Amiga - future development?

[LUKas007]

What do you think of Amiga future? Is there any? If there is, what market niche may Amiga try to take? I think it would be dificult to take ANY niche of the market now. Gaming market is ruled by consoles (PSX) and PC which position is rather strong...
It would be difficult to take proffesional market - need for proffesional software at reasonable prices.

[Twistin'Ghost]

There is still a market for people frustrated with the current state of disarray in computing. A happy medium between the problematic PC and the overly simplistic Mac. And the market that originally supported the Amiga: the artists, the creators, the free thinkers. The world is much less about free thinking these days, though. Independence is out of style, so the Amiga may just tank.

[Fred the Fop]

Mac is not overly simplistic, and its common knowledge that Macs are the choice of free thinkers and artists over PC s any day.
My opinion of Amia's future, fucknecks, is that OS 4 will do nicely. But I'd like to see it able to run on PC hardware, so that PC owners can utilize it over Windoze. The only qualm I have is that third party support will be scant, but if there is only a few apps for each type (Media, photo imaging, WP, etc) then it'll be just ok. Like us Mac people say: Who cares if 30,000 programs are on the Windoze platform if the top 5 are on the Mac? I think Amiga people will be able to say the same thing. Viva any alternative to Evil MicroSoft.
Bitchslap!!!

[jmmijo]

Well tell me Fred does the Option + Command + O + F key combo still work with the latest G4's and/or eMAC's?

Can you get into the system BIOS any other way or what?

And why has there never ever been a command line interface?

See, it's all GUI based, but the Amiga had the CLI and even all the Windows flavors have a command line as well

[Fred the Fop]

Um, ever heard of AppleScript, Jim??
And now that OS X is Unix based, you can go command line all you want. And who gives a flying fuck about command line when 99% of people could not care less to use it or know how to???
Its 2002, not 1982.

[jmmijo]

Well that's good about OS X then, didn't realize it had a CLI. As for giving a flip, I do and perhaps a few others but you're correct most users wouldn't at all since the CLI requires a deeper knowledge of command structure and switches

[Fred the Fop]

Exactly, Jim. And most people don't know it. And Applescript has been around for years, not only since OS X.

[Unknown_K]

The only market the new amiga will apeal to is the hobbyist, and if its cheap enough to older fanatic Amiga users.

Any system that hasnt had new hardware in years is basically dead in the market 9 why would anybody develope software for a system with 0 market presence?). That and the big players in the market today (Intel makers and apple) dont want any other competition to deal with and will keep any big developers from making anything for amiga even if they wanted to.

Hell most people dont even use the old amiga hardware anymore, but prefer to run an emulator on a windows box (I use the real a500).

[Djay]

Whatever Amiga Inc. try to do will not come close to how i remember the Amiga computer, infact, it could be true to say that there isn't an Amiga anymore... just a fantasic scene.

The problem is, as we all know, is that Microsoft and Intel dominate the computer market, Macs are cool and have some killer apps (which the PC just can't run as quick).. but for business and "Computer" gaming, PCs are the computer of choice (sad, i know).

There just isn't a space for another hardware platform nor, another operating system, so Amiga Inc, can't sell a computer or to a point an OS...

---
imagine the scene...

Amiga Inc. release a new super computer to an already saturated market, they have millions of pounds riding on a computer that isn't compatiable with PCs or Macs... is the computer industry ready to say "Bye Bye Microsoft, Intel and Apple". No their not.
---

... the only thing they can do is intergrate the hardware and software into other mediums...

Amiga for me will always be a Computer with a soul, but in todays Computer market, souls have been sold...

... todays computers aren't about Passion, they are about Money!

[Fred the Fop]

Well D Jay, if you think a computer has a "soul", then why is it that poor marketing and business decisions killed CBM and effectively left Amigans in the lurch?
Computers don't have "souls", mac. Music, good cuisine, dance, lovemaking, quality cinema, etc has "soul". NOT computers.

[Djay]

hehe..

true, they killed the Amiga... bastards!

of course computers have a Soul... have you never watched Red Dwarf?

Seriously, i doubt that there will be a big retro Playstation scene (well for the amount of units sold), because Sony will always push their latest product down our throats.

