Where Are We?

by Ron Schwartz
AmiTech Dayton Gazette, June 2005

The world is an interesting place. You can never predict just what is going to happen. If you remember my article last month I was asking if anyone had seen either of the Amiga magazines currently available in English, Amiga Forever or Future Amiga. We no sooner had printed the newsletter than a copy of Amiga Forever arrived in the mail. They had interviewed Eric a while back and sent him a copy of the issue it was included in. It seems to be a pretty good magazine. The biggest disadvantage I see with it is that it is only published quarterly. Some of the news it carries is two to three months old, so that most people will have seen it ad infinitum on the internet by then. Although, as you might suspect, they cover the news in more detail than you usually see it on the net. As an example, there is a 3/4 page article in this issue entitled "Good-bye KMOS." It started with how KMOS had purchased the rights to Amiga OS, as reported in a previous issue, then went on to discuss KMOS' purchase of Amiga Inc., changing its name to Amiga Inc. Amiga.com finally being updated and its concentration on marketing Amiga Anywhere, it reiterates Amiga Inc.'s continuing agreement with Hyperion and Eyetech and an indication of big plans for the Amiga OS in the future. Overall, it does do a good job of covering things on the Classic Amiga, Amiga One/OS4 and Pegasos/Morph systems. Now, how about the other one, Future Amiga? Has anyone seen or heard anything about that one? Actually, that's just a veiled invitation for them to send me a copy of that one too. Well, it worked once, why not again?

Once again, there's not a lot to report with regard to what is going on in the overall Amiga Community. What little news I have found recently is not very good. On the Amiga.org web site are a couple notices about statements that have been made recently by Alan Redhouse of Eyetech regarding the Amiga One motherboards. In the one statement he announced that a new batch of the Micro Amiga One boards would be shipped to dealers, "shortly." The other item indicated that Amigaworld had posted 20 questions for Redhouse on the future of the Amiga One motherboard. The article on Amiga.org didn't include the questions or Redhouse's specific responses, only general comments about them and, of course, the discussion in the comments section. Wayne Hunt, one of Amiga.org's moderators wrote a condensed synopsis of Redhouse's answers. What it boiled down to was that Redhouse's responses seemed to be interpreted as meaning, in the current environment, the long term outlook for the Amiga One was not very good. There seem to be a number of factors involved. Obviously, the fact that nearly ten years elapsed from the demise of Commodore before a marketable new Amiga was available and the delay beyond that before OS4 was available means the Amiga Community, which would be the primary market, has nearly disappeared. The appearance of the Pegasos/Morph system has further divided the already small potential market. As a result, I went to the Amigaworld web site to see what he actually said.

My impression before that had been that he dodged the questions or gave such broad answers they didn't mean anything. When I actually read his answers to the questions, he was pretty specific but, unfortunately, what he said was not at all encouraging. He, basically, stated that without Eyetech the Amiga One and OS4 would not exist. Apparently neither Eyetech nor Hyperion were fully aware of what they were getting into when they were recruited by Amiga Inc. Amiga Inc. was out of money and could not afford development of OS4. Redhouse helped broker the deal with Hyperion so that they would develop OS4 at no cost to Amiga Inc. and they would retain all the profits from its sale. On several occasions, however, because there were more problems than they anticipated, Hyperion ran into financial problems and were bailed out by Eyetech. Because sales of the Amiga One are so small, it is not profitable for Eyetech. When people complain that Eyetech's priorities are wrong and sometimes Amiga Ones are not available, you must remember that their first priority must be to do what is necessary to remain economically viable. While big companies like General Motors may lose millions of dollars in the short term and survive, small companies cannot. If Eyetech were to go under, it is highly doubtful that anyone else would pick up production and sales of the Amiga One, at least without substantial financial support from Amiga Inc. At this point, does anyone know what Amiga Inc.'s current financial situation is? I think Eyetech is owed a big vote of thanks by the Amiga Community.

As far as other news, there are a few things of interest:

The one other item of interest that appeared recently is the decision by Apple to convert their systems to the Intel X86 series CPUs. The major question this raises is, how will it affect the Amiga Community. It could mean more PPC CPUs available for Amiga One and Pegasos -- even potential upgrades to G5. On the other hand it could mean such a reduction in the market for PPCs that they may disappear. I don't know what applications the current PPCs are utilized for other than Apple's Macs, Amiga One and Pegasos. Whether or not they have a broader range of applications will make the difference as to whether they continue to be available for the applications we want. At this point, all I can say is keep your fingers crossed.