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Achim Stegeman, Author of the well known Astronomy program Digital Almanac, has expressed his thoughts about the new operating system update AmigaOS3.9 in a very detailed article.
»PREFACE
This article in not a review of the the new AmigaOS 3.9. This article reveals the newest accomplishments from Haage & Partner (H&P) and Amiga Inc. in a whole different light.
In the official media , such as print magazines - AmigaOS 3.9 has already since last October been - and especially after its official release in Cologne in December , celebrated as a major improvement over the existing AmigaOS. Where were the critical comments? Where were the articles and opinions that a critical look behind the new AmigaOS 3.9? They simply did not exist. Only in a few of the listservs were there any real critical opinions being voiced - which naturally fuel many heated discussions on these lists.
I myself participated in these discussions and would like to now present AmigaOS 3.9 from a different view - away from the non-critical and pandering articles of the last few months.
THE FIRST IMPRESSION
On the outside totally irrelevant, only what`s inside counts. So, I took the CD out of the package and placed it into the CD-Rom. I was at first very happily surprised to see 470MB as compared to the measily 100MB that the predecessor AmigaOS 3.5 has. However quantity does not mean quality . At least next to the already from OS 3.5 known icons there is an additional audio track. a look at the cover reveals that once again the Amiga group Annex is involved.
INSTALLATION
Well look at that! The update to OS 3.9 (OS3.5 was already installed) went as smooth as silk! That is in itself should be considered a new miracle, if you remember what kind of problems the installation of OS3.5 caused many of