by competitors. I have pre-ordered one of your new CyberStorm boards. Next year, I will consider buying an AmiRage [phase5.de] if (and only if) Phase 5 has not done anything to trick developers into writing stuff that will only run on Phase 5 hardware. If you play fair, and put me in a situation where I have to choose between an AmiRage and some other PPC box based on the price and/or technical merit of the two competing products, I'll give your product very serious consideration, and we may have a long and recurring business relationship.


    ---
    Have a Sloppy day!
  • Well, I have used the Amiga since the A500 (went through 2000, 2500, and expanded that sucker like crazy), and although I was very hardcore, now as I see it it's just sad...

    Commodore will always be a place of great technology and stupid, stupid management.

    Early this year I was even ready to buy a new Amiga, now all I want is a new SCSI HD+ROMs for the A500 that's collecting dust in the closet, install Linux w/minicom and use it as a terminal at home. All the other machines have been gone for a while.

    A sad ending for a great piece of hardware, that's for sure.

    - David
  • That's funny. I can see it now. Denial of Icemaker attacks on the fridge, automatic grocery lists spammed or a MS bug in the home security cams that
    anyone access without a password.
  • Back in the Amiga heyday I wrote a couple of forgettable games that were actually published (!). If any Amiga diehards are curious, the titles were "Dino Wars," and "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."

    My development environment was DevPac, a really sweet 68K Assembler. My favorite features in the Amiga was most definitely the 68000 processor. I wasn't ready to go from a nice clean 6502 to a sloppy creature like the x86, and when I saw the 68000 instruction set I knew I had come home.

    Throw in a really nifty Copper, and a fabulous Blitter, and the Amiga had everything a kid brought up on Atari display list programming could want! Imagine my shock when newer computers were coming out that didn't have any onboard co-processors to handle tasks like blitting and sound... It was a strange thing to see.

    Now of course the PCI slot rules, and AGP is coming on strong, and everything is 20 times more complex and you have to spend years on a single architecture just to keep up with its APIs. And all this complexity, perhaps more than anything else, is what drives the new "information economy," which to me seems more like a dazzle 'em with bullshit, grab their wallet and run economy.

    A rant, to be sure, but I always wondered how the Amiga, with its fab Intuition toolbox, a penchant for multiprocessing, a thoroughly OOP design, and a superior processor could founder while DOS continued to rule the desktops of the world. I think I must've been warped to an evil alternate universe at some point!
    Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?
  • /me scratches head in confuzzlement I dont know about the rest of you out there, but i was very interested when i first heard about Amiga making a come back. And the fact that they were planning to use a Linux kernel just made it that much better. There have been rumors flying all over the place about things happening, not happening, CEOs changing. Now they have decided (apparantly) not to create a "new machine" but rather an "internet device" Does anyone have any real information about what is going on over @ Amiga Corp
    \\||//
    ----ooo00ooo----
  • And, after heavy market research, consultation with Gartner Group, email to Jesse Berst, a double espresso, an Altavista search and three hits of acid, i found the name of this project - Elizamiga.

    Apparently, it's an experiment in marketing Darwinism by a bored MIS/marketing double major with his finger perpetually on the fast-forward button.

    The 2.0 beta release will go into IPO later in Q4.

    ---

  • Then Phase5 it is (Score:5)

    by RickyRay ( 73033 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @04:48AM (#1690515)
    Phase5 (who does the best PPC and video upgrades for the Amiga) has been working on an Amiga replacement for years (the project used to be called A\\Box). They have announced a pretty sweet new version of the Amiga for early next year using the QNX kernel. They're at www.phase5.de.

    Unlike Gateway, it appears they really are going to do it.

  • What is the Amiga? (Score:4)

    by SteveX ( 5640 ) on Friday September 10, 1999 @04:52AM (#1690516) Homepage
    The Amiga wasn't just about a computer.. to me anyway the Amiga was a community, and a set of developers who we all respected, and some applications that we loved (partly because we all kinda knew the people who were working on them)...

    I don't think this is something that can ever be recaptured as Amiga. It's too late for that now. Be has the same flavour to it (are there any Amiga people involved in that?) as did the Atari Lynx and the 3DO.. both of those had some of the Amiga crew onboard at some point.

    The Linux community is the same way, really, but it's grown so big that it's really hard to feel like you're a part of it these days. (Maybe that's what will make the Hurd catch on).

    Anyone else remember Dave Haynie and RJ Mical and Jay Minor and Bryce Nesbitt and Dale Luck and the rest of the original Amiga crew?

    Whatever happened to Leo Schwab anyway? :)
  • Now now, Gateway did not kill the Amiga. Amiga management killed Amiga. Gateway is just one in a long string of suckers that tried to revive Amiga once again. But now it looks like the Amiga really is dead. Sucks, I was kind of looking forward to the new machines. I reccomend that the Amigans out there give BeOS a try, it seems to be the closest thing to the Amiga spirit, but actually has a future.

    -lx
  • I loved the Amiga back in the old days. I remember walking into an Amiga dealership in Des Moines (back in the Commodore days... another system that I've a soft spot for) and seeing the "Walker demo". I'd never seen anything like it, it really was years ahead of anyone else.

    Unfortunately, the times have changed. Amiga is never going to take the marketshare of SGI in the high-end graphic workstation field. They're not going to beat out eMachines or any of the other cheap Internet computer manufacturers. They've fallen behind, and in a world that works on Internet time, that's not something anything can easily recover from.

