OS News reported the recent news of AmigaOS running on Macs!

NOW I UNDERSTAND THE RENEWED INTEREST OF Amiga Inc. REGARDING AmigaOS!

I made IMHO some counts about Amiga and Mac users and some considerations of myself which I want to share with you and receive some comments and critics...

Here is a quote of my comment in OS News thread:

Quote:

There are at least 5 millions of PPC based Macintosh worldwide still functioning and up and running... If only 100.000, 200.000 or at least 250.000 persons would try to run AmigaOS on their PPC machine this will increase Amiga userbase enormously... Infacts there is a large part of Apple Macintosh users who were former Amiga users in the past. There is a large part of people who could buy AmigaOS just to see how it runs a different OS on their machines... There is a great number of users of PPC Macintoshes who want to keep functioning their hardware even if Apple could cease to produce MacOS for PPC machines... (all these three categories are potential wannabe users) Remember that hundreds of thousands former Amiga users switched to Mac just because Amiga hardware they own was too old for modern usage or just broken, and Macintoshes seem the platform which is closer to their old Amiga experience! Actually if you spot the traffic of the Amiga related sites worldwide, and make some counts, even counting new hardware sold in the past years, then there are at least: - 2000 users of AmigaONE/AOS 4.0 - 1500/2000 users of Pegasos/MorphOS (new ppc machines) plus - still 3000/5000 users of old Amiga classics models (who can use only AmigaOS upto version 3.9) - 300 users of Amiga Amithlon Emulator for X86, - 200/300 users of AROS project hobby OS for Intel machines (most of them are developers) - and virtually about 10.000 users of Amiga emulators such as WinUAE (but very best part of them use emulated Amiga only for games, so they are not interested in new machines with serious software! We can count only a third or a fourth of them -2500 users- interested in new Amiga portings)... While a functioning AmigaOS porting for PPC classic macintoshes will increase userbase by a factor 100 and upto (200.000, 250.000 new users)! This will ensure Amiga a very SIGNIFICATIVE userbase! (Amiga will became third platform after Windows and Linux... There will be then more Amigans than BEOS users. Actually it is BeOS the third platform) This will really mean millions of dollars of renevues... More users to buy Amiga programs! (Again a software market for Amiga) More and more developers who will return to develop for Amiga software market...! IMAGINE! New sites... New AmigaOS related newspapers... Software houses... Advertising renevues... Books that explain dummies how to use AmigaOS on Macs! No wonder Amiga Inc. wants back AmigaOS from Hyperion preventing the belgian firm to sell AmigaOS by themselves... With a new market and an improved userbase, then there will be enough money running to keep Amiga ALIVE! This will also justify the development of new Amiga Machines...!!! With all the new userbase there could be enough money for research and hardware development and the opportunity to realize new PPC machines OR EVEN X86 based new Amigas and AmigaOS for Intel Operating Sustem!!! (It is only a matter how much it could grew again the Amiga market... But perspectives are really interesting and promising!) This is why Amiga Inc. does not want just copyrights renevues... They want to control a market who could became a gold mine...

Please. Feel free to comment. I want to know other people positions about these perspectives of any possible new Amiga market!

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-May-2007 at 08:18 AM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

heh.. your numbers are probably a little high.

By the way, how is that interview with Acube going?

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

@Darth_X

It is not me making the interview... But Bitplane magazine people.

They just opned a thread on Ikir sector italian Amiga site three weeks ago asking us users for some intelligent questions, and perhaps some people made more interesting questions than mine.

I just asked a joke question...

I hope we will soon see the interview on Bitplane ofr a translation of it in english posted on Amiga sites!

And perhaps my numbers are just a quick calculation based on the best perspectives...

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

but with the court case, it's probably not the best move to reply to these questions...

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@Darth_X

There are a lot of people who are interested in Amiga, for example i receive a lot of PM from ItaliaMac only because i have "AmigaOne & OS4" in my signature... and i mean a lot of PM.

