amiga-news.de - Don't expect too much...

29.Mar.2000
Martin Baute Don't expect too much...
Some thoughts on the upcoming Amiga 2K. Not as negative as it might sound, but some facts to consider:

Don't expect too much - Thoughts by Martin Baute

In three days it will happen. On the "Amiga 2K" in St. Louis, USA, the new developer boxes are presented to the public.

It really seems like, for the first time since the AGA chipset, announcements of a new Amiga technology will be indeed followed up by a real product.

With interest I followed the enthusiastic expectation expressed on mailing lists, chat rooms etc. I hate to pull the brake on this enthusiasm, but I have to call out to many Amigians: Don't expect too much!

To prevent the big outcry after this weekend, "we have been fooled", "Bill and Fleecy aren't better than the people before", I want to have a critic eye on what we are up to.

The hardware that will be displayed in St. Louis will not be different from an off-the-shelf PC. Yes, that means x86. This won't change in the foreseeable future, since Amiga doesn't have a choice.

Yes, I hear the cry: PPC! But where to get one? The only manufacturer of high-power PPC systems in significant numbers is Apple - and their systems are not only more expensive than their x86 counterparts, but also much less documented. Apple simply doesn't tell every anybody all the details of their motherboards, as Be came to realize painfully.

The POP PPC boards by IBM? Except for the one I saw at the Amiga booth in Cologne, I haven't seen one so far. They are real, for sure. But where to get one, for which price?

So swallow the pill and take a x86 board. Let's face it: why not? The CPUs are no beautys, but they offer x times more performance than any (existing!) Amiga PPC boards, they are cheap, and available from the retailer around the corner.

(Well, I see, certain people from the Amiga community will likely hang myself after this article...)

Graphics? Be real, no company in the world can hope to outperform the big players in the business, ATi, Matrox, nVidia, 3DFx etc. just like that. And they, in turn, will most likely not offer some kind of miracle chip exclusively to Amiga.

So we have to settle with "standard hardware" in this area, too.

So what's special about the developer boxes at all?

Software, of course. But what kind of software will that be? If you think about it, you should realize that these systems won't show the new Amiga Desktop.

For one, it would be a miracle if, after a few (three? four?) months of cooperation with the TAO Group, it would be already finished. And if it would, they would ship user devices instead of developer boxes.

What will be running on the developer boxes will be Elate, the real-time core from TAO. Perhaps natively, perhaps "hosted" on e.g. Linux. (And in case McEwen pre-installed Windows on the Amiga developer boxes, I will travel to the USA myself to send him to the asylum.)

This will be supplemented by a documentation of the Elate and intent architectures (intent is the "multimedia layer" from TAO), probably a special version of GCC and a bunch of Includes.

Or, to put it an Amigian way: It will not be the successor of the OS3.5 CD, but the successor of the Amiga Developer CD.

Developers will be happy to get a glance on "the insides". For users, the developer boxes will most likely be as (un-)interesting as the last Cheapo-PC.

The fact that hardware is shipped together with the software at all is to avoid developers having to write drivers for their XY card with ZZ chip at first; at the same time, you don't have to specify your hardware configuration at length when sending in a bug report...

"But when the first end-user products are released, everything will be fine, wouldn't it?"

Sorry I have to pull the brakes on this one, too - no it won't. At least not automatically.

Even if all programmers from the Amiga community get themselves a developer box (and many will not, if not simply for cost considerations); even if ALL existing Amiga software would be available for the new machines in a new version, starting from day 0...

...that would be great for us, and a real miracle. But would it lead to the PC user next door getting himself an Elate-Amiga-whatever instead of upgrading his system?

Your friend wants to buy the PC with monitor, Windows, Word, and Works for 999 USD. Can you (without guilty conscience) recommend buying an Elate-Amiga with Monitor, Elate, AmigaWriter and TurboCalc, PPaint and MUIbase for 999 USD instead?

Yes, I hear ye: It will be much cheaper, because being much more efficient with the ressources.

Sure, and again the Amigians tell the world that AmigaOS is happy with a half-as-fast CPU because being efficient. Don't you remember the sorry glances?

It will take time. It will take the support of software manufacturers porting PROFESSIONAL applications to the Elate-Amiga. It will take applications that, in their elegance, efficiency, and their usefullnes aren't POSSIBLE on any other platform. It will take an unparalleled marketing campaign, and I don't know who will pay for it. It will take strong partners, supporting Amiga financially - because the startup money brought together by Bill and Fleecy won't take forever.

It will take a lack of attention from the competition, with their large amounts of "operative cash" and their monopolistic stranglehold, which could crush the small startup in no time.

You could read from between the lines of the Executive Update that Bill and Fleecy already have big-player companies at hand - just for getting confirmation on this (and to hear names) makes looking at this weekend's happenings at St. Louis worthwhile.

And, after the many years of hoping, waiting, holding out: It will take programmers porting their tools and applications to the new machines with full enthusiasm, with no regard for the collapsing "Classic" market.

Some will say: "I have done my part for the Amiga, now others should take the lead." God knows, I could spend my time with more pleasant things than hours of translations.

But right NOW is the moment when it will be decided: Have the years of holding out been worth it? Right NOW the developers have to take the chance to provide the plattform "new Amiga" with desperately needed software right from the start.

Even if it becomes a success, probably only a few will make the big money with it. But to say now that it won't be a success anyway means saying the recent years went to waste.

And in the last, it will need users more than anything else, spending their money on buying these tools and applications together with the new hardware; creating the foundation for the new users that might follow.

Don't expect too much. But do what you can!

Martin Baute
mb@amiga-news.de (Translation: mb)

[News message: 29. Mar. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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