Why we must keep the dream alive

[Pyromania]

The Amiga is a system, so long as people believe in, use, continue upgrading that system and buying software Amiga will continue to grow. Even I feared that is was over and the Amiga was finally dead in 1998 when a German lawyer made it illegal for Amiga 4000T's to be manufactured. The 4000T is my favorite Amiga model and it was selling well, then it became a legal
crime for it to be even made [insert conspiracy theory here]. Gateway had their head covenantly in the sand and did nothing about it at the time(Gatesway?). But the Amiga prove that it is much more than just custom computer chips and NTSC timing. Products like UAE/WinUAE and
Amithlon came out and allowed you to run the Amiga OS on cheap PC hardware, Macs and even Unix machines. I have a version of UAE running on my SGI O2 and my Sharp Zaurus PDA, amazing. I don't subscribe to the model that one monopoly OS fits all. I know a developer named Aaron, he made an Amiga product called Fast Fuel. I respect him because he sticks so highly to his ideals he won't even use Windows at all. I don't have that luxury but I do still continue to develop Amiga versions of my software as well as the Video Toaster [2] Windows versions. I do pray for the day that I can put my copy of Windows XP out with the Thursday morning garbage though. I refuse to became a slave to Microsoft's twisted view of what a computer is, (planned
obsolescence, milking customers for as much money as possible, regular slaughtering of other software developers and companies). This is not what anyone wants the future of computers to be.

Amiga users come and users go, developers come and developers go but the Amiga continues regardless. I am sure if even one day I abandon all my Amiga development 3 or 4 younger, stronger and more talent developers will take my place. The Amiga is much more than you, me or countless other souls. Now that the Amiga OS is running everywhere and ubiquitous development can be done on almost any computer. I truly believe the dark times are behind us, Amiga Ones are shipping, MorphOS is shipping if your looking for an Amiga clone. UAE
runs the Amiga OS very fast on Mac/PC/Unix hardware, Amiga Anywhere is maturing and is available in CompUSA now, in the next year it will be integrated into the Amiga OS. Developers disappear but new ones take their place. We no longer have Migraph OCR but we have the much better fxScan.

http://www.iospirit.de/index.php?mod...cab916bf4d294\
4669edde8f47&dlccode=1&dls_lang=e&dlcon=5&dls_ivs=1&submode=scsh

Dpaint is no more but we have Photogenics 5, fxPaint 2.0, ImageFX 4.5
and much more.

http://www.iospirit.de/index.php?mod...ab916bf4d2944\
669edde8f47&dlccode=1&dls_lang=e&dlcon=5&dls_ivs=1&submode=scsh

http://www.idruna.com/

www.novadesign.com

Asimware is no more but we have the awesome BurnIt Pro which even
burns DVDs.

By by Scala, at least on the Amiga but we have the excellent
MediaPoint RTG and Hollywood.
Hollywood even loads and plays back Scala scripts in 24 bit, something
the Amiga version of Scala does not do.

http://www.airsoftsoftwair.com/

These are only a few examples, there are many more. The only missing link right now is the Amiga Video Toaster/Flyer sourcecode. Many Amiga owners are just now buying a used Amiga Toaster system for the first time. They could not afford the Toaster and Flyer when it was introduced but now the price point is much better. Many of them are also programmers and would do great justice to this legendary products code. Dan can go ahead and say its impossible to upgrade the Toasters sourecode but Amiga programmers have done impossible feats before and they will do it again. I remember when I first told a PC store owner about the Video Toaster in 1991. He did not believe me, he told me something like the Video Toaster would be mathmaticley impossible on personal computers like the Amiga, PC or Mac.

Even if you have never even seen an Amiga it has profoundly changed the computer industry, raised the bar so to speak. Look at the computers around you. They are all trying to be just like the Amiga. What was the big deal with the Amiga in 1985? Accelerated graphics chipsets, Multitasking, more colors, better sound, NTSC timing, command line with full color GUI, genlocking, video editing, 3D animation etc. What are the big buzzwords in computers today in 2003? Accelerated graphics chipsets, Multitasking, more colors, better sound, NTSC timing, command line with full color GUI, genlocking, video editing, 3D animation. Whatever you believe, be it Amiga ALIVE or DEAD I think anyone with common sense can see that the Amiga will continue regardless. Commodore died in 1994, it is now 2003. We must do our part to keep the Amiga Alive so that one day the computer industry can be a fair and ethical place. Without Amiga the computer industry has no soul. If you need a software solution try to find an Amiga solution first and buy that instead of a Windows soultion. If you value the joy the Amiga gave you when you first used it and want better times in the future buy Amiga Forever and any other package that you use and enjoy daily. Please keep the dream alive. Thank you for your time.

