Amiga’s CEO has posted his latest executive update in which Bill writes about the progress being made. Also included are videos of
AmigaDE software running binary identical on various devices. For instance the Compaq iPAQ and Sharp Collie. Also Luca Diana recently visited the Amiga’s headquarters and made a little report with pictures for us to enjoy, included is a picture of a PDA by Casio running the AmigaDE.The software titles shown are already available at Amiga’s AmigaDE shop and Linux and Windows AmigaDE desktop players are already available. For a better view at some of the games shown in the videos, I uploaded some screenshots.
Alot is still covered by NDAs but in the latest executive update Bill states that during the second week of January they will announce a partnership with one of the largest Set Top Box companies in the world. A partnership with STB
manufacturer Infomedia Network was already publicly known. What also is publicly known is that Amiga’s AmigaDE partner the Tao Group is working closely with companies like Sony, Sharp, JVC, Fujitsu,
NEC, Motorola, Psion, Grundig and others to integrate the core hardware independent technology into their devices including cellphones, Cameras, PDAs, STBs and Digital TVs.
Yawn…..everybody’s making stuff for overgrown calculators these days. What about AmigaOS 4.0? That might actually be interesting.
Right. I’m ready for a new Amiga OS … where oh where can I get a screenshot?
For all the hype on Amiga.com for AmigaDE I’m having trouble understanding exactly what it is and why I would ever want to buy it.
Kevin wrote: Yawn…..everybody’s making stuff for overgrown calculators these days.
The cellphone/PDA market is the first market Amiga Inc is going to target, as there still isn`t a choking monopolist within this market segment. There is huge potential here, just look at Japan where over 30 million people use advanced cellphones to connect to the internet and play games. The games you see here will run without modifications on future cellphones with 16-bit 240×320 color displays. Such phones/PDAs will offer functions like:
– email (touchscreen with handwriting recognition, some will use bluetooth and enables you to use your stylus to write on any surface and wirelessly transmits the data to your phone.)
– webbrowser (not just text, it will support high quality graphics and sound as well, Flash)
– MP3/MPEG multimedia players (something like an inbuilt iPOD and fullscreen videos)
– Global positioning Services (Maps with your location, and find nearest restaurant/hotel/hospital/etc functions)
– Games(Both 3D and 2D but adjusted for small screensizes, online gaming i.e. play chess nomatter where your opponent is located i.e. in a train in Tokyo Japan or in the hospital somewhere in Amsterdam)
– Built-in webcam and 384kbs (currently available in Tokyo) allows you to instantly see to who you are talking with.
– Other stadard functions will also be available of course: Schedule, Calculator, Alarm, Call Answering, Voice Memo in Standby or Text Memo.
So PDAs/cellphones will surely be more than just an oversized calculator.
What about AmigaOS 4.0?
It is planned for release around March 2002. It will probably be released during the http://www.amigaexpo.com“>AmigaExpo in the united states or maybe during the http://www.weemeet.net/wwwamigbgcom/startsida/“>AmiGBG in Sweden.
I am confused as well !@#$%^&*?
Klint wrote: For all the hype on Amiga.com for AmigaDE I’m having trouble understanding exactly what it is and why I would ever want to buy it.
The thing is that this technology offers better performing/efficient platform independent technologies than has ever been available before. Not only can you use the ultra fast http://tao-group.com/2/tao/sunset.html“>Java that was written on top of this technology. But you can program in C, C++, http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-amiga3/?dwzone=linu… and soon even <a href=”http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=169“>SHEEP binary identical across platforms and devices as well.
Beware of a “focus shift”….
Microsoft is very afraid of platform independent technologies. Microsoft did everything to cripple the performance of their own JVM and connect it as much to their own technologies as possible. It will interesting to see how Microsoft will try to destroy Amiga. Afterall Amiga just hired one of Microsoft’s best man, namely Sanjay Menon!
This isn’t really a focus shift–it’s what the new Amiga’s target market was to start with. I’m technically impressed by what I’ve seen of the Amiga DE, but I’ve come to the conclusion over the last few years that “platform independent technologies” are only a holy grail to engineers. Consumers just want to get stuff done. Historically, if there’s a market demand, programs get ported to other platforms, and those market pressures have tacitly reinforced source code portability and interchangable data formats. (And, hey, if you have to buy a separate version of the Watts Wonder App for your PDA and two incompatible desktops, that means I get more money. Maybe I’ll sell you the second and third licenses at a discount because I’m a nice guy!)
