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               A M I G A      | 061231 |      U P D A T E
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  "SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW"                                   (Eject +1)
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        AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc.      
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        N O   M O R E   " W H E N   I T ' S   D O N E "   ! !  

    U P D A T E D   I B R O W S E   T O   U S E   W I T H   4 . 0

     A N D   D I R O P U S   S A M E   D A Y   A S   O S   4 . 0

 I R O N Y ?   -   A M I G A   B I R T H   I S   N E W S   A G A I N

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S P E C I A L   E D I T I O N ! 

Editor's Thoughts and Introduction:
 Well, Merry Christmas indeed! For those Amiga users who celebrate the 
holiday, this has to be one to remember! Hyperion has released the 
last update to 4.0 to Amiga Community, and did so on Christmas Eve. 
Interestingly, they did not use the words "production release", so 
some confusion resulted. However, as it's available for purchase, 
apparently to anyone who wishes to buy it and who owns an Amiga One, a 
production release is what it amounts to. Finally, it's done and 
generally available. Per the promise made in the last regular issue of 
"Amiga Update", we've put together a short special issue to celebrate 
this very important milestone.
 As if that weren't enough, also on Christmas Eve the I-Browse team 
announced the release of the long awaited update to what is certainly 
one of the most, if not the most, important pieces of software for the 
Amiga currently. All in all, a very nice set of Christmas gifts for 
the community.
 Lest you think we've gone all Pollyanna on you, we are well aware 
there are issues still to be resolved. Chief among them is the lack of 
hardware on which to run the latest OS. According to Hyperion, there 
should be new hardware available early in '07. No details, and we will 
have to wait and see what it all means, but at least it sounds good.
 There there's the matter of Java. You can't have a truly modern 
computer that doesn't have Java available for it. Given the costs 
associated with adding Java to any computer's environment, it's not 
surprising there's none available for the Amiga. I don't see any 
immediate resolution of this one. We hope there's something down the 
road that will help with this functional gap.
 Finally, can anyone else buy OS 4.0? The release states only that 
it's available for registered Amiga One owners. That's not exactly a 
release to the world. However, I sense that's just the way it is 
today. After all, why reassure people there will be new hardware 
coming if the intent is to limit 4.0 to current Amiga One owners? 
Doesn't make sense and I doubt that's the plan.
 OK, I have to add one other thought. I wonder if Amiga will ever 
realize that software companies sell software to the market that 
exists. That means "X86" machines. Maybe they don't know those 
computers aren't even all Intel any longer? It remains my opinion that 
if the Amiga is to have any long term future, even as a niche 
computer, it needs to get in on the now developing market of 
alternatives to MicroSoft. The only way to do that is to run on the 
commodity hardware that's out there. Will Amiga miss yet another 
opportunity to actually grow the OS side of the business and even make 
some money from it? Well, we all know Amiga's track record but we can 
hope.
 Hint to Amiga: check out the processors powering the latest Sun 
workstations.
 While putting together this special issue we spotted a couple of 
other stories that just had to be included. The one back in November 
about the re-discovery of work by Andy Warhol is fascinating in its 
timing. Just as the rebirth of the OS is completed, we are reminded of 
the significance of the Amiga's original release. The lunacy of the 
those working with the newly re-discovered work using a Mac to put it 
back together must have our readers shaking their heads in amazement, 
but that doesn't detract from the rest of the story.
 And we had to include the story on the OS 4.0-only version of the 
most popular file manager ever for the Amiga. Interestingly, it also 
was released on Christmas Eve. Could there have been a Christmas 
Conspiracy at work?
 In case there are any doubts, this will definitely be the last 
edition of "Amiga Update" but what a way to end. At the beginning, we 
hope, of a new era for Amiga. It's up to someone else to chronicle it 
but we'll be here enjoying it with you. Thanks to all the readers, 
contributors and critics we've had over the years. Here's hoping you 
have an enjoyable Amiga New Year, and many more to come.

 Brad Webb,
 Editor
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        N O   M O R E   " W H E N   I T ' S   D O N E "   ! ! 

Leuven, Belgium, 24 December 2006.

