"Amiga"???

» BinaryBill - All these "new directions"

Neutrino,

Linux,

Java,

etc., . . .

Does ANY portion of what ANYONE wants or plans to do with the Amiga today -- be it Amiga, Inc., QNX, Phase 5, or whoever -- have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the original Amiga ARCHITECTURE and DESIGN?

It seems that just about ALL of the plans I read about these days -- for something that people are at least CALLing
"the Amiga" -- have almost NOTHING in common with the ORIGINAL Amiga except the NAME!

(And perhaps, to be fair, a philosophy of being media-savvy, and/or of integrating hardware and software synergistically.)

If and when the Amiga moves to a new OS kernel -- let alone to more than one! -- will there still be any continuity with the original Amiga OS? Or will they just be two or three (or even more?) OSes that all just happen to have the same name?

Will Amiga, Inc. even be making use of the Amiga-related patents that Gateway bought?

It's all well and good to invoke the name and vision of Jay Miner, but shouldn't those who currently do so be invoking
a bit more of his ENGINEERING as well?

What's going on here, Jay?!!!

-- posted by BinaryBill

» MetalJoe - Amiga? Yup!

Is it an Amiga? Well, without having seen the finished thing the concepts on paper appear to be about 90% 'Amiga'. It's where the Amiga probably would be had Commodore continued - by whcih time OS3 and AGA would've been removed from the equation. Except we might well be using PA-RISC chips and the successor to Hombre by now.

To me, the Amiga was really a combination of a certain 'essence' or 'spirit', tasty hardware and the OS - the new OS, sorry OE, is quite a distance from OS3.1. It's almost entirely from scratch, except incorporating off-the-shelf technology to reduce the cost and time of development.

The new hardware looks excellent from what we know so far, particularly if they've chosen Transmeta as the CPU. It's Amiga-like in terms of the price/performance and capabilities.

The OE will feature AmigaOS 3.1 emulation through a UAE-like evolution and the Transmeta chip. There's a smooth upgrade path. However, the OE is new ground - it isn't going to incorporate much, if any, of the original OS. But then, there isn't much left of OS1.0 in OS3.1 or 3.5, and by now the OS would've had little left of OS3 had things carried on without bankruptcies.

The spirit is there too to an extent - tying together a disparate amount of technologies, looking not to the near future, but to the far future for inspiration, blending it into a seamless and inexpensive package which is aimed at getting things *done* - quickly, creatively and with style.

Of course, this is just an opinion - everyone has their own views about the situation, and what it is to be an "Amiga". The true test is taking the new Amigas, plugging them in and using them - if it fails that test, then we can truly say if it's an Amiga or not.

Just a few thoughts..
.

-- posted by MetalJoe