With all due respect to Mark Scholer, Microsoft didn’t cripple the performance of their JVM: it could run 100% pure Java and it ran it faster than the JVM that Sun produced at the time. Bill Gates and Scott McNealy got into a pissing contest, with Microsoft doing their usual “but we can extend Java so you can also write Java applets that hook directly into the OS” and and Sun jumping up and down and screaming about it. It’s easy to blame Microsoft for trying to “screw up” Java, but the idea of making a superset of a standard language didn’t originate in Redmond. It subverted Sun’s original grand scheme, which was to have a 100% standard language–that just happened to run much faster on proprietary Sun products. This never took off because, well, consumers don’t care about platform independent technologies; they just want to get stuff done. But I said that already.
Ironically, Apple’s “Cocoa” environment lets you write applications in Java with Cocoa bindings, making them–guess what!–no longer platform-independent. I don’t hear Sun jumping up and down and screaming about that, do you?
Anyway, I wish the Amiga folks luck, but I think their market successes are mostly going to depend on the performance of Tao’s virtual machine–which is something I think you can get without the Amiga DE. A friend of mine has the Sharp PDA developer model that’s shown as the ‘Collie’; it’s running Linux/QT. They may be using the Tao JVM, and my friend says that its ROM can be flashed with the Amiga DE… but that’s not what Sharp’s pushing to developers.
WattsM wrote: consumers don’t care about platform independent technologies; they just want to get stuff done.
I agree with you here and that is one of the important reasons why I think the AmigaDE/Intent will succeed. The consumer should not have to worry about what kind of operating system their cellphones, Cameras, PDAs, STBs, Digital TVs or even desktops are running. They just buy an application and it just works!
but that’s not what Sharp’s pushing to developers.
There are good reasons for pushing Linux.
1) Potential free software development, from one of the biggest developers communities.
2) The hype around Linux the last couple of years allows Sharp to gain more media exposure. (Microsoft vs Linux/ Closed monopolist platform vs Open community platform)
3) Unlike better kernels architectures, like for instance QSSL’s QNX Neutrino, Linux is completely free for them to use and modify.
Who cares about this AmigaDE, I want to see AmigaOS 4.
Interesting…
I have yet to buy a portable device that isn’t paper-based, a gameboy or a watch, though. I’m also one of the dying breed that doesn’t have pressing need for a mobile phone. Maybe in the next 5 years somebody will convince me I need one
The major aspect of the AmigaDE is that it is hardware independent, you can run any software that runs on the AmigaDE no matter what the underlining hardware may actually be. Weather it’s a PPC cpu or an AMD/intel chip or one of the cpu’s that powers a palm top (PDA), that and you can run a proper 3D game on a palm top running under Warp3D (a quick game of PDA Quake anyone?).
>>I’m also one of the dying breed that doesn’t have pressing need for a mobile phone. Maybe in the next 5 years somebody will convince me I need one
<<
Me as well… my friends keep bugging me to get one so they can easily get ahold of me, but after seeing a few of them just get called all the time has turned me off to the idea, but I think once they come out with everything you need on them and become really practical I’ll get one!
Who cares about this AmigaDE, I want to see AmigaOS 4.
<P>
AmigaOS 4.0 is planned for release around March 2002. The AmigaDE will eventually become integrated into AmigaOS, for instance this allows AmigaOS to gain an excellent Java Virtual Machine among other technologies. The idea is to advance the Amiga hardware platform into a home server platform.
For instance a computer that will talk to all your AmigaDE enabled devices and the outside world through the internet. It could distribute content stored on the harddrive like music, photos, videos and games to any of those devices. It could wirelessly provide internet access to these devices as well. For instance only the main home server computer is directly connected to the internet but sends the Data wirelessly to other devices.
The possibilities are endless here. BTW it is amazing that not much in the last 10 years has changed with regard to this already. (In fact everything the “Amiga 1000” got released with as standard in 1985, got re-introduced in other products years, sometimes even a decade later in rival products, and then all of the sudden conceived as great achievements… I.E. stereo sound, multimedia, autoconfig, 32-bit preemptive multitasking, long file names support, color GUI and many other things comes to mind.)