_________________
ikir

@elwood

Quote:

elwood wrote: @Raffaele but with the court case, it's probably not the best move to reply to these questions...

Questions are like:

"When will be presented Samantha on the market?" and things such these...

I just asked:

"Tell us about new pretty secretaries you employed to run ACube"...

You know that the first it is a quite normal question...

The second (mine question) obviously was only a piggy joke!


To be back on this thread seriously... What Do you think of my calculations?

Are too far positive?

But even if ONLY 25.000 mac users will buy an original package of AmigaOS (Instread of 250.000, that are my previsions), that is a TENTH of 250.000 mac users who could be interested in Amiga...

...then don't you agree that our userbase will grew up by 10X and upto 25.000 new users?

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

I haven't seen any evidence that Amiga Inc want to run OS4 on the Mac. All of their own hardware solutions weren't Mac-based, and Bill sounded more shocked than please by news that OS4 was running on the Mac Mini. They certainly wanted to get their hands on OS4 before they knew about it.

I suppose OS4 running on Macs might get a few extra people on board (although I suspect most people would continue running Mac OS most of the time) but it's obviously not a viable future path for OS4, and it could muddy the waters about what OS4 is to those outside, since they might assume it only runs on Macs, so Amiga Inc (if they get their hands on OS4) might choose to pass this by and continue with their plans to release their own hardware. Note that Bill seemed quite enthralled with the idea of release an A500/1200 style machine in the chat transcript with ACube, so I guess this is what they want to achieve.

@Raffaele

Quote:

There are at least 5 millions of PPC based Macintosh worldwide still functioning and up and running... - and virtually about 10.000 users of Amiga emulators such as WinUAE (but very best part of them use emulated Amiga only for games, so they are not interested in new machines with serious software! We can count only a third or a fourth of them -2500 users- interested in new Amiga portings)... While a functioning AmigaOS porting for PPC classic macintoshes will increase userbase by a factor 100 and upto (200.000, 250.000 new users)! This will ensure Amiga a very SIGNIFICATIVE userbase! (Amiga will became third platform after Windows and Linux... There will be then more Amigans than BEOS users.

Interesting figures. Any sources or is this purely speculation? Especially the 5 million PPC macs up and running? Amiga becoming the 3rd OS after Windows and Linux? More popular than MacOs? How did you come to these traffic based guesstimates?

You'd have had to spend a lot of time counting traffic to these websites, then coming up with some kind of formula to work out how much repeat traffic, how many people are genuinely interested or just surfing because they're plain bored. Can't see how you could come up with any figures even remotely accurate.

Sorry to seem cynical. 10 out of 10 for optimism but I highly doubt Amiga Inc are interested in the port to Macs given their "only licensed hardware" stance and the fact that there are so many different system variables to provide support for.

From the looks of the Amiga Inc announcements, IF they are genuine it looks like Amiga Inc are looking for closed base system specs. I'd imagine the new/power units to be marketed in a similar way to the A500 / A1000 or A1200 / A4000. Obviously dealers will be able to supply upgraded bundles but it'll be up to the dealers to provide support if they choose to go this way. I'd imagine they would be interested in supporting PS3 as well as the unit is also pretty closed spec and still in production.

I'd also find it difficult to imagine PPC Mac owners swithing from OSX or even OS9 to AmigaOS 4, without it having a decent web browser or office suite. Mind you, I wonder what this Amiga Development India (or whatever the name) company have been working on all this time?...

@Raffaele

None of this will ever happen without a new Amiga software base which just doesn't exist. Until then WinUAE fills any need these people would have had to be nostalgic and run the - very very very old - software base that does exist.

For any sort of an Amiga rebuild to happen it would require truck loads of investment to bring about new software.

_________________
Sam

@Pleng

Quote:

Pleng wrote: @Raffaele [Raffaele]There are at least 5 millions of PPC based Macintosh worldwide still functioning and up and running... Interesting figures. Any sources or is this purely speculation?

I just made a quick calculation in my mind, but yes I exstimed it at eyesight...

