Various news

8. AMIGA AKTUELL Special from April 7, 1999

+++ AaktInt special +++ AaktInt special +++ AaktInt special +++

OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY (07-Apr-99)
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»April 1999

This is my first open letter to the Amiga community. In many ways, I am
honored by the opportunity to address such a great community of people and
represent such a unique brand as Amiga. There are many remarkable Amigans,
both former and current, that are responsible for Amiga's impressive
products and its spirit of revolutionary innovation. These are the people
that created the Amiga phenomena and the people that persevered through
these tough times. Amiga communities from across the world have kept the
Amiga spirit alive. I can't claim any responsibility for the early success
of Amiga or the current endurance. I can only praise the people responsible
and hope that I can help bring a new era of greatness to Amiga and fulfill
the hopes of the Amiga community.

The St. Louis show a few weeks ago was the first Amiga show I attended as
president of Amiga. From the feedback I have received, the show was a great
success. The show was well organized with good attendance and was also a
lot of fun. The number of people who attended was approximately 1,200 but
more important is the fact that there was a 14% increase in attendance from
last year. I made my debut as president of Amiga and I want to thank
everyone who welcomed me to the community. I especially want to thank those
who welcomed me until 3:00 a.m. in the morning and taught me that Amigans
really know how to have fun. You know who you are.

In St. Louis, I had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time
with people in the Amiga community. Several times during the show, I
publicly made the statement that the Amiga community is the greatest
community in the computer industry. I am now more convinced of this than
ever. The Amiga community is the most innovative, dedicated, heroic and
enduring community in the computer industry. I am amazed at what the
community has done with little or no support from a corporate entity. You
have endured through extremely tough times and kept the spirit of Amiga
alive and strong.

Unfortunately, some of the difficulties the Amiga community has endured in
the last two years stem from some misguided decisions made by Amiga Inc. It
is now obvious to me that some very big mistakes were made in defining a
path for Amiga in the last two years. The low priority and support given to
Amiga by our parent company, Gateway, aggravated this situation. Gateway
was preoccupied during this period with significant internal restructuring
to strengthen its core business for the future. The intentions relative to
Amiga were good but the situation was mismanaged. Some people have told me
that I should stop talking about past mistakes and only look toward the
future. I agree with this but I also want people to clearly understand that
I realize how much our past mistakes have hurt the community and delayed
progress. This is important because I do not want to repeat these mistakes
so be patient as I discuss this one last time.

In my opinion, the biggest mistake was the decision not to evolve the
current Amiga architecture as we developed the next generation. This hurt
the current Amiga community the most. The right decision would have been to
overlap product generations just as Apple did during the Apple II to
Macintosh transition. Apple evolved the Apple II architecture by
introducing the Apple III even after Apple came out with the Mac. The Apple
III wasn't a big seller but it helped Apple II hardware and software
companies and allowed them time to transition their products to the new Mac
platform.

In hindsight and from the vantage of the Amiga community, not evolving the
current architecture may look like an incredibly stupid mistake but it was
not as obvious to people coming from the PC industry. I am not trying to
justify this flawed decision but to give some insight as to how such a
decision could be made. Living in a computer industry dominated by Wintel
PCs skewed the thinking of people making this decision. In a computer
industry dominated by Wintel PCs, computers are obsolete within six to
twelve months. The inefficiency of the architecture requires a continuous
upgrading of CPUs, graphics, and storage devices in order to deliver
acceptable improvements in features and functions. This is what happens in
an industry where revolutionary innovation has been replaced by constrained
evolution. From this PC centric view, no one could imagine that a computer
architecture that stopped evolving in the early '90s could have any life
left in it. Obviously this view was very limited and flawed as the Amiga
community has proven over-and-over again how much life was left in the
current Amiga architecture.

It is obvious that the community would currently be stronger if we had made
the decision two years ago to evolve the current Amiga architecture. Two
years have now passed and we are faced with a tough question. Is there
still life left in the current architecture? I believe that there is. The
release of O/S 3.5 in late July or early August will allow the current
architecture to live on for a few more years. In addition to O/S 3.5 we are
looking at supporting companies that are looking at hardware enhancements
to the current architecture. We will also support emulation of the current
Amiga architecture on the next generation Amiga so that people can use most
of their old software. I am spending time with key people in the Amiga
community to finalize transition plans between the current Amiga and the
next generation.