Hyperion Entertainment is very pleased to announce the immediate 
availability (for registered AmigaOne customers) of Amiga OS 4.0, 
The Final Update.

Originally released in May of 2004, Amiga OS 4.0 (www.amigaos4.com) is 
the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the 
multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business 
Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of 
compatibility.

Amiga OS 4.0, The Final Update is the culmination of 5 years of 
development and takes the form of a stand-alone ISO image which 
contains a full installation of all Amiga OS 4.0 components.

A list of new features can be found below.

Availability of PowerPC hardware suitable for operation with Amiga OS 
4.0 will be announced by third parties early 2007.

The Hyperion Entertainment management would like to take this 
opportunity to wish all our customers and supporters a pleasant 
holiday season!

Amiga OS 4.0 (C) 2001-2006 Hyperion Entertainment VOF, developed under 
license from Amiga, Inc. ?Amiga? is a registered trademark of Amiga, 
Inc.


Hyperion comment from Amiga World (www.amigaworld.net):

"Final Update" means that the next update released for OS 4 will be OS 
4.01.

FWIW, OS 4 was released in May 2004, and has been updated ever since. 
This is the final update. Everything from now on will go into 4.01 
(the first patch).


This is a non-exhaustive list of the new features of AmigaOS 4.0 The 
Final Update since Update #4:

    * Exec
          o New memory system
                + Low Fragmentation, even with long uptimes
                + Lots of speedups (for example, memory pools are 10 
                  to 20 times faster than before)
                + Named memory 
          o Now uses the MMU to write-protect the .rodata sections of 
            ELF binaries 

    * 680x0 emulators
          o Improved compatibility
          o JIT emulator is between 10 to 50% faster 

    * DOS
          o 64 bit support for file sizes.
          o New directory scanning and object examination API 

    * Intuition
          o Support for legacy programs requiring a planar screen: 
            normal, HAM6 and HAM8 planar screens are promoted to RTG
          o Customizable truecolor mouse pointer (in hardware sprite 
            mode on Radeon boards, and in software sprite mode on all 
            boards)
          o Navigation of oversized screens via [Left Amiga] + numeric 
            pad 

    * Workbench
          o Support for native 32 bit icons with normal and selected 
            image
          o Support for loader/saver modules for third-party icon 
            formats
          o Customizable highlight effect for selected single-image 
            icons
          o Customizable "left out", "no drop" and "disabled" icon 
            symbols
          o Removed the remaining 30 character filename length limits 

    * Storage controllers support
          o New driver for ITE IT8212 IDE controller
          o New driver for SCSI 53C8xx-based controllers
          o Support for IDE ct-flasher hardware added as contribution 

    * General
          o Support for alpha channel in IFF ILBM for easy loading, 
            saving, and clipboard copy/paste of truecolor data
          o No more black background in MultiView when displaying 
            truecolor pictures with an alpha channel
          o MultiView allows the Workbench screen to be closed and 
            reopened
          o Smoother appearance for colorwheel.gadget
          o Customizable images for requester.class requesters
          o Many parts of OS4 now support the mouse wheel 

    * ramdrive.device
          o The classic RAD: doesnt survive a soft reboot anymore
          o The new RESRAD: survives a soft reboot again
          o The new BOOTRAD: offers booting from a disk image which 
            survives a soft reboot. 

    * console.device
          o Changing the system default keymap now immediately affects 
            all console windows which dont use a private keymap. 

    * printer drivers
          o All printer drivers except Printers:File are PPC native
          o The PostScript printer driver now supports printing 
            pictures in greyscale, B&W and landscape modes. It now 
            uses the current system default charset for text printing 
            to ISO-8859-1 before. 

    * Printer preferences editor
          o Now PPC native, some new features 

    * a1floppy.device
          o New driver for the AmigaOne which has a floppy disk port.
          o Supports booting from floppy disk.
          o Allows limited exchange with Classic Amigas. 

    * ft2.library
          o Now supports algorithmic font emboldening. 

    * Fonts
          o The default fonts are now the DejaVu fonts which support 
            more different character sets than the Bitstream Vera 
            fonts. 

