@hazydave

Interesting read!

Quote:

The hard work is moving off the 68K, not on to the PPC. If they had actually put together a real OS team, rather than farming it out with the PPC mandate to a video gaming company

If I remember correctly, the price of OS4 port (in point of view of Amiga.Inc) was 25000 USD - really sufficient budget for such task.

@hazydave

Quote:

It's simple: for any AmigaOS system that hopes to grow its market, it needs to offer something to new users. That's perhaps not something folks here think about, but that was how I looked at it at Commodore. And the fact you all are here indicates that yeah, my gang helped to build the Amiga beyond the A1000. We grew the market. And, far as I know, we never sold you on something you didn't get. The X1000, whether its AEON themselves or the fanboys, I don't know, but it's writing checks it can't possible cash.

Part of the issue here is the potential customer base. Look at the wars that erupt here every time x86 is mentioned. If they had the capital to hire enough developers to bring it to a state where it had a reasonable hope of selling to a wider market, then they could move to x86 without too much risk, but as it stands they risk alienating a significant chunk of their core market without gaining enough new users if they try to make a switch.

As for the X1000, for my part I see it as a halfway house - it's expensive, sure, but it also has a certain amount of geek appeal from both the PPC which a lot of us has a lot of irrational attachment to, to the XMOS stuff, and it's an AmigaOS4 system that's finally getting fast enough to reach a tipping point for some of us.

Not as much geek appeal as the Natami, but on the other hand the Natami (at least the first generation) isn't going to be fast enough to be usable for many of the thing the X1000 will be fast enough to be usable for. It's about getting an AmigaOS system that has *some* of the old appeal while being fast enough for me to spend more of my daily computing time on. I'm willing to pay a lot extra for that even if the Natami seems more fun.

If/when M68k compatible FPGA Amiga clones get fast enough to be able to offer a fast web browsing experience and live video etc., I'd jump on it (that's pretty much the performance target I'd need to reach to be able to use a system "full time") - I'd love for these FPGA systems to be the future of AmigaOS (or AROS) compatible machines. But we're a few years away from them being viable contenders.

AROS on ARM might be another cheap-ish solution, but I do have an irrational fondness for M68k asm...

_________________
Wiki for new/returning Amiga users - Projects: ACE basic compiler / FrexxEd / Git

@hazydave

Quote:

Possibly the most annoyance of all I had with the Amiga, Inc. of the 2000's was the fact they were do frackin' religious about PowerPC, rather than getting serious about CPU-independent AmigaOS.

The most annoyance I had was that the classic Amiga could multitask, whilst management could not.
Bolton Peck's quote from Bill that "classic is dead" just showed there was either no desire and/or ability to make money on what was still a viable market, whilst simultaneously preparing for the future.
Thank goodness they didn't listen to the PDC or they could be in the dreadful position of RIM/Blackberry now. Heh.

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*