Now, it's time to talk about the future! I know this has been an extremely
difficult and painful period for the Amiga community but I would like to
put that chapter of the Amiga story behind us and look toward the future.
We have a difficult road ahead of us with many important decisions to be
made on our future plans. I will not make the mistake again of not
understanding the Amiga community, its requirements, and its dynamics. St
Louis was a good start for me but I require even more input to better
understand the situation. As all of you know, the Amiga community is very
strong in Europe with many Amiga companies and extremely impressive
individuals. I am planning a trip to Germany and the U.K. in late April to
meet with more leaders in the Amiga community. The objective of my trip is
partially to communicate our current thinking but mostly to listen and
understand. I want to understand the opinions of prominent people in the
Amiga community. I will use this input to finalize our future architecture
and plans. I especially need help in planning out how we will transition
from the old architecture to the new architecture in such a way that keeps
the Amiga community healthy.

One thing clearly requested by the Amiga community was BETTER COMMUNICATION
on the activities at Amiga. I promise to improve our communication starting
with this letter and continuing with frequent postings on our Web site as
well as increased interaction with the community. Our participation in the
St. Louis show and my upcoming trip to Germany and the U.K. are good
examples of our efforts in this area. The letter you are currently reading
is posted on our Web site in the new "Executive Update" section that I will
personally be updating on a monthly basis. In this section you will also
find an update on major activities listed after the monthly letter to the
community. I think this is a good start and we will continue improving our
communication as we go forward. If you have any input on my executive
update web page or on how to improve our communication please send your
suggestions via email to executive@amiga.com. You can also send email to me
directly at jim.collas@amiga.com but I get significant amounts of email so
it may take me a few days to respond. The executive@amiga.com email address
goes to my assistant who in turn directs the email to the Amiga executive
that can most effectively reply.

I know that I have yet to prove my dedication or win your confidence but I
hope to do so over the coming months. As many of you already know, I
stepped out of a senior executive position with Gateway that was a very
prominent position in the PC industry to lead Amiga. I did this because I
believe strongly in what Amiga stands for. I believe in the Amiga spirit of
revolutionary innovation. I believe that the PC revolution is over because
innovative revolution has been replaced by constrained evolution. I believe
that there is a new computer revolution on the horizon, one that will
fulfill the promise of bringing the power of computing to the masses. Most
importantly, I believe that Amiga will play a significant role in this new
computer revolution. But Amiga can't do this without the full support of
the Amiga community. The Amiga community is one of the greatest and most
innovative communities in the computer industry. It is a revolutionary army
waiting to strike and reclaim its prominent position in the computer
industry. I truly believe this from the depths of my heart and I promise to
use all of my experience, resources, industry contacts, and energy to give
Amiga a strong and aggressive push. I hope I will not let you down.

Let's keep the momentum going as we come back for the future.

Sincerely,
Jim Collas
President, Amiga«

(Source: AMIGA)

UPDATE ON MAJOR ACTIVITIES (07-Apr-99)
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»April 1999

Operations/Planning:

1) We have combined Amiga, Inc and Amiga Intl under a single corporate
entity. The name of the new company is simply Amiga. Amiga Intl is a
subsidiary of Amiga and will remain in Germany under Petro's leadership. As
part of this we have combined our Web sites into a single Web site.
2) We have secured funding for a significant budget to drive our plans.
3) Our executive headquarters have been moved to San Diego.
4) We are opening up San Jose engineering facilities to support our rapid
engineering expansion.

New Staff:

1) In February we officially hired Dr. Allan Havemose as VP of S/W
engineering.
2) In February we also hired Jim Von Holle as VP of OEM Sales and
marketing.
3) Allan has hired Richard Lipes from Silicon Graphics as a director of S/W
engineering for graphics and A/V.
4) Within 2 weeks I will announce a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and
VP of advanced technology (you will be impressed) as well as a new VP of
finance and operations (you will be impressed again).
5) In the next few weeks we will begin advertising in major newspapers to
recruit engineering resources for our San Jose facility.

Major Development Programs:

1) O/S 3.5 - This product is being developed by Haage & Partner under
contract from Amiga. The target release date is late July or early August.
We will also be talking to Amiga hardware development companies about
possibilities for hardware products targeted at the O/S 3.5 release.
2) AmigaSoftTM Operating Environment (OE) - We are developing our next
generation operating environment including operating system, user
interface, and some revolutionary software structures to be disclosed at a
later date. Target beta version is 3Q99 with final in late 4Q99.
3) Next generation hardware architecture - Being developed as a foundation
for all next generation Amiga products.
4) AmigaSoftTM development system - This is planned in 3Q99 along with the
beta release of the new AmigaSoftTM Operating Environment.
5) Initial next generation computer - We are developing the next generation
computer that will be used to launch the next generation systems
architecture and operating environment. Target release date is late 4Q99.