I really don’t see why these guys are keeping Amiga OS 4.0 so secret. I’ve had BeForever readers write in to me saying that the future for the Amiga platform is exciting, but I can’t really get all that enthused about it. If its taken this long to get to v4 of the OS then it’d better be good! 🙂
OK, so I dig what DE is… but what’s the difference between DE and SDK?
And what exactly is the AmigaOne? Are these new motherboards for older Amiga machines? A whole new machine? A hardware specification? All? None?
Is OS4 supposed to run only on the AmigaOne (whatever it may be) or will it run on other OSes now that Amiga is a software company?
Pictures of several handheld devices running an über-OS…hardly any executive updates…man, this looks so Be to me!
Klint:
The SDK is the software developer kit to develop AmigaDE programs. It does the same thing as AmigaDE, only it comes with compilers, debugger, developer documentation, etc. and it’s almost a full-blown desktop. The AmigaDE comes currently as a kind of media player (which will grow much above that state soon), which you buy for the appropriate platform and run AmigaDE games/apps on it.
You should also see it run on digital appliances such as set-top boxes and other home-oriented devices.
AmigaDE doesn’t look like much right now, but it should grow to a competent digital content client which will oppose the coming AmigaOS 5 (a content delivery server OS). Together they will form the Domestic Digital Habitat(TM), a home network with AmigaDE on small clients and OS5 on bigger machines and servers.
There’s much more about it on http://www.amiga.com...
The AmigaOne is a whole new machine being developed by Eyetech. It’s being developed according to Amiga Inc’s Zico hardware specifications, which you can read about on http://www.amiga.com. Amiga themselves have nothing to do with the machine other than they approved the design to run Amiga Inc’s OS. AmigaOne will run AmigaOS4 and uses standard PC technology PCI, AGP (it’s not the PC architecture, e.g. no BIOS but a Kickstart ROM, different bus controllers, etc.) to give you the possibility to use cheap standard PC expansion cards. It uses a G3 or G4 PowerPC processor. The One in AmigaOne stands for One CPU.
Actually there’s another machine on the way, Pegasos, which is ahead of AmigaOne. It can use two G4 CPU’s and has been demonstrated at several Amiga shows. A few hundred motherboards have been produced for developers. However a long lasting disagreement between the creators of Pegasos and Amiga Inc makes it uncertain whether it will run AmigaOS at all, but the clone MorphOS instead.
“Hope this helps” 🙂
and dont be turned off by the hardware specs on the amiga one zico specs, its just a minimum
Who cares about platform independence when you have a 320×240 ipaq with a 206Mhz CPU, a mobile phone with a lower powered CPU and different sized screen, a tablet with 640×480 and faster CPU… are you getting my point?
Everything has to be redesigned for the platform it runs on, REGARDLESS of the fancy JVM (run once, debug everywhere) or whatever other bindings are used.
I haven’t seen anyone here mention a single advantage of this which can’t already be had by existing plaforms (CE etc.)
It seems Amiga can’t decide what business direction to follow. This is the first sign of disaster, clutching at straws.
And good luck competing on the cell phone market when you have companies like Nokia, Motorola, etc. not only making their own phones, but being in bed with telco carriers. And please don’t say ‘but they will adopt AmigaDE (or whatever the name is today)’ – they will adopt it by copying it and making their own.
Everything has to be redesigned for the platform it runs on
No it doesn`t, it is a relative easy task to make larger screen versions of PDA targetted applications while using the AmigaDE. And your argument regarding different CPUs is mainly untrue. Some applications may need more horsepower than others, however for instance what you have been shown here could do with lesser CPU power and memory. For example the iPAQ video shows the AmigaDE and Planet Zed running hosted on top of the PocketPC platform. Running the AmigaDE standalone will however result in the best maximum performance, but as you see everything is already running at full speed, regardless of the host operating system.
I haven’t seen anyone here mention a single advantage of this which can’t already be had by existing plaforms
There is and still will be a great scala of different operating systems used within the consumer electronic space. An AmigaDE software developer can support all these platforms at once, they don`t have to worry about it being Linux, Palm, Neutrino or PocketPC based. Many companies have invested alot of money on developing their own OSes, with the AmigaDE they can still use their legacy operating system while extending it with AmigaDE software through AmigaDE players running on top of the own OSes.