See for example here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/03/02/mac_install_base_estimated_at_22_million_pre_leopard.html

Quote:

The figure is up by 6 million users since the Mac maker unwrapped its last major revision to the Mac operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, back in June of 2005, analyst Keith Bachman told clients in research distributed earlier this week.

So if we calculate 22 - 6 before Mac OS tiger release there were almost 16 millions Macs worldwide, and the best part of it were PPC machines.

Then I wonder that my calculation is far down real number of existing PPC Macintosh.

Regarding new Amigas (AmigaONEs and Pegasos) the amount of machines sold was discussed many times on internet sites.

AmigaOS emulated from WINUAE.

During ten years I personally saw hundreds of requests on how to run Winuae on computer italian forums, and hundreds on Amiga relatd forums worldwide. I can't judge. But I think I spotted almost a thousand requests in all these years...

I can't say how it was the situation in other nations, but sure Amiga was famous in numerous nations, sure in more than 17 (France, Italy, USA, Canada, Great Britain, Czech, Finalnd, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Japan, Greece, Turkey, some Spain, some Slovakia, and some Russia, etc.) !

Amigas were more famous in Germany and Great Britain, so the number of nostalgic users using WinUAE should be more than I calculated.

If you count almost 500/700/1000 requests as in Italy on how to use WINUAE x 17 nations, (x1500 in GB and DE) you reach easily the number of 10000 users, and again I made an exsteem minus than real...

Quote:

Especially the 5 million PPC macs up and running? Amiga becoming the 3rd OS after Windows and Linux? More popular than MacOs? How did you come to these traffic based guesstimates?

Whoops I forgot MacOS... That is a true Freudian lapsus... I Apologize.

Then, sure AmigaOS users will reach ALMOST 4th place after Windows, Linux AND MacOS X.

(and to be precise I must say that I am not counting server OSes)

Windows should be installed on more than 700 millions computers worldwide

Linux should be installed onto 200/300 millions machines.

Mac OS should be installed on almost 22 upto 30 millions machines.

Quote:

I'd also find it difficult to imagine PPC Mac owners swithing from OSX or even OS9 to AmigaOS 4, without it having a decent web browser or office suite. Mind you, I wonder what this Amiga Development India (or whatever the name) company have been working on all this time?...

Why switching? In these modern times there are multiple boot capabilities and LiveCD to run AmigaOS from.

I don't care how much people will ADOPT AmigaOS as their preferred OS on Macintoshes.

I just only hope that in the vaste Macintosh market almost 250.000 will be so honest to purchase an ORIGINAL copy of AmigaOS package.

Then this will be enough for Amiga to reach a decent amount of money.

Euro 100 for any package x 250.000 users = 25.000.000 Euro = 36.600.000 US Dollars!

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-May-2007 at 12:18 PM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 28-May-2007 at 12:17 PM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

Why all these calculations? Whom do you want to convince? Did you forget about the _real_ reason why it still won't happen?

_________________
This signature is in the middle of a much needed facelift!

@Raffaele

Quote:

Whoops I forgot MacOS... That is a true Freudian lapsus... I Apologize (and to be precise I must say that I am not counting server OSes)

So you're saying that Amiga could be 4th out of... um 4 OSs. Unless I've missed something there really is no other commercially supported non server OS around?

Quote:

Why switching? In these modern times there are multiple boot capabilities and LiveCD to run AmigaOS from.

But why? Why would you PAY for an OS so that you can stick it on a partition that will never get booted into? People realistically only dual boot into an OS if that OS provides something they really can't get from their main OS.

Quote:

I don't care how much people will ADOPT AmigaOS as their preferred OS on Macintoshes. I just only hope that in the vaste Macintosh market almost 250.000 will be so honest to purchase an ORIGINAL copy of AmigaOS package.

why? what gratification will 250,000 unused OS installations give you? Certainly won't give you:

Quote:

More users to buy Amiga programs! (Again a software market for Amiga) More and more developers who will return to develop for Amiga software market...! IMAGINE! New sites... New AmigaOS related newspapers... Software houses... Advertising renevues... Books that explain dummies how to use AmigaOS on Macs!

