No News
by Ron Schwartz
AmiTech-Dayton Gazette, June 2004
Let's hope that no news is good news. I have seen very little about Amiga that I consider news lately. I have to admit that, currently, I do not often look at the Amiga Web Sites that I used to check daily. New news was appearing so seldom I would often see the same things for days in a row. So now I just check them now and then. It also seems that when there is news, it refers to something that is a total unknown to me. I'm not sure if that means that I have very limited experience with the Amiga or that there is so little going on that what is going on is limited to very peripheral things. Probably the most surprising thing is that, since the announcement in March that KMOS/Garry Hare had purchased control of development and marketing of the Amiga One and 0S-4, they seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. The major problem is that, if the Amiga One/OS-4 and/or the Pegasos/Morph Systems are to be successful, they must expand their marketing far beyond what is left of the old Amiga Community. Of course the continued unavailability of OS-4 significantly hampers the potential marketing of the Amiga System. It appears that many of those who have purchased the Amiga One boards have become beta testers for OS-4, which will probably hamper its market when it is finally available.
My impression is that there are more active Amiga dealers left in Europe, which has helped sales there. The LINUX community continues to grow and is a potential market for the Amiga One. At this point, however, there does not appear to be a significant marketing effort aimed at either the Amiga or LINUX communities. Genesi, on the other hand, does appear to have a more organized marketing effort underway, although they have been slow about getting representatives established to carry it out in this country. They have realized the need for broader marketing. Currently, they are organizing separate marketing programs to target both the Amiga and LINUX communities. They are also aiming at those involved with the developing family of Amiga-like OSs. Within the Amiga Community, I don't know how typical AmiTech is, but our members have been slow to commit to the new systems. Three have done so and all have purchased Pegasos. We currently have no Amiga One owners.