[jmmijo]

Pyro, I like your points, very nice.

I especially like the end as it sounds a lot like the old "Bartles & James" commercials, thanks for your support

[wakeupbomb]

That's a great post
Iv'e read it 3 times so far

Well done dude

[Twistin'Ghost]

Yep, that's good stuff!

And another point Pyro left out (that initially came from him in the first place) was when I told him why I had to use a PC - for audio production. I explained that there were no 16-bit+ tools on the Amiga that could replace the ones I use on the PC. Almost instantly, he gave me url's that proved me wrong. And I realized then that I very likely could actually walk away from the Windows platform and survive. It will mean having to start back at square one again, but I feel capable enough to exist without the dependency on the PC (I feel like I'm trying to get rid of a bad drug habit...)

I will put my money where my mouth is and be PC-free soon enough! Call me a health nut, if you will. Born again, more like.

[Pyromania]

Originally posted by Twistin'Ghost
Yep, that's good stuff!

And another point Pyro left out (that initially came from him in the first place) was when I told him why I had to use a PC - for audio production. I explained that there were no 16-bit+ tools on the Amiga that could replace the ones I use on the PC. Almost instantly, he gave me url's that proved me wrong. And I realized then that I very likely could actually walk away from the Windows platform and survive. It will mean having to start back at square one again, but I feel capable enough to exist without the dependency on the PC (I feel like I'm trying to get rid of a bad drug habit...)

I will put my money where my mouth is and be PC-free soon enough! Call me a health nut, if you will. Born again, more like.

The company Twist is talking about is Audiolabs. @ http://www.audiolabs.it/
The product is ProStation Audio and it is a damn good software solution for audio. I have heard they even have a deal with Genisi and bundle a light version with the latested version of MorphOS. This application also works very well under WinUAE and Amithlon. You can download a demo version for free @ the site if your interested.

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by Twistin'Ghost
Yep, that's good stuff!

And another point Pyro left out (that initially came from him in the first place) was when I told him why I had to use a PC - for audio production. I explained that there were no 16-bit+ tools on the Amiga that could replace the ones I use on the PC. Almost instantly, he gave me url's that proved me wrong. And I realized then that I very likely could actually walk away from the Windows platform and survive. It will mean having to start back at square one again, but I feel capable enough to exist without the dependency on the PC (I feel like I'm trying to get rid of a bad drug habit...)

I will put my money where my mouth is and be PC-free soon enough! Call me a health nut, if you will. Born again, more like.

Do you really hate the PC platform enough that you would give up a working and paid for setup to spend money on an Amiga system that wont get updated?

Hey, Im all for using what you have if it works. But when you get to the point that you give up what works and go backwards thats kinda crazy.

You can build your own PC's today and never give a dime of profit to the big pc makers. You can spend money on developers other then M$ (many of which are the same developers you supported on the amiga) for your apps and OS. You can even run an emulator on the PC to use your old amiga apps, and they will run faster then on the old hardware.

And as far as Pyromanias speach goes, every major computer maker has made contributions to the computer industry, some major and some minor. Each has borrowed from the other systems made during and before their time. Competition breeds changes.

It would be nice if more developers picked up the amiga system, but like any non-supported technology that has seen better days, the developers move on to other platforms.

personally if somebody developed a non x86 platform tomorrow that was as open as the PC platform, faster, cheaper I would jump to it as soon as it was viable.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
Do you really hate the PC platform enough that you would give up a working and paid for setup to spend money on an Amiga system that wont get updated?

Hey, Im all for using what you have if it works. But when you get to the point that you give up what works and go backwards thats kinda crazy.

1. Yes, I hate the PC pretty badly. A given, I suppose.

2. It's paid for, but working? Depends on your definition.

And whoever said I was going to a 680x0-based system? My loathe affair with the PC has me seeking an alternative system, not simply an Amiga system. But the fact is, the best years of my (computing) life were spent on the Amiga. Part of it was due to great software and great games, part of it was the scene and BBS surfing, but an even larger part of it was that the OS worked, did what it was supposed to do, and there were no tricks up its sleeve making me wonder what the hell it was doing most of the time. It didn't need to be fed hundreds of megs of RAM, then still grind away at a swap file every time an app was opened! Or an endless array of bufoonery I could detail here until I reached the character limit of this message.

Being free of all of the trappings of using a PC is anything but stepping backwards. I'd rather use three different OS's, if neccesary. But I'll still keep my PC, I reckon, since WinUAE is just too good to dismiss.

