amiga-news.de - Weekly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss

04.May.2003
AmigaWorld.net (ANF) Weekly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - episode 8
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 8 of the regular questions and answers session with Fleecy Moss, CTO at AMIGA, Inc. (Update 2012-03-17, cg: as the original document is no longer available, the following content was moved into our database):

1) IonMane: Some software is now available for DE, yet I had difficulty finding out info on it, or even where to buy it. How do you plan on marketing it, do you plan to get in on shelves in supermarkets/department stores?

Fleecy: In discussions with potential partners, we have discovered that they are keen to rebadge and sell it themselves, for example the MS PocketPaks using Amiga Anywhere. They want to do this for several reasons, whether it be to use their existing marketing resources and branding or else to build up their own marketing brand, for example we are working with a company that has a rather unique expansion capability and they want to use Amiga Anyware products to show it off. Due to this, we are having to create a multi thread marketing strategy that promotes Amiga Anyware as a whole without damaging any of the particular marketing threads and opportunities.

The power of the underlying AmigaDE technology is that we can create multiple deployment models - cards, players, standalones etc and each one represents a separate marketing domain.

To answer your question, we already have one chain in the US (CompUSA) shipping the cards, Microsoft are pushing these cards to other chains and are investigating expansion opportunities. Other potential partners are at various stages but most seem to want to control the marketing. To bring it all together, we will be revising the Amiga Anyware website so that the different deployment types and different pieces of content will have their own separate resources so you will be able to search through the available content, find out in which products it ships and locate their availability.

2) Doobrey: Are there any plans( or even pipedreams) to have an AmigaOne or derivative as an "all on board" system (ie video, sound etc. all on the motherboard) for STB or embedded use?

Fleecy: We have several hardware vendors ranging from small to huge who are interested in the AmigaOS on a variety of devices that span the digital device market, all the way upto servers and workstations. Most of these devices already exist as either prototypes or reference designs and the companies involved are looking for an advanced multimedia capable operating system. We are keeping them closely informed as to the progress of AmigaOS4.0 and are already including requirements from them into the specification for AmigaOS4.1 and beyond.

3) ShadesOfGrey: For those of us who've already made that decision, and those of us considering this decision. How does Amiga Inc. plan to entice us back to AmigaOS 4 AND 'AmigaOS 5'? To be a bit more precise, once the die-hard community has been satisfied (or perhaps placated) by the release (or is the proper term is launch) of AmigaOnes and/with AmigaOS 4. Does Amiga Inc. have any formative plans for recapturing the dormant Amiga user and developer community?

Fleecy: Obviously we want to sell the AmigaOS into as many markets as possible and I have hinted at how we intend to do this in previous Q&A sessions. I do not want to go into too much detail since competitors are constantly on the lookout for any details of our plans so that they can adopt or stymie them as suits their agenda.

4) Treke: Don't you think that the success of 'mainstream' platforms (I think windoze) is also based on the ease of development (mass development) for them ? Has Amiga plans to make available some RAD tools for Amiga OS 4.x or AmigaOS 5.x ?

Fleecy: It is a fact that the success of a platform is down to the amount of content available for it. Whilst the AmigaOS does have a huge backlog of quality content, we need to create new content that takes advantage of the new features of AmigaOS4.0 (and beyond that of AG2). Having a friendly and easy to use development environment set which appeals to all levels of developer, from hobby to commercial is crucial to the growth of the content portfolio and we have plans to attend to this whilst also pushing the development envelope in terms of technologies.

5) IonMane: Could you tell us about SHEEP?What is it, and where does it fit into Amiga Incs. plan?

Fleecy: This follows on from Q4. We want a single, simple universal language that can be used to 'talk' to the environment, whether that be an extended shell, scripts, querying or shells. Such a language would sit at the heart of our future environment, making it a more social, more interactive experience that graphical manipulation and projection.

6) IonMane: Just how powerful is the DE player?Is it possible, for example, to write a Office suite with the capabilities of MS office/Open Office?