    * USB
          o USB mice and keyboard can now be used to access and 
            navigate EarlyStartup
          o Keybord drivers respects users keyboard key repeat delay 
            and speed
          o Keyboard drivers can now reset into UBoot 

    * Boot menu
          o Early boot menu can be used with the only a keyboard.
          o Adjusts its GUI to the screen height which looks better on 
            A1 

    * Picasso96 and drivers
          o Radeon Overlay (PIP) support
          o Extended P96 PIP API (double/triple-buffering possibility 
            allowing perfectly smooth animation) 

    * AmiGS
          o Localized
          o Improved printing preferences (page selection, double 
            sided printing, collation) 

    * AmiPDF
          o Localized
          o Improved printing preferences (page selection, double 
            sided printing, collation)
          o Additional character set support for bookmarks and text 
            copying
          o More search options 

    * Ghostscript
          o Updated to the latest version (8.54) 

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    U P D A T E D   I B R O W S E   T O   U S E   W I T H   4 . 0  

LUND, Sweden, 22nd December 2006 - Stefan Burström and the IBrowse 
Team are pleased to announce the immediate release of the much 
anticipated update to IBrowse 2.3.

IBrowse 2.4 brings web browsing on AmigaOS to a new level - below is a 
very brief summary of the changes since version 2.3:

    * New integrated Search Bar, allowing you to easily perform 
      searches of your favourite sites. Search engines can be added 
      manually or automatically via the Mycroft project site


    * The Status Bar has been overhauled to optionally provide the 
      status of IBrowse graphically. Due to requiring less space than 
      text, this has allowed us to show additional statuses such as 
      when Javascript is being processed


    * Plugin API system for embedded objects based on the v4 NPAPI 
      (Netscape Plugin API) to allow for easier porting of NS 
      compatible plugins, this is used to allow IBrowse to display 
      embedded objects (such as flash animations) within the browser 
      when a suitable plugin is available.


    * Support for AmiSSLv3 has been added to IBrowse 2.4, allowing the 
      use of the most up to date SSL implementation available for 
      AmigaOS.


    * Context sensitive mouse pointers have been added, providing 
      different mouse pointers in different areas of IBrowse.


    * Background tab loading has finally been added to the Browser 
      Tabs. Links can be opened in new browsers which remain inactive, 
      allowing you to continue browsing the original page 
      uninterrupted.


    * The spoofing engine has been totally re-written for 2.4, and 
      provides a range of pre-defined spoofing options.


    * The JavaScript engine has been improved yet further providing 
      support for more event handlers, and improved DOM support, along 
      with some significant speed increases in certain areas. It now 
      supports the complete JavaScript 1.6 extension, as found in 
      Firefox 2.0, along with the majority of JavaScript 1.5 and the 
      revision 3 of the ECMAScript (ECMA-262) specification.


    * HTTP compressed content support has been added, which includes 
      both gzip and deflate algorithms.


    * On websites which ask for a username and password in a HTML 
      based form, IBrowse can now (optionally) save these details for 
      future visits.


    * Web Advert Control Language (WACL) is a feature of IBrowse 
      based on a proposal by Stefan Stuntz for a user configurable, 
      flexible scripting language to control the display of adverts on 
      webpages.


    * Improved general stability and memory leaks plugged.


    * Hundreds of other minor and major bug fixes + improvements, and 
      increased tolerance of broken sites for better compatibility.


All these improvements greatly improve the browsing experience, and 
allow IBrowse to offer compatibility with many more websites than 
before.

IBrowse 2.4 is available from IOSPIRIT - to purchase, please visit 
http://amiga.iospirit.de/ (registered users of IBrowse 2.x can upgrade 
for free, and there is a special upgrade price available to registered 
IBrowse 1.x users).

For further information, news and product support, please visit 
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/.
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     A N D   D I R O P U S   S A M E   D A Y   A S   O S   4 . 0 

Uddevalla - 24th December 2006

Version 4.18 of DirectoryOpus, the legendary filemanager for Amiga, is 
released. This version is for Amiga OS4 only (but does not need the 
final version though ). There has been lots of fixes and improvements 
in this version, see directory History/ inside the archive for most of 
the changes. Many thanks to the Opus4 ML for bugreports and support in 
general.