Originally posted by Unknown_K
You can build your own PC's today and never give a dime of profit to the big pc makers. You can spend money on developers other then M$ (many of which are the same developers you supported on the amiga) for your apps and OS. You can even run an emulator on the PC to use your old amiga apps, and they will run faster then on the old hardware.

I knew developers on the Amiga back in the day and when I talk to them now, they have no passion for their craft anymore. All they spew is dollar signs, corporate options, cellphone banter...typical IT posturing and snobbery. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's a bleak wasteland.

This is really not just about M$, even though my hatred of them and their software is infinite. I use quite a variety of PC's and various Windows versions at work (depending on what I am doing, I shift between machines on the job quite a bit...including the Mac). The main enjoyment I get from them is surfing web sites, which any capable computer can manage. I just find the PC platform to be a half-cocked operation across the board.

[Unknown_K]

Young developers did it for a hobby, once its a job and your main source of income perspectives change.

[Pyromania]

Unknown_K in my Keep the Dream Alive speech I never said you have run Amiga OS only, I use and mantain a network of 19 computers myself @ home with only 3 using a version of the Windows OS. Using WinUAE fits the bill even, since many Amiga developers today code and update their apps under WinUAE. GoldED AIX is one example. I certainly use Windows XP (Know thy enemy).

[Antiriad]

Lovely speech Pyro, but the dream died in 1994.

Sad, but true.

[Pyromania]

Originally posted by Antiriad
Lovely speech Pyro, but the dream died in 1994.

Sad, but true.

Then how come I am betatesting Amiga OS 4.0 and still buying new software and hardware for my Amiga?

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by Antiriad
Lovely speech Pyro, but the dream died in 1994.

Sad, but true.

Not neccessarily true unless you're saying that the death of CBM is the reason why

I actually was hoping that the rumor about big blue back then was coming true and they were indeed gonna purchase the remaining assets from CBM. I think they would've found a nice market for video/audio production machines

I actully think that Irving Gould and his cronies ran the company into the ground after Jack Tremiel left, they are more responsible for the demise of CBM then I think anybody else was. Basically just take the money and run, the precursor to Enron

Ok, off my soapbox now. As for the death knell of the Amiga, I guess it would be if there weren't so many forums and sites still devoted to this great machine. As long as there are active users out there it will never really die

[Pyromania]

Unfortanaly for us the computer industry is controlled by the masses/millions of users that would not know how to login into their ISP and browse the web without Internet Explorer. It is not that they only want to use IE, they just don’t know how to use anything else. These users can’t be bothered to learn much more about the computer than the few apps they need to use. When buying their machine they go with Windows because they don’t know there is anything else, M$ controls what OS gets installed on major brands even Sony, and restrictive M$ contracts stop any dual booting or including another operating system. But the most profound thing that none of these users may ever realize is that each night as they login to their PC, each morning that they use the computer at work they may never know the most scary thing about their machine is that;

THEY ARE A SLAVE!

The operating system that they use is from the same vendor as their Word Processing program, Spreadsheet program, ,e-mail program, web design program, photo editing program, and presentation program. And if they are epically unlucky and shop @ Best Buy their ISP is also from that very same vendor. Also that same vendor also wants to control their entertainment game system and their television, in fact they might already be watching MSNBC. You will never see a story on MSNBC or NBC for that matter that protrays M$ in a bad light. Microsoft also wants to control their PDA, their cell phone, and even their toilets.

http://www.web-user.co.uk/news/artic...3A761DBF3CC%7d

http://wireless.ziffdavis.com/articl...1059589,00.asp

One company should never have that much power and then try to grab even more. I hope that everyone @ EAB is smarter than this message that one company should control all of our IT needs. I know that M$ has spent billions of dollars trying to convince everyone their way is the only way but please people don’t be slaves and blinded from the truth. The truth that the computer industry does not need Microsoft for everything and would be a better off without their system of control. Learn this fact before it is too late. Some on EAB don't like it when I mention M$ in a bad light but wake up from your illusion people, M$ does not give two sh*ts about you, they don't need anymore of your money. You have given them enough already. And they want to control everything you use on your computer and they want to sell your private information to every Tom, Dick and Hairy that pays them for it.

Keep the Dream Alive

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by Pyromania
Unfortanaly for us the computer industry is controlled by the masses/millions of users that would not know how to login into their ISP and browse the web without Internet Explorer. It is not that they only want to use IE, they just don’t know how to use anything else. These users can’t be bothered to learn much more about the computer than the few apps they need to use. When buying their machine they go with Windows because they don’t know there is anything else, M$ controls what OS gets installed on major brands even Sony, and restrictive M$ contracts stop any dual booting or including another operating system. But the most profound thing that none of these users may ever realize is that each night as they login to their PC, each morning that they use the computer at work they may never know the most scary thing about their machine is that;

THEY ARE A SLAVE!