The Amiga still has a huge following, looking at some of the prices of hardware on Ebay you can tell that their are alot of people ready to handover some serious cash for a format that has no future (by that, i mean that any Amiga computer that is released in the future will have nothing to do with what we know as the Amiga).

The reason that PCs took over is that it was a structured business tool, not a games machine. Hardware for the PC was developed by lots of different companies, all working for a common goal.... to beat each others specifications.

Commodore made some huge mistakes... but as they said in their original ethos "We are making a computer everyone, not just for the Big Guys", they developed some excellent hardware, way above what the PC could produce at the time... which left them no money for marketing. *source - the history of video gaming.

[Fred the Fop]

You know, D Jay, If the dolts at CBM concentrated on pushing the Amiga as an office and business tool, which it easily was more capable of doing than PC's at the time, it may still be around today and Amigans would not have to pine over the AmigaOne, which is long in the making. Hopefully it'll br out soon.

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by jmmijo
Well tell me Fred does the Option + Command + O + F key combo still work with the latest G4's and/or eMAC's?

I'm VERY intrigued by that god damnit! What does it do??
*turns on Classic II*

Well, the previous G4s still had the debug button, dunno about the new ones... but in general it always bothered me too that the Mac has no commandline. That's just because I want to fiddle with the stuff lying behind the MacOS GUI.

Then again it proves not to be needed at all! At least I never needed a CLI with my Macs.

And when I want to screw up, I press the debug button and make my machine go ding-ding-ding-ding!....ding-ding-ding-dong?!...

Hmm... that does nothing on my Classic II.. is this a newer Mac feature? I tried it both on powerup and while the OS was running.

Or am I just dumb?

A lot of the Amiga fans, when forced to move to newer hardware, moved onto the Mac. They stuck with the Motorola architechture and at the same time were able to use the latest programs that they needed for work.

I would have done the same if I had the chance!

[Twistin'Ghost]

I just find the Mac to be cumbersome whenever I have to use the one here at work. Simple commands are a pain in the ass to figure out how to make happen. I had to insert an external disk (mini-disk from camera) in the drive to copy files over to the network. No command line to copy. No GUI interface for copying. I finally dug around enough to find a tool (was it Finder?) to search for DSCN, then when it found them, I had to figure a way to make a Window open with a directory listing of somewhere on the network, then clumsily drag the files over to it. Hardly as "friendly" as it's claimed to be.

A command line is neccesary, IMHO. Applescript hardly qualifies as a command line any more than that little MS-DOS window on the PeeCee.

I just don't find that I have much flexibility for customizing my system on a Mac the way I do on an Amiga (or even a PC, to a small degree).

[Amiga1992]

If you are used to CLIs, you're screwed in the Mac...

Nothing, IMO, beats the AmigaCLI. much better than the clis of the unix flavours out there (I tested many). I have never used a better OS... EVER.

Excels in both CLI and GUI sides.

[Fred the Fop]

Well, Akira, that being said, I agree. What limited knowledge I use in command line, Amiga's cli makes simple and elegant sense.

[gary]

CLI:

Sometimes CLI's are faster and easier to use than GUIs - usually when you know what command to use, the arguments, etc. I think most experienced programmers use CLIs far more than GUIs (which also are more resource hogging on most systems)
The AmigaDos CLI is good, but for scripting abilities I doubt that there is anything more powerful/flexible than the UNIX shell environments (although they're definately NOT user friendly).

Amiga in 1985:

Positives:
* Hardware
* Operating System
* Price

Negatives:
* Software support
* Hardware support
* Userbase

Sadly, not many people needed the Amigas hardware capabilities in 1985. They wanted a machine at home that did exactly what they did at work. Usually an IBM compatible

The Amiga was ahead in terms of its hardware capabilities and its operating system but had to start from scratch in terms of software support and a userbase. I think for a new computer today to stand a good chance at competing well against (or eventually overtaking?) PCs/Macs it would have to have groundbreaking hardware capabilities AND immediate software support including applications that are 100% compatible with the top apps today in popular fields (Networking / Word proc / Multimedia / Accounting / etc...). That would probably mean licencing the software from companies like Microsoft who would have no interest in a new platform.

