I am constantly amazed by the people doing the do behind the scenes.My only contribution is to use my A1 and OS4. Occassionally I buy a lottery ticket and think if I win at least a million goes to Amiga endeavors. Sorry but that is all I can think to do. I guess my favourite surprise for guests switching my A1 on and off a couple of times with no shut down contributes. My wife worries I will give the IT guys coronaries so I let them sit down first.
My reaction to this honest letter is disheartening, but it is a reality that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I was content with my A3000 and saw myself struggling forward for at least a few more years, but this present machine in its present state is a pure joy to work with. Thanks for having the courage to continue.
If you take this to another example of dogged determination, you will see that it is not the first time that the statis quo was upset by smaller groups of individuals. Sir Frank Whittle's development of the jet engine is one example. From the little I know he was a WWI fighter ace then top test pilot who kept advancing his design for more than ten years of indifference and ridicule. It was not till English spies reported that the Germans were working on a design that the higher-ups called on Whittle to move ahead. I view his courage and vision as similar to all the behind the scenes people who are able to put their money where there mouth is. Thank God for passion!
All the Best,
John Paul

Just a few words on monopoly (not the game). I admit I thought also that Eyetech was not letting others into the market because they want to be the only ones. But is that really the case? I don't think so. I think we are pointing fingers at Eyetech while they are not to blame for this. I changed my mind on this fact about monopoly.

Coder

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The Bucket Diary Blog
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Thanks Alan. If I was going to complain, it would be that you never told us this sooner.

Now that the stark reality of the survival of the Amiga has been spelt out for us, I think it's REALLY time we started behaving more like a community and less like an old wives club with all the bitching.

A general call to all those involved in Amiga's future...

Keep us updated! Even if it's bad news. I only found out by chance that I can buy a working version of the OS to run on a working version of the hardware. How the hell can anyone who isn't prepared to dive into the forum threads find this out?

I've been telling my friends who are/were interested in buying Amigas "It will be out soon". This has got to stop. I'm now telling people to buy Mac's because the wait is so long and now I find out I could have been telling them the Amiga works! Today!!

If we can raise funds to upgrade the server for this site, then how about raising the funds to get some publicity NOW in the Amiga market. Tell people they can buy Amigas TODAY!

Thanks Alan. I would just like to say I am very happy with my AmigaOne-XE, and appreciate the amount of time, money and effort you (and Hyperion, from the OS side of things) have put into making it happen.

Chris

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"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

@ Wiffy
Quote:

I get your point, and it doesnt disagree with mine at all. Alan doesn't think there ever will be enough demand for sole funding, either he has to be proven wrong, or the community accepts it.

How do you prove him wrong? How do you increase demand for a product, when the producer of this product doesn't seem confident or even interested in making such a demand increase?

Their only hope is to sell AmigaONE-alike boards in some kind of embedded market, with a modified/hidden AOS4 on top. If they succeed at that, then they might decide to throw some more money at the "Amiga Enthusiast" market... but why would they do it? There's no demand, he says, and he's not confident there will ever be.

Basically he's saying that unless some kind of miracles happen - like 50,000 people suddendly getting interested in AONE/AOS4, the desktop market is dead. At least that's how I understand it.

-- EDIT --

Mind you, I'm not cursing AOS4/AONE, if this discussion were about MOS/PEG I'd say exactly the same things.

Last edited by falemagn on 06-Jun-2005 at 01:43 PM.

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“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

Basically, it's a chicken and egg situation.

There is a demand for Amigaone boards
but there is no money to produce them

how is this problem solved???

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No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.

@Wiffy
Quote:

Prepayment schemes are not trusted by members of the Amiga community in any way these days so it probably wouldn't fly.

Yes, the only way it possibly could take off these days, would propably be a prepayment that comes with a bank-guarantee.
That would be 100% safe for the customer.

(With bank-guarantee I refer to a guarantee from a bank, that secures the money in case of bankrupcy, I think the finances of a company needs to be in healthy order, for a bank to agree to give such guarantees for a company).

Last edited by tomazkid on 06-Jun-2005 at 01:50 PM.

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Site admins are people too..pooff!

Perhaps a holding fund ??

i.e. everyone pays into some sort of trustee fund, held independentley, then when the money is there, the money is released to the dealers, who in turn pass the cash onto Eyetech

I think this could be done.

Obviously each person would have to state which dealer they would like to purchase from and I suppose each dealer would have to have something like paypal or similar for it all to work.

It's an idea anyhow

Heck, Amigaworld could host the famous barometer target graphic, so that we can all keep an eye on it.

It's trying to find someone to run it though.

Mikey C

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No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.

@ Alan
Quote:

The bottom line is that we got very low volume, new (and therefore defacto not mass tested) PPC hardware into peoples hands when nobody else would do anything. We did that on the basis that we would keep the costs as low as possible for those early adopters who were prepared to share some of the risk. The alternative would have been to price the boards to cover that risk (in consumer terms) making the boards at least three times as expensive to end users. (And prices must be based on manufacturing costs for these small volumes, and not the sales prices of bare, mass-produced PC boards). More realistically this would almost certainly have represented a level of risk too far, with the result that there would have been no AmigaOnes and no OS4. After all anyone could have bought essentially the same product (without UBoot or OS4, but with full support) direct from from MAI Logic for $3900.