The operating system that they use is from the same vendor as their Word Processing program, Spreadsheet program, ,e-mail program, web design program, photo editing program, and presentation program. And if they are epically unlucky and shop @ Best Buy their ISP is also from that very same vendor. Also that same vendor also wants to control their entertainment game system and their television, in fact they might already be watching MSNBC. You will never see a story on MSNBC or NBC for that matter that protrays M$ in a bad light. Microsoft also wants to control their PDA, their cell phone, and even their toilets.

http://www.web-user.co.uk/news/artic...3A761DBF3CC%7d

http://wireless.ziffdavis.com/articl...1059589,00.asp

One company should never have that much power and then try to grab even more. I hope that everyone @ EAB is smarter than this message that one company should control all of our IT needs. I know that M$ has spent billions of dollars trying to convince everyone their way is the only way but please people don’t be slaves and blinded from the truth. The truth that the computer industry does not need Microsoft for everything and would be a better off without their system of control. Learn this fact before it is too late. Some on EAB don't like it when I mention M$ in a bad light but wake up from your illusion people, M$ does not give two sh*ts about you, they don't need anymore of your money. You have given them enough already. And they want to control everything you use on your computer and they want to sell your private information to every Tom, Dick and Hairy that pays them for it.

Keep the Dream Alive

The majority of users have a computer to play simple games, balance their checkbooks, write email, calculate loan payments, browse the web, instant messaging, search for recipes, in ohter words simple stuff. They also dont spend all their time at home on their computer let alone online. A computer is a tool, they are not slaves.

Why do you keep posting this crap. M$ does not control all of your IT needs, you do have choices in what machine/os you use.

I personally remember back before OS/2, Desqview, and Windows was out that each program had wierd sets of hotkeys to do functions, every program was different (you have cutouts for templates on your keyboard because of all the key combinations, like in wordperfect). Each program had to have drivers for your specific printer, and what you seen on the screen was not exactly how it looked printed. There was no multitasking, no cut and past, basically no standards for interfacing hardware to software. Each card needed jumpers to set. Things have changed quite a bit for the better. The reason for this standardisation was because 1 software maker and 1 hardware maker won the marketing/design war. The monopoly in chips and software is what caused system to be a commodity these days. The lowest comon denominator of users wants ease of use, familiar interface for each program, easy hardware setup, cheap pricing, and places to get support when things do go bad, and they have it.

The amiga's at the peak of their popularity were never as cheap to buy as pc's are today, never had the amount of hardware/software choices we have now, and were never sold in the quantity PC's are sold in today. The computer using public is much better off today then they were 20 or even 10 years ago. Computers are a tool, and tools should be a commodity. To be a commodity there needs to be standards and for better or worse M$/Intel made these standards.

[Pyromania]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
The majority of users have a computer to play simple games, balance their checkbooks (MS Money), write email (Outlook Express & Outlook 2000), calculate loan payments (MS Money), browse the web (Internet Explorer), instant messaging (MSN Messager)
Why do you keep posting this crap. M$ does not control all of your IT needs, you do have choices in what machine/os you use.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A SLAVE TO M$

I personally remember back before OS/2, Desqview, and Windows was out that each program had wierd sets of hotkeys to do functions, every program was different (you have cutouts for templates on your keyboard because of all the key combinations, like in wordperfect).

NOT ON AMIGA

Each program had to have drivers for your specific printer, and what you seen on the screen was not exactly how it looked printed. There was no multitasking, no cut and past, basically no standards for interfacing hardware to software. Each card needed jumpers to set.

NOT ON AMIGA

Computers are a tool, and tools should be a commodity. To be a commodity there needs to be standards and for better or worse M$/Intel made these standards.

They only made themselves the standard by controlling the distribution channel, butchering fellow software developers and evil ethics. They are the standard by spilling the blood of many developers and stealing their ideas. Fall in love with that if you must. Do you work for M$?

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by Pyromania
They only made themselves the standard by controlling the distribution channel, butchering fellow software devlopers and evil ethics. They are the standard by spilling the blood of many developers and stealing their ideas. Fall in love with that if you must. Do you work for M$?

First off you have some balls quoting what I said and adding your own comments to make it look like I typed it that way.

Second your amiga was a proprietary hardware platform with a proprietary os running on it BOTH controlled by 1 company. So if M$ is the devil controlling just the software side on pc's what does that make Commodore or Apple that has both ends sown up?