This release is available on Aminet: DirectoryOpus 4.18

Shortt:         The legendary filemanager
Author:         Joachim Birging + more
Uploader:       jocke birging gmail com
Type:           biz/dopus
Version:        4.18
Architecture:   ppc-amigaos >= 4.0.0
Date:           2006-12-24
Download:       http://aminet.net/biz/dopus/DirectoryOpus418.lha - 
                {But see below before downloading! Brad}

This is the Amiga OS4 port of DirectoryOpus 4, released under the GNU 
GPL. Currently developed by Joachim Birging. See README.txt inside 
archive for complete license.

See directory History/ inside this archive for what has been done in 
the OS4 port. Also the guide, Docs/DOpus4 Manual, has changed to 
reflect these changes.

Thanks to the Opus4 ML for their support and bugreports, and a special 
thanks to Christoph Gutjahr for the manual. To join the ML see the 
guide.

29 December, 2006

4.18.1
 
I've decided to release a quick fix for the "Extract" command crash. 
Apparently no-one with OS4 beta ever tested this command. Nothing else 
is fixed in this release. Exe only available here:

http://www.zerohero.se/DirOpus-Exe.lha

Happy Holidays,
Joachim Birging
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 I R O N Y ?   -   A M I G A   B I R T H   I S   N E W S   A G A I N 

PONTIAC, MI. 9 November, 2006- In what many have dubbed the world's 
first multi-media presentation on July 23rd 1985 at the Lincoln Center 
in New York, the maverick art legend Andy Warhol stood on stage using 
a new computer to paint a portrait of pop star Debbie Harry in his own 
unique style. That night the world was introduced to something 
entirely new in computing: the Amiga. Prior to this computers were 
aimed at a relatively limited audience. The message was clear: for the 
first time, an affordable computer was powerful and flexible enough to 
be a true creative tool, and user friendly enough to be used by 
artists, not just technologists.

Andy Warhol was just the first of many creative people to find that 
the Amiga offered entirely new possibilities and new ways of working. 
With powerful audio and video capabilities as well as the best 
graphical display of the era, Amigas rapidly found a place in the 
hearts and studios of many artists, filmmakers and musicians, as well 
into the homes of millions of ordinary families. Amigas were used by 
Disney and Spielberg, in Babylon 5 and Star Trek. They were found in 
television studios around the world, used by Arthur C. Clarke to 
create images of Mars, and by NASA to track satellites. They made the 
basis for many of the first Virtual Reality systems and provided 
interactive displays in countless museums. They've been used to 
control laser displays, run theme park rides, and operate stage 
lighting systems in the West End and on Broadway.

In the following months after its launch, Warhol acquired a battery of 
Amigas and experimented using these computers with the same enthusiasm 
as any medium he ever approached.

Until its 2001 discovery, what had only been hinted at and rumored is 
that Warhol had actually created a short digital film on one such 
computer, probably the first such digital creation by any important 
artist. Titled YOU ARE THE ONE, the digital stills were discovered on 
a floppy disk among thousands in Warhol?s estate. Long believed lost, 
this short masterpiece (20 painted frames) was reconstructed by Arnie 
Friedhoff and his team at ITN on a retro-fitted Mac G5 and reunited 
with what is believed to be its original soundtrack (also discovered 
on another floppy disk marked in Warhol?s familiar scrawl ?soundtracks 
for imaginary movies, i.e., you are the one?.

Now, after five years of painstaking archival reconstruction, YOU ARE 
THE ONE is being debuted for the first time anywhere at the Museum of 
New Art (MONA).

However, due to threatened legal action tied to estate disputes and to 
its pending seizure, the museum will only be allowed a one day 
screening of the film.

?We are so excited at this once in a lifetime opportunity," remarked 
Mr. Friedhoff, then added sadly: ?Yet after this single viewing, I?m 
afraid the work will be lost again for at least another generation.?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Amiga Update on the net:
 All back issues available at:
    http://www.globaldialog.com/~bandr/AU/index.html
Stop by and check out our archive! Now in our 13th publication year. 
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Copyright 2006 by Brad Webb.    Freely distributable, if not modified.
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