Which Amiga?
by Brad Webb
Amiga Update, April 2002
There's an old American saying that politics makes strange bedfellows. Looks like computers do also. Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic in the story below to have a quote from a Microsoft executive talking about Windows CE's multimedia functionality teaming with Amiga's software solution? Well, if it sells Amiga product it's not all bad. Just keep an eye on those folks from Redmond, please, Amiga.
In another bizarre example of seemingly strange bedfellows, we have the trio of Bill Buck, Raquel Velasco (Thendic-France) and ... Petro Tyschtshenko (!) (Power Trading GmbH) teaming up with bplan GmbH to continue work on Morph OS and the Pegasos board, among other things. Even Dr. Allan Havemose, former Commodore AmigaOS guru, is said to be part of the team. This one makes my head ache as I try to figure it all out.
Whatever the technical merits of their products, a couple of things are certain. First, there is only one Amiga and none of these folks is associated with it at the moment. Second, Amiga Inc. would have to be headed by a crazy person to let something that looks and acts like AmigaOS be sold by anyone else. News Flash: Amiga Inc. is not headed by a crazy person. It is headed by the most astute businessman to be in charge of Amiga for a very long time. This is not to demean the very real accomplishments of Petro. If it weren't for him, there would almost certainly be no Amiga at the present time and for that he will always be near the top of my list of great Amigans. But he's not the businessman Bill McEwen is.
The Amiga community has created some marvelous visionaries, some of whom are listed two paragraphs back. It has created far fewer businessmen. The visions that survive, regardless of whether they are great visions or weak ones, are the ones managed capably as part of a real business. Just compare results - Microsoft's "vision" combined with its business skills, and Commodore-Amiga's vision combined with Commodore's business skills and it's very clear what works in the real world.
If you're interested in spending your hard earned money on things Amigan, we suggest you spend it on the Real Thing.