@Pleng

I actually don't think he is that far off.

People will pay for it, just for novelty. Mac is not overrun with software choices and the idea of a new OS to play with will be intriguing for many Mac users.

@A3K

Even if these 250,000 users did buy it just for novelty (which I highly doubt), I doubt any more than 10% (as we seem to be in the mood for picking numbers from nowhere ) of those users would still have the OS still installed on the machine after a month of playing around, and of the people who do keep it installed, even fewer will regularly boot into the system (It took me 3 months to bother removing OpenSuSE from my system. Only ever booted it twice in the first week of owning, but I just didn't need the hard disk space).

All of this leads to me questioning if there'd really be (a significant amount of):

Quote:

More users to buy Amiga programs! (Again a software market for Amiga) More and more developers who will return to develop for Amiga software market...! IMAGINE! New sites... New AmigaOS related newspapers... Software houses... Advertising renevues... Books that explain dummies how to use AmigaOS on Macs!

I think the numbers are pretty right. Though, I wonder why Pegasos/MorphOS number is lower? How long have PegasosII been sold including PegasosI?

I think its way more than 1500/2000 Pegasos users out there. Remember that PegasosII production stopped last year. It lasted since 2004.

I wonder if bbrv ever would reveal how many Pegasos machines have been sold ever? That would be interesting.

_________________
Regards,
Michal, Amiga user since 1988
amitopia@gmail.com

@Raffaele

I serious doubt that much Mac User will install AmigaOs and even less will pay money for it. There is not a single application which MacOs doesnt provide. Just for retro fans intresting but there is MacUAE already.

@Raffaele

Quote:

Please. Feel free to comment. I want to know other people positions about these perspectives of any possible new Amiga market!

I don't think even Amiga Inc would be stupid enough to release an operating system for third-party, closed-source, out-of-production, obsolete, out-of-date hardware that's only available second hand from eBay.

I think this, you think this, we think this. they think this hehe..... and the story continues. This could be a good comedy :)

EDIT: Just ignore me :)

Last edited by Kicko on 28-May-2007 at 05:20 PM.

@smithy

Quote:

I don't think even Amiga Inc would be stupid enough to release an operating system for third-party, closed-source, out-of-production, obsolete, out-of-date hardware that's only available second hand from eBay

You're right... they'd prefer to release an operating system for third-party, closed-source not in production, obsolete, out-of-date hardware that's not available.

All of this is pure conjecture. It's doubtful that making OS4 available on PPC-based Macs would be anything more than a proof of concept. But, it would demonstrate portability to other platforms, open up the possibility of low-cost development/production machines and provide some free buzz.

Apart from nostalgia, I'm not convinced that *any* version of the OS offers much to the mainstream market at this stage. If the core was running on a Cell or x86 it may be more interesting.

@ne_one

Quote:

Apart from nostalgia, I'm not convinced that *any* version of the OS offers much to the mainstream market at this stage. If the core was running on a Cell or x86 it may be more interesting.

Believe me... Any dirty trick to enlarge userbase of Amiga it is welcome...

The more users, the more software to keep market alive...

And it is worth the effort to gain some developers taken from Apple world who could then help Amiga to realize new programs...

Remember that We are talking of Moana since 1 year ago.

So at Acube they realized AmigaOS loader for MacMini in less than six months and all the job it is done by only ONE SINGLE italian programmer with the help of Hyperion who suggested him how to peek and poke to realize the Moana Loader...

This is more than a proof of concept. It just proofs that protings of AmigaOS on any PPC architecture it is far easier than we could imagine!

Then you got the point.

From some exhibits shown by Amiga Inc. it seems it has been stated by Rogue (one of the Friedens) that they have the right ideas, and a concrete plan to port AmigaOS on Cell architecture!

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).