Fleecy: Firstly, the AmigaDE is a technology set for the creation of products. The DE Player was a prototype product that allowed for content portability. Amiga Anyware was our first proper commercial product, allowing for multiple deployment options against a content portfolio. As to how powerful is it? It is as powerful as its host in terms of performance and in terms of capabilities, we are expanding them all the time - enhanced 2D, 3D support, data storage and organisation options. It is more than capable of providing a productivity environment which in reality is a lot less demanding that many of the games being written or already available. We need to add a few more GUI gadgets to make it more productivity friendly but they are in the pipeline.

7) IonMane: If this is possible, is it possible to take this exact program and use it directly on say a Linux, Mac or AmigaOne? (providing the DE player is available for these platforms?

Fleecy: That is the point of the AmigaDE and we have already demonstrated this, with the same content runnning on both Linux, Embedded Linux, Symbian, Windows, PocketPC and across Arm, MIPS, SHn, and x86 processors. We just have to make sure that the DE environment is available for the particular deployment HW/SW.

8) horizone: The Commodore 64 got you right into a BASIC interpreter 2 seconds after powerup and the original Amiga included AmigaBasic. I think DOS included a basic too... WindowsXP at least have Paintbrush and a bunch of small games to start having fun with out of the box. How will the newbie AmigaOne owner get started with creative and fun stuff without spending more money on full games and apps right away?

Fleecy: What we are intending to do is offer a contributions drawer, where third parties can provide freeware, shareware and either full or limited versions of their commercial products. In this way the user has a good selection of powerful applications with which to experiment right out of the box and the third party developers gain maximum access to the potential customer base for their products. We had talked to developers and users about the very problem you describe and this is the solution that they suggested.

9) ssolie: How does Amiga Inc. influence and control the development path of AmigaOS when you do not have direct control over the source code? For example, Hyperion may add/remove/change features that would be counterproductive to your goals.

Fleecy: Far too much has been made of the fact that ownership of the AmigaOS rests with Hyperion at the moment, mostly by those with an interest in encouraging mischief. It was done as a protective measure to ensure that if anything happened to Amiga Inc then the community wouldn't have to put up with another x years of uncertainty. The actual development process itself is already well documented and agreed at the highest levels. I have also mentioned before that AmigaOS4.0 is unique in that it is mostly about moving from old hardware to a new abstract hardware definition whilst the Amiga Generation 2 (AG2) project is about advancing the capabilities of the product as a whole; as such Hyperion, with its expertise in classic hardware, porting and PPC architectures is far more qualified to make that transition than the staff at Amiga Inc.

10) JubalHarshaw: I was wondering what direction the AmigaDE side of things will move in... as far as what markets besides the current one. (forgive me if that's not clear, English isn't my strong point yet :) What I mean is, where is it moving into, and where do you see AmigaDE making the biggest impact?

Fleecy: AmigaDE will continue to flesh out its capabilities in response to the demands made on it by its derivative products and the customers of those products. For example, the enthusiastic response to the Gamecard technology, one of the Amiga Anyware deployments is causing us to extend the Quickstart, Autostart and PIPO (Pop In/Pop Out) feature sets. At its heart though, AmigaDE will always be a portable content solution whilst for dedicated products such as desktops and workstations which require a full environment, the AmigaOS will be enhanced and pushed.

As far as impact, AmigaDE derivatives will have most impact where a product domain has a heterogeneous profile. So, in a market where content solutions are more important than implementations, such as the embedded market, the ability of the DE to offer the same content across those many different product implementations will be valuable whereas in a product domain where one manufacturer and implementation dominates then it will have less of an impact (although even in this case, the high efficiency of the AmigaDE coupled with the quality of the content makes a compelling case all of its own.

Over time, the idea of a multi product matrix will become a very powerful driver for the AmigaDE. A digital home with a mix of devices that ranges from PDAs, Tablets, TVs, Consoles, Laptops, Smartphones, DVD players and even washing machines, air conditioning and automobiles will benefit immensely from something like the AmigaDE, which attempts to create a single, contiguous solution above the various devices.

(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=9
You may freely redistribute this article, providing that a URL is provided to the original source,
and the copyright notices remain intact) (ps) (Translation: cb)

[News message: 04. May. 2003, 19:29] [Comments: 0]
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