Shows and Community Activities:

1) Amiga had a strong presence at the St. Louis show. We also spent a
significant amount of time talking to leaders in the Amiga community.
2) I am planning a trip to Germany and the U.K. in late April in order to
discuss future Amiga plans with leaders of the Amiga community in Europe.
Petro is coordinating this.
3) We are working on supporting and getting finalized plans for a 1999
World of Amiga show in London.
4) We are planning for the Cologne show in November.
5) We are planning for the Las Vegas Comdex in November.
6) Petro is developing reseller, distributor, and magazine support programs
to help the Amiga community.
7) We are also working on some user group support programs.«

(Source: AMIGA)

Now there is a photo of Jim Collas available, it is attached to this mail.
Also new is the biography of the AMIGA president:

»Jim Collas

President

James P. Collas, President, Amiga.

Jim was appointed president of Amiga on January 20th, 1999. Prior to
joining Amiga, Jim was senior vice president of global products for
Gateway, one of the world's leading PC suppliers. In this position Jim was
responsible for the planning, development, procurement, and management of
all Gateway products worldwide. He aggressively expanded Gateway's product
line to include consumer desktops, enterprise desktops, notebooks,
servers, workstations, convergence computers, software products, and
Internet services. Jim joined Gateway in June of 1992 as a director of
engineering and was promoted through the years leading to his final
position starting in early 1996. Before joining Gateway, Jim was the
president of Anigma, Inc., a PC industry product engineering company that
he founded in 1987. Prior to this, Jim spent several years designing
hardware peripheral products for the IBM PC, Apple II, and Apple Macintosh
computers. He started his career developing video games for a software
contractor in Santa Monica, California. Jim received a B.S. degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles in
1984.«

(Source: AMIGA)

Titan presents new G3/G4 board (07-Apr-99)
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»TITAN COMPUTER proudly presents

the new Twister G3/G4 PPC Project

The Story so far....

The Twister G3/G4 project for Amiga 1200 is a cooperation between ACT
(Apollo), Haage and Titan Computers.

The new Motorala G3/G4 PPC-Cpu`s open a new world of speed and creativty
for A1200 users. With a Twister PPC board the Amiga 1200 will play again
in champions-league of powerful computer systems. Old 68k times are over a
new RISC-CPU era has begun.

Due to Haage 68k emulation which is fit in a 2MB Flashrom the Twister-PPC
board reaches a 100% compatiblity to old 68xxx CPU`s.
The emulation is powerful enough to reach the speed of an 68060 Cpu on a
300Mhz G3 turbo board. Furthermore the Twister PPC-board has 2 local
PCI-Slots with each 100 mhz bus clock
The Slots are suitable for a 2d/3d graphic board on RivaTnT2 basis and for
Ultra-Wide-SCSI-controller
The Twister boards will need a lot of space therefore it could only fit in
a Amiga 1200 tower system

Specifications:
- G3/G4 PPC-board with 300 - 450 MHz
- 2 local PCI-Slots with each 100 Mhz Bus clock
- 2 Ram slot for upto 512MB SD-Ram, also clocked with 100MHz
- 512 kb 2nd Level Cache
- 2MB Flashrom for BIOS and 68k emulation
suggested retail price for G3 300Mhz version DM 1100.- (incl. 16% local
taxes)

Expansion boards:

Twister-Vision

- 2D/3D graphic board with 8MB SG-Ram, upgradeable to 16MB
- Riva TNT2 graphic chip
- Amigasignal will be passed through the gfx-board. No Monitor switcher or
something else needed
suggested retail price DM 349.- (incl. 16% local taxes)

Twister-SCSI

- UW-SCSI-controller
- upto 20MB/sec transfer rate
- DVD-Support
suggested retail price DM 249.- (incl. 16% local taxes)

Release date 4. quarter 1999«

(Source: Titan Computer)

AaktInt homepages: http://www.mediaspace.net/amigaaktuell and
http://www.vmc.de/aakt

+++ AaktInt special +++ AaktInt special +++ AaktInt special +++