A Nudge In The Right Direction

Real Soon Now is a phrase that frequently takes on a whole new dimension in the Amiga community. Those three words conjure up the Curse of Commodore to many, striking away at every chance of the Amiga to make a triumphant return. Real Soon Now has been the cry of many projects over the years, projects that have claimed to continue the evolution of the Amiga in some shape or form: Walker, InsideOut, BoXeR, A/Box, Pre/Box, Pios One, Amiga MCC. So I guess it's hard for some to accept the fact that the Amiga community has a genuine Real Soon Now heading... well, heading real soon.

It's amazing to think the Amiga platform has survived so much disappointment and neglect over the years. Yet it still receives so much attention, both from the hardy few who have clung on to their machines, as well as those who have experienced the Amiga in some form over the years. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?

How many hardy few are left? A couple of years ago, 100,000 was the established number - by some bizarre twist of statistics, roughly the same number of BeOS developers. There are fewer now, and the number 30,000 is probably closer to the mark, but it's not easy because the user base has become very ill-defined. What exactly constitutes an "Amiga user"? Do we count those who use an Amiga as their primary computer? Or someone who has an Amiga that gets used occasionally? DraCo users? How about people using emulators such as UAE, AmigaForever or Amithlon? What about those with an AmigaOS compatible OS (source and/or binary) such as AROS or MorphOS? Do we even start to include those running AmigaAnywhere/AmigaDE? If we don't currently, we soon could be...

I don't have a definitive answer, I don't think anyone does and to be honest it probably doesn't really matter. The important thing is that a group of people out there have experienced "the Amiga" in some shape or form and realised that there's a spirit, an essence, an intangible something that isn't easily found elsewhere.

Why else would people put up with expensive and often outdated hardware? Nostalgia? Oh come off it! For me there's something the Amiga provides that I can't find elsewhere, and believe me I've looked. I can't really define it but I see glimmers of it in assorted places: BeOS, the Python language, maybe Linux and the BSDs, QNX RtP, even the latest Macs. But nothing quite brings it together in the same way as the Amiga. In my humble opinion, of course.

The problem is, everyone's experience is different. The Amiga community, for

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