As far as developers goes how many companies has apple fucked by giving out their free iApps and making competing products to adobe and other companies or plain going out and buying audio hardware companies and discontinuing the PC version of their software? You think apple would be a saint if they owned the home computer market? I would say the way commodore ran their company we would be one fucking hell of alot worse off if they owned the market.

I guess your just to hung up on commodore (even though you develope on the satan machine like a good little money grubbing developer) to see that there is no difference in WHO ended up owning the market, because to get where we are todat SOMEBODY would have had to own it.

As far as developers go, fuck them if they dont make what I want at a price I am willing to pay for the platform I chose to use. The whole point of capitalism is servival of the fittest, if you cant play with the big boys then go home. There is nothing evil in business, there are legal rules you need to follow, if you get out of line you get penalized, nothing more nothing less.

[Pyromania]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
First off you have some balls quoting what I said and adding your own comments to make it look like I typed it that way.

Second your amiga was a proprietary hardware platform with a proprietary os running on it BOTH controlled by 1 company. So if M$ is the devil controlling just the software side on pc's what does that make Commodore or Apple that has both ends sown up?

As far as developers goes how many companies has apple fucked by giving out their free iApps and making competing products to adobe and other companies or plain going out and buying audio hardware companies and discontinuing the PC version of their software? You think apple would be a saint if they owned the home computer market? I would say the way commodore ran their company we would be one fucking hell of alot worse off if they owned the market.

I guess your just to hung up on commodore (even though you develope on the satan machine like a good little money grubbing developer) to see that there is no difference in WHO ended up owning the market, because to get where we are todat SOMEBODY would have had to own it.

Your comments needed updating with proper information. Commodore did not suck the blood out of their developers, they just aquired a computer that came with a kick ass OS. I did not like many things Commodore did though and complained about it back then, ask Twist. I worked for Commodore so I wanted them to do better than they did. M$ and Bill Gates are not the devil but they know where he lives and consult with him daily. Fuck Apple, I spent $800 on my Newton in 1996 and then Steve Jobs comes back and kills it dead. I hate Apple almost as much as M$. How nice that FreeBSD was available so Apple could use (steal) it for their new OS when Copland was behind schedual and a piece of sh*t. The Mac guys are so stupid they don't even know Steve Jobs killed their computer and OS and replaced them with Unix and a pretty GUI. The only reason that I develop for the satan machine is because I have always been a Newtek 3rd party developer and right now the Video Toaster [2] only runs under Windows. I am working to change that though.

[Unknown_K]

Anybody who bitches so much about M$ but uses their products and or makes a living off of developing for a platform that is tied to M$ should be carefull who they are calling a slave. Since your making money from satan your the slave, no matter how you rationalise it.

[Pyromania]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
Anybody who bitches so much about M$ but uses their products and or makes a living off of developing for a platform that is tied to M$ should be carefull who they are calling a slave. Since your making money from satan your the slave, no matter how you rationalise it.

Wrong, I still develop for Amiga, work hard to make the Amiga version of my products better and bring over products from Windows to the Amiga OS to help it grow. If I was a slave I would only develop for Windows and praise it the way you do. Who is the real slave here? Most of my machines @ home are SGI and Amiga based. Also I have a genius programmer working hard on a new product for me that might make this whole arguement Obsolete. It might even knock down M$ a notch or two. It won't be available for 3 or 4 years though. But since you work for M$ I should not be telling you about it.

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by Pyromania
Wrong, I still develop for Amiga, work hard to make the Amiga version of my products better and bring over products from Windows to the Amiga OS to help it grow. If I was a slave I would only develop for Windows and praise it the way you do. Who is the real slave here? Most of my machines @ home are SGI and Amiga based. Also I have a genius programmer working hard on a new product for me that might make this whole arguement Obsolete. It might even knock down M$ a notch or two. It won't be available for 3 or 4 years though. But since you work for M$ I should not be telling you about it.

Im not praising anything, just stating facts most people here can see the difference. But I am not also calling a platform and an os satan and then on the other hand making a product that you hope people will buy and propogate their dependence on Windows based hardware. Saying you are trying to get out of the M$ platform in the future is no different then a crack dealer saying he wants to be a pharmasist down the road. Its what you do now that counts, and the crack dealer at least has the sense to keep his mouth shut about what he is doing.



I dont develope for microsoft, you do.
I dont ask people to use M$, I am all for freedom of choice. You are asking people to use M$ because you have a product thats needs the OS to run.

Basically your a hipocrit, calling M$ the devil but supporting the devil at the same time. The fact that you lower yourself to developing on a platform you despise and make such a fuss about proves nobody should listen to a dam thing you say. At least the Linux fanatics dont have windows loaded on there machines at home.