Shortly before last month's article was published, Amiga Inc. made an important announcement. It was, unfortunately, too late to mention and I don't usually like rushing into sudden news until the facts have settled - and they settled really well in retrospect. Jim Collas has taken over as president of Amiga Inc. apparently signalling Gateway's first major intervention in the Amiga. While an important change-over in terms of strategic thinking it also shows that Gateway have genuine interests in their new -found technology, and genuine concerns that they only have a limited window of opportunity.
The announcement gave vague, but promising, information on the focus for the future. Amongst the descriptions of set top boxes and other Internet and digital convergence applications, the desktop market hasn't been forgotten - with a reference to A500-style Amiga NG systems. Of course, we're not expecting a wedge-shaped box but rather something fitting the A500's legendary reputation for providing cheap and powerful multimedia computing before PC compatibles caught on. This was probably the most important part of the whole statement for me - a sign that Amiga Inc. realise the Amiga is first and foremost a computer, not something tucked inside a black box or a TV. Remember Commodore's CDTV? Ahead of its time, but never marketed as the thing it really was: a multimedia home computer, an Amiga, rather than a glorified hi-fi extension.
But the announcement was just the start of an exciting month. Amiga Inc. are set to make announcements of software and hardware partnerships over the coming months. In fact, as I type there are strong hints that Corel (of CorelDRAW, CorelOffice, Wordperfect etc. fame) is set to become the first of many major names to offer their own products to the next generation Amiga market. Like many others, Corel see the 'alternative platforms' market as
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