I would so much like to avoid sarcasm here, however I can't help but smiling with a puzzled expression at that text. I mean, hey, how could you not notice that a competitor of yours was producing, promoting, selling, repairing, substituting equivalent boards with an equivalent OS on top, with a price half as the one you were making, at the same time you were doing all that you say above?

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford

@ falemagn

Quote:

he openly admitted to be emotional about the whole affair

I never said he wasn't being emotional about it all just not 'that' emotional about it.

I suppose it's up to him in the end but it depends what the agreement covers - if it's just the brand name yada yada...

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Sam

He refers to just that in the text of the Q+A, the fact that the previous attempt at making a deal between Amiga Inc and the other provider had fallen through.

The SE was roughly the same price as the Peg 1, which is what the early adopter board was.
The rotting emptied corpses of two larger companies did not have to pay to subsidise it. Which kind of answers the point really.

Hopefully the non arse about tit method of finding a lower risk larger capacity market before committing any more incredibly large amounts of money will prevail at Eyetech. It is common sense.

In the meantime, in answer to your question about how to prove it. Well, aside from getting the applications developed on the platform, slowly but surely increasing the number of users on the platform and reaching that critical mass with what we have or cross-subsidied boards I don't know, what ideas do you have?

Frankly, I don't think it matters in the slightest if the boards are subsidied elsewhere, thats not really an issue - I think the times of producing a board specifically for the Amiga Enthusiast market went in 1998. Alan always did talk about needing to make a break in other markets to make this project work to the extent of developing it further.

IF it is important to people that an Amiga Enthusiast market that it has its own exclusive boards or boards developed FOR it THEN we need to achieve that critical mass and prove to outside investors that it is a market they can invest in. ELSE does not matter, we can just carry off leeching off wares designed for other markets that just happen to work with AmigaOS4.

Not sure what the big deal is on that point.

So no, the market isn't dead, its merely resting.

@Alan
Yup! I'm also very happy with my XE. Please bring us the XC

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ikir

@Theo
Quote:

What's "md"? (Sorry for my ignorance)

I'm guessing here, but 'Mystery Device'?

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@falemagn

Quote:

How do you prove him wrong? How do you increase demand for a product, when the producer of this product doesn't seem confident or even interested in making such a demand increase?

It seems unlikely. I cannot see where future hardware is going to come from as it sounds as if interest has all but dried up from Eyetech and that is with good reason and fair enough.

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Sam

@ikir

Quote:

Please bring us the XC

It would be good but he states that it isn't going to happen:

Quote:

No new board designs will be made

...and seeing as though Eyetech have been looking for a break in another market for a good many years now and have made no apparent progress I wouldn't sensibly believe that it will ever appear. The way of the BoXeR?

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Sam

Yeah that's what I reckon

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falemagn asked:
Quote:

I mean, hey, how could you not notice that a competitor of yours was producing, promoting, selling, repairing, substituting equivalent boards with an equivalent OS on top, with a price half as the one you were making, at the same time you were doing all that you say above?

Well, the fact remains that THAT competitor was taking a substancial LOSS on each board sold.
To the extent that they had to strip funds from one of their subsidiaries and ended up killing that subsidiary as a result . . . . that way of doing business can not be sustained for long!

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-vortexau, who's A1 XE-G4 remains at half-RAM !
A2000HD (from 1991) 060 64Mb PicassoII with OS3.5 . . . still working.

"Both the µA1-I and A1-XC have been designed and the µA1-I has been prototyped. The final specification for both boards (and other designs/variations) will inevitably be modified before they go into production, if and when this happens. Boards will only go into production when we have volume orders for them from industry."

"No new board designs will be made"

Its already been designed, therefore that doesn't apply.

Regards

Dave.

@ falemagn

The big difference is that bplan designed the board themselves and produce the boards themselves @ DCE.

Sad for Alan, but I don't think there is a good chance to challange new markets.

- not nuch cash to do marketing
- no strong partners
- doubious Articia

Sorry, but the train has left the station already.
But there is still the Pegasos, Alan holds a license, Genesi provides relativlely cheap boards. Alan could sell (maybe usb dongled) Pegasosboards as A1s if he wants to, he just can purchase Pegasi like everyone else. There is no ressentiment against him, but also no extra bonus. Only a fair treatment as a customer.

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My programs: via.bckrs.de
MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

Quote:

he SE was roughly the same price as the Peg 1, which is what the early adopter board was. The rotting emptied corpses of two larger companies did not have to pay to subsidise it. Which kind of answers the point really.

I recall the PEG being roughly half the price of the A1, or at least 3/4 of it. Then, as far as we all know, the boards weren't subsidized: you're making quite a big allegation there, an allegation that has been denied many times in the past by the party directly involved.

_________________
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary
system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~~ Henry Ford