A happy new year everyone!
Let’s sum this up, DEad is Tao’s Intent (which anyone else can purchase and ignore Amiga entirely) with some pretty icons. So it has nothing to do with the Amiga we have come to know and love. Worse yet, the linux version will only run on top of RH 6.2 (whatever happened to the overhyped strategic alliance with Corel and RedHat?) and that is if someone pays for it. It’s certainly not Open Source.
OS4, which is not being done by Amiga Inc, but subcontracted out (for no subcontractor fee since Amiga can’t afford to do it themselves and have to focus on the PDA/Cellphone market for their DEad layier) to a game porting company called Hyerpion. OS4 was due to be out last summer, then last fall, now it’s suppost to be released in Feb, 2002.
Such a pity that just about anything can now have a Boing Ball sticker and be called an Amiga. Guess anything to make the venture capital people happy…
Dammy
Dammy
People please ignore certain village idiot ex-members of the Amiga community. These individuals are putting a whole lot of effort in distroying the Amiga community by stating false information and half twisted truths. It is a small vocal group of individuals often posting several times under fake names and IPs to give the impression they are a large percentage of the Amiga community.
This group even went as far as attacking key Amiga websites and post false claims of bankruptcy and gay pornographic material. It started with the Amiga.org community portal, followed by Amiga.com, Eyetech, Amiga News Network and now Amiga.org again so now the Amiga community has to wait until the community portal is being entirely rebuilt with other more secure development tools.
Why are they doing this you may ask? Some have been working on rival systems with some intended to become a successor Amiga platform as the previous Amiga IP owners proved to be incompetent (Gateway, Commodore, Escom). They spent years on developing their solutions and making plans, similar to the way Amino did before buying the Amiga IP for many millions of dollars 2 years ago.
Although some of these aren`t even originated from within the Amiga community, just being afraid of the rival oppertunity and some are just pissed because they don`t have access to NDA material while having huge false egos. You won`t imagine the amount of damage they did already.
Dammy wrote:
So it has nothing to do with the Amiga we have come to know and love.
The AmigaDE has everything to do with the Amiga platform as the Amiga community and company is behind this project. Amiga Inc is an independent company just like it was before Commodore purshased the company. The AmigaDE is a revolutionary step towards making a content identical digital environment. For this, new technology is needed and luckily Amiga fan and ex-Amiga developer Francis Charig already started developing such an technology years ago. (And founded the Tao Group) The Intent technology is ideal to achieve this and therefor they became partners in jointly developing the AmigaDE. It would be insane to say that Apple may not release an iPod because it lacks MacOS 1.0 or use MacOS X since it’s foundation has technicly not much to do with their previous 68k/PPC operating systems. The argument is truly insane if you think about it. Amiga Inc has the right as any other company to develop whatever technology it thinks it needs to secure its future.
Worse yet, the linux version will only run on top of RH 6.2 (whatever happened to the overhyped strategic alliance with Corel and RedHat
The AmigaDE does run on many more linux distributions. The trouble is however that there are too many factors to take into account to guarantee everything working correctly on every distribution out there. If the SDK doesn`t work on another distribution than Linux 6.2 it is simply your problem to deal with as Amiga Inc doesn`t have the time to invest every possible variable which exists in all those linux distributions. For a better understanding with regard to this I recommend reading the Linux pieces of Scott Hacker’s ‘Tales of a BeOS Refugee’ article.
and that is if someone pays for it.
There`s nothing wrong with spending money on software that took years to develop. Software developers do have kids of their own to feed, you know…
It’s certainly not Open Source.
If you want open source, then there`s <a href=”http://www.aros.org/“>AROS for you. When developing revolutionary new software, open source doesn`t make much business sense, since all rival companies would know how to achieve this as well. There`s is no business reality in the AmigaDE becoming open source.
OS4, which is not being done by Amiga Inc
Incorrect, the management of the project is being done by Amiga’s close partner Hyperion Entertaiment, because most of the developers involved in the AmigaOS port to PPC are located in Europe. AmigaOS did get delayed as investors pulled away and others only invest into Amiga because of the DE product.