    Now, if they actually did build a Transmeta-powered Linux system with support for full-motion video editing, audio, 3D graphics, and support for Windoze software at an affordable price, they might actually be able to survive. However, I wouldn't hold your breath for this to happen. Amiga is dead... it has been on life support for a long time, and perhaps now someone has mercifully pulled the plug. Let's just remember that they got there first, and make sure that we also never forget why Amiga is dead as a doornail and SGI is thriving.
  • Why are they even bothering to keep the Amiga name? Apparently they're using some Amiga patents for this new scheme, but I wouldn't think the Amiga name would help sell anything except computers.
  • ...I hereby let out the following scream:
    "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!PLEASEDON'TMAKEMY AMIGAAWEBTVCLONE!".

    This is insane...sure, the idea of household integration is cool, I'll be the first to get one (though don't get me started on the security issues involved in an online toaster). But why does Gateway have to use the Amiga name to foist this product on people? The Amiga has name recognition, sure, but recogition of what depends on who you ask. Most people, if they have even heard of one, think it's an old gaming machine. Anyone affilated with video production probably associates it with the Video Toaster. Then there are the (relatively) few people who actually know about the unqiue architechture (sp?), and admire it for that.
    It seems to me, though, that none of these images could in ANY way help someone launch what Gateway is apparently now trying to launch. Does anyone have any idea why they choose to piggy-back the Amiga name, instead of launching a brand new product? They can't say "Amiga's back!". One, we've all heard it already. And two, this isn't the Amiga. The Amiga is something you can buy from Antigravity.com, Phase5, etc...so does anyone know why they did this?
    Also, from a hardware standpoint, what could this new (insert whatever buzzword they're using at this time, I forget) possibly have in common with the old Amiga? From what the article makes it out to be, the 'new' Amiga is going to be a glorified X10 controller, with an X-windows interface. At it would need would be an ARM CPU (not to diss them, I like 'em). And they are certainly going to be cutting costs. So what becomes of the Amiga's sort of asymetric multiprocessing, with graphics/sound/math split into separate cpus, and all the other things from the hw on up that made it the Amiga. This new amiga has more in common with, well, a thinclient tv remote.
    Arrrghhhhhhhhhhhh, I'm angry.
    Sorry if this was a vent, having fun moderating me down.

  • I have seen more Amiga flipflops since I have been reading slashdot than I ever remember hearing about. You know who is really going to suffer? The people who have really had their hope up about Amiga. I have a friend who loves Amigas, and I think this might be the final straw to him, and with good reason. You just cannot depend on a company that cannot make a plan and stick to it.

    Their strategy of making a network appliance is unoriginal, unimaginative, and not what we would typical expect from the forward thinking amiga crew. I wonder what is going on with that. The market is soon to be saturated with little internet appliances already. What is going to make it different? I don't think that people will buy it just because it is an amiga. People who bought amigas actually did work with them.

    Get your act together, Amiga, or get out of the rat race
  • I don't see why us Amigans must always quarrel about the direction the
    company and why always the direction Amiga Inc. has taken is the worst one.
  • Screw Petro!. Petro is a big fat drunk German who runs around screaming "Keep
    dar momentum goink" Petro can do whatever he likes, I'm getting sick. Unless
    the story about amiga being a net box gets denied by GW2K then I'm off, I've
    had it....
  • What you have seen were only pictures of some boxes. There was nothing inside (as it is with the Gateway plans arund an Amiga computer). And: Never believe into somethin an american business man tells you. They are all fooling you.
  • This shouldn't come as any great suprise. The mark of a loser is not that he fails, but that he doesn't even try to win. This reminds me of the flakes over at Apple. I'm totally disgusted by this. There is room in the market for an alternative to the PC. The fact that Apple hasn't succeeded killing itself despite its best efforts show this. I miss the early 80's when completely new computers were coming out all the time. Each had its own personality and I miss that. Now all you've got is the PC or the Mac. You can choose your own OS, but its still a PC (or Mac).
  • With no new products to speak of. What exactly do they do? Do they even have profit? maybe they should just give up.
  • The Amiga was a cool bit of tech, but it's dead, Gateway killed it!

    Gateway picked up the pieces after the Amiga had already crumbled. Sometime in the early 90s, the spirit of the machine died, even before Commodore folded. At one time the Amiga was a hotbed for innovation. Remember games like Mind Walker? But after a point a destructive compulsion to outdo other machines (the PC, the Sega Genesis, the NES) took over, and the innovation was replaced with a "me too!" idealogy. Witness how much time has been spent showing that the Amiga can play a decent game of Doom and Quake. Before that, there was a race to show that the Amiga was better at Sonic-style platform games than the Genesis. Unfortunately the only results were to make the machine look even sadder than ever.
  • Well, this is certainly depressing. But in a way I suppose that all of us knew this was coming, deep in the back of our minds. Amiga will probably never die, but whether it will actually live again is another question altogether.

    Personally I've long since decided that the successor to the Amiga spirit is Be. In fact, I was originally hoping that the new Amiga would be BeOS based. Wouldn't a G4 Amiga machine running BeOS be nice? Oh well, it's a moot point now I suppose.
  • One transistor at a time!

    Seriously, maybe the free software community should consider drafting a new, open hardware standard as an alternative to the PC platform. The expertise is out there. The market is out there. It's just the PHBs who can't get their act together because they're too busy chasing the Sun buzzword bandwagon.

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