...But...

Amiga in 2005 ?

If the hardware really offered more than exists now at a much lower price (along with a stable OS) it could still be a viable alternative to the PCs/Macs. But the hardware would have to be designed with a new usage in mind (like 'Multimedia' capabilities in 1985).

How about *Actual* 3D graphical displays?

Imagine a LCD/Plasma screen the width of a piece of paper where every non-used pixel was transparent. The imagine many layers of these directly behind each other. If any pixel could be controlled on any layer then you could create a real 3 dimensional image. With colours and pixel resolutions as good as they are now could this be the next direction to take to further improve graphics?

Haha. I can just imagine the confusion of some people trying to move the mouse pointer around in a 3d environment. Perhaps we will have to use the old Nintendo 'Power Gloves' to select Icons?



Anyway, don't say an alternative to the PC/Mac can't be done. What if the original Amiga team had thought like that and just made a Windows-like OS for 8086 PCs?

I would like to go into an electronics shop in the future and see a selection of different hardware platforms created with different ideas and styles like the 8-bit days.

[Unknown_K]

In the end the interface you like is the one your are used to. The problem is that during the early part of your life you learn things at an exponential rate and everything is easy to understand and work with. later in life its harder to learn things no matter how you try.

Example, if your born in the USA and move to france to live when your 8 yrs old you will end up having the same french accent as somebody born there. Try the same thing when your 40 and even if you learn french it will be with an english accent easy to spot.

I grew up with dos back when the xt was invented, using dos is easy for me and I understand it and how batch files work, prompts, etc. Somebody who grew up using the apple mac has no clue how a command prompt works so they might not feel comfortable using it in OSX on their new machines.

So even if somebody invented the easiest to use operating system some peaple will have problems with it because of their past computing experiances. I also think that is the same reason Amiga and mac fans hate the pc.. they just didnt grow up using one and dont use it enough to learn it (thats the reason I dont bother with linux)

[Fred the Fop]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
I also think that is the same reason Amiga and mac fans hate the pc.. they just didnt grow up using one and dont use it enough to learn it (thats the reason I dont bother with linux)

Nice points, but Un-Known, you assume that the reason us Mac/Amigans dislike the PC is the fact we did not grow up on comps. using MS DOS? Poorly arrived at assumption.
Why poor?
First, pure MS DOS is very stable, and fast. If GUI types like me (The vast majority of computer users) learned To use MS DOS we'd love it. But the fact is, Windows is GUI, and most of us never bother with command line. So we deal with the garbage from Redmond all the time. Once in a while we'll go into DOS for maintenence or some task. But 99 % of the time, we'll use the GUI. XP is an improvement over the DOS kernel Windows of old, and has some DOS implementation to get behind the screen, but it further takes us away from command line.
No, the reason I am not happy with Windows, and I speak only for me here, is the poor quality it is when the company that puts it out killed many good software houses. It is the biggest IT related company on earth, and their product still farts ass.
I expect more. I get less.

[Unknown_K]

Windows isnt that bad.

Alot of the companies that made software no longer exist because they could not inovate fast enough.

There is nothing that Microsoft ever released in 1.0 revision that was worth a shit. Netscape was THE internet browser, microsoft first few versions sucked. But netscape started to release buggy crap and microsoft finally made a decent product. Look at wordperfect, owned the world.. but people didnt want a DOS word processor anymore and WP took too long getting a windows version out.. so much for them.

Some companies do inovate, case in point quicken. Microsoft pretty much gave M$ money away and still could not get most users to switch from quicken. The reason windows won out is because it was the better all in one solution. I admit M$ plays unfair in keeping their monopoly, but they got to this point by being better then the competition for the most part.

There is NO os in the world that lets you run software from a decade ago on new computers and lets you use as much hardware as you can with windows on the intel x86 systems today. The price we pay for this is legacy code,some buggy/crappy drivers, and the occasional system crash.

Sooner or later a new hardware system will come out and the whole PC/OS race will start over again and somebody else will win. Once upon a time CP/M used to be the only game in town.. all things must come to an end, and M$ will fall just like rome did (just hope it doesnt take a 1,000 years).