Amiga’s Gary Peake: “We did secure funding prior to, and it evaporated before our eyes due to Sept 11th. Bill had to start all over again with new companies. When one member of a group is almost totally wiped out it is hard to maintain the same group financing.”
Beware that while everything is clarified here Dammy will most likely state the same arguments over and over again on every possible Amiga related forum. What a waste of energy, please Dammy I have read your arguments too many times already.
When I saw the first Amiga around 1987 it was impressive. Waaay ahead of its time. And I always thought that if the OS had been updated continuously it would be quite an OS by now. It is unfortunate that the company change hands so many times and now that there is so much infighting about the Amiga. That could ruin any chance of the OS continuing.
I do understand why people would feel all the emphasis should be put on updating the existing Amiga OS. Many Amiga owners have been waiting, and it seems like there has been delay after delay. Still, DE needs to be worked on also. I think BeOS showed us that even if you have the best OS, it may not survive, you need to make it accessible to as many people as possible. And DE can do that.
Open source is a great idea, but making it work is another deal. Linux on the desktop is stalling out, I personally saw a co-worker, a total Linux addict, go back to Windows because of all the problems he had making Linux run on his desktop. Sure it was stable, but the lack of standardization made it maddening to try and make it work.
Everything has been against the Amiga, but I think given the chance, Amiga.com can provide both a new OS and DE. At this point I don’t think there is a choice to argue about… I saw what happend to BeOS. With Mac OS X and even Win XP improving, people need an alternative less and less.
Amiga Inc, Eyetech and Hyperion Entertainment will be present at the http://www.alt-woa.org/“>Alt-WoA show being held in the United Kingdom on the 23rd of February. They will most likely be demonstrating AmigaOS 4.0 to the public for the first time. (AmigaDE developers will be present as well.)
“http://www.alt-woa.org/“>Alt-WoA will be held on the 23rd February 2002 at The Old Corn Mill in Huddersfield West Yorkshire – UK.
The Show now covers 3 floors with attractions including Workshops, User Group, Support Groups Amiga and related Dealers and runs from 11.30am to 5.30pm – Saturday only.
Only 1 minute away from the M62 and situated in the middle of the UK, there is a very large free car park, bar and restaurant facilities plus a Great Yorkshire Welcome.
We still have one or two vacancies but space is filling rapidly. Show sponsored by Eyetech and Wirenet – organised from the ground up by the Huddersfield Amiga User Group.”
I’ve been using AmigaOS as the platform of my freetime computing OS. (at work it is not an option)
Currently I use OS3.9 on my 50Mhz Amiga and it is just great.
I’m looking forward of getting a “affordable” PowerPC option and OS4.0 (or MorphOS) for it.
Hopefully also AmigaDE materializes (really, not just as a player) for end users, any attempt to improve cross-platform compatibility is welcome.
IMHO: Year 2002 will be great for an Amiga user.
If anyone is wondering what AmigaOS 3.9 looks like, then here’s a http://www.stormloader.com/amiga/BAS/12.htm“>screenshotPicture Report, just have a look.
Also there is a new product available which allows AmigaOS 3.9 to be used at amazing speeds on standard PC equipment. At this <a href=”http://www.amithlon.com“>website you can find more information regarding this product. I have been using it on my laptop for some time now and I can fully recommend AmigaOS XL. Hopefully you will see a review on OSNews by me soon.
peed.planet.nl) wrote on 2002-01-01 08:08:06
>People please ignore certain village idiot ex-members of the Amiga community. >These individuals are putting a whole lot of effort in distroying the Amiga >community by stating false information and half twisted truths. It is a small
>vocal group of individuals often posting several times under fake names and IPs
>to give the impression they are a large percentage of the Amiga community.
Disenfranchising me Mike? Tsk tsk tsk, people on here ought to know there are indeed Amiga Community members think this DEad stuff stinks to high heaven. And also do not like “Amiga” Inc’s cult tatics that resemble the Scientology folks.
> This group even went as far as attacking key Amiga websites and post false
> claims of bankruptcy and gay pornographic material. It started with the
> Amiga.org community portal, followed by Amiga.com, Eyetech, Amiga News Network > and now Amiga.org again so now the Amiga community has to wait until the
> community portal is being entirely rebuilt with other more secure development > tools.
> And that has what to do with your reply to me Mike? Why are they doing this
> you may ask? Some have been working on rival systems with some intended to
> become a successor Amiga platform as the previous Amiga IP owners proved to be > incompetent (Gateway, Commodore, Escom). They spent years on developing their > solutions and making plans, similar to the way Amino did before buying the
> Amiga IP for many millions of dollars 2 years ago.
Great, they bought the name and hardware, but didn’t buy the IP from Gateway. What do they have to show for themselves but alot of propaganda? Of your above explaination doesn’t cut with me since I’m rooting for Amithlon and AROS teams.
> The AmigaDE has everything to do with the Amiga platform as the Amiga
> community and company is behind this project.
Perhaps Fleecy’s Kommunity is behind it, but certainly there is a significant portion of the Amiga Community (note it’s spelled with a C) that is less then thrilled for some Tao based software with icons designed by “Amiga” Inc.
> Amiga Inc is an independent company just like it was before Commodore
> purshased the company.
Except the orginal company owned it’s own IP. Gateway still owns it now.
> The AmigaDE is a revolutionary step towards making a content identical digital > environment.
Revolutionary? What a bunch of hype.
> For this, new technology is needed and luckily Amiga fan and ex-Amiga
> developer Francis Charig already started developing such an technology years
> ago. (And founded the Tao Group) The Intent technology is ideal to achieve
> this and therefor they became partners in jointly developing the AmigaDE.
DEad is Amiga’s thing that depends on Tao’s software. Now explain to these nice people why they can’t go directly to Tao and get the same license “Amiga” Inc has. You can’t because they can.
> It would be insane to say that Apple may not release an iPod because it lacks > MacOS 1.0 or use MacOS X since it’s foundation has technicly not much to do
> with their previous 68k/PPC operating systems. The argument is truly insane if > you think about it. Amiga Inc has the right as any other company to develop
> whatever technology it thinks it needs to secure its future.
Future of PDAs and Cellphones that the enduser who will have to buy all this for since it certainly appears no major OEM is going to stick it on top of the OS for them. As far as the overly expensive digital walkman, does anyone really care what OS is on it? Not I.
> The AmigaDE does run on many more linux distributions.
Name them.
> The trouble is however that there are too many factors to take into account to > guarantee everything working correctly on every distribution out there. If the > SDK doesn`t work on another distribution than Linux 6.2 it is simply your
> problem to deal with as Amiga Inc doesn`t have the time to invest every
> possible variable which exists in all those linux distributions. For a better > understanding with regard to this I recommend reading the Linux pieces of
> Scott Hacker’s ‘Tales of a BeOS Refugee’ article.
How about RH 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, you know, all the latest releases for their strategic partner, RedHat? This whole this has become such a farce.
>Incorrect, the management of the project is being done by Amiga’s close partner > Hyperion Entertaiment,
Oh Joy! A company that ports old Windows games! Yeah, that’s who I want a new OS coming from! Pity H&P gave OS4 the boot huh?
> because most of the developers involved in the AmigaOS port to PPC are located > in Europe.
And they are stupid enough to do it on their own dime because “Amiga” Inc doesn’t have the money. Can’t forget that little fact.
> AmigaOS did get delayed as investors pulled away and others only invest into
> Amiga because of the DE product.
Nice spin attempt.
> Amiga’s Gary Peake: “We did secure funding prior to, and it evaporated before > our eyes due to Sept 11th. Bill had to start all over again with new
> companies. When one member of a group is almost totally wiped out it is hard
> to maintain the same group financing.”
Oh boy, they tried folks! They really did! Guess that is the reason why H&P are going off towards AmgiaXL (QNX’s RTP and UAE) and leaving “Amiga” Inc to flounder by themselves. It’s pretty bad when H&P can’t stand the stench.
> Beware that while everything is clarified here Dammy will most likely state
> the same arguments over and over again on every possible Amiga related forum.
What can I say Mike, I like going around debunking hypegenerators spew forth to the unsuspecting. This whole thing has turned into a fiasco, no amount of regurgitating of hype/propaganda from the cult leaders is going to turn it around.
> What a waste of energy, please Dammy I have read your arguments too many times > already.
Funny part is, your took your reply and repeated this over on MooBunny (think it’s http://www.moobunny.com ). Just who is doing cut and paste here, hrm?
Dammy
All this confusion is exactly what digital (that’s a magazine, by the way) aims to clear up. For those who aren’t already aware, see http://www.digitalmagazine.co.uk
Everyone else, please forgive the shameless plug, on account that I don’t have time to debate all this stuff in public as well as pull together a magazine about it 🙂 But you’re welcome to pop over and discuss such concepts with us further on our public mailing list. Details on web site.
Cheers!
Dave.
Hey folks, I lurk in/out of the Amiga scene every now and then to see whats happening. It’s a shame that many of you seem to be very negative abt where the amiga is going because you are missing out on a lot of potential.
Read this article on ZDNet
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/enterprise/story/0,2000025001,2026…
about how Microsoft with it’s .NET, is focusing on the same technology that DE is, appliance integration for lack of a better term. Bill McEwan’s Amiga has been focussing on since they got hold of Amiga, which shows that this company has vision which is important quality to have in IT.
DE has potential to do a lot of good as far as competing standards go. It may not mean much to you, esp. if you don’t even have a mobile phone or PDA, WAP service, etc, but to the ppl always on the go, who move between different platforms, computers, operating systems and use these to organise their lives and comunicate with others it’s a revolution that the mobile community has been waiting for.
I’ll give you an example. I haven’t seen a close friend in a few months. I’m holidaying at a beach that we used to frequent and I’m reminded of her and want to say hi. I want to send her a pic (one of those rare Kodak moment type pics that’d mean a lot to us both) but I only have my digital cam and wap phone with me. I’ll have to settle for an SMS to say hi – shame that she couldn’t see the pic though.
If these devices were DE enabled, I’d be able to email the pic to her automatically SMSing her letting her know I’ve said hi and to check her email, and concurrently have a copy in my own sent mail on my WinXP based machine at home (some 100km away, also running some DE variant) once I return from my holiday to satisfy my own Photo Album, all without worrying about how they’ll plugin and what standards they’ll share this data on.
I wonder how many of the posters here actually use mobile technology like WAP/PDA before bagging it out. I browse the net on my WAP phone while on the train which isn’t the best. But I can bookmark sites, and if the phone is DE enabled, I can view them in their full color glory when I next logon to the DE running, Unix system with the sites already loaded, as if I’d been using the Unix machine the whole time.
One of you said you don’t care what OS your digital walkman uses. As long as it supports DE you won’t have to. As long as the ‘environment’ it’s running can handle mp3’s and wma’s and is adaptable to convert any new formats its thrown at it then I won’t have to worry, and it can add some life to my MP3 player by not having to buy the newest product to hear the newest proprietory standard.
Yes, Bill McEwan can get a bit fanatical but the Amiga has always been about ease of use, bringing powerful, efficient computing to the masses. Don’t you remember how you used to sell the Amiga to your PC owning friends in the good old days ‘I get 24-bit colour, stereo sound and I haven’t even had to worry about a sound driver or DLL!!’
DE is still a way off from this pipe dream. Admittedly, I was disappointed to see that the DE at its present incarnation was only a platform for all my portable devices to play the same games. It still needs that killer app to set it apart from the competing offerings but what it promises relates to ppl who use refridgerators and microwaves and normal things and wouldn’t care what version of Redhat was driving the whole show. It’s what Joe Public wants, you’ve known that since you bought your first Amiga while seeing others struggle with competing platforms.
Even though it can’t help me with my scenarios above yet, DE promises to remove the keyboard, mouse, CPU square from the computer and bring it to Joe Public, in turn making them money to develop the other side of the Amiga your also interested – forefront nerdy technologies to make your neighbours drool over which cost 5% as much as its rivals
As far as DEad being a PDA’s utopia, let’s look more at it for a minute. For the developers, if they can get complete agnostic programming (which I’ve read in a few places that is yet to truely happen), great for them, more market. For the end users, OTOH, just how many PDAs will the average person own to make it “portable” a thing of choice so they can use it on all their PDAs (which will of course screw the closed sourced coder out of money since they are suppost to be getting $ for each PDA it’s installed on)?
As for getting pics and sending them via phones, you need to check out Symbian OS that is being used on the likes of Nokia’s 9210/9290’s phone. Now that’s an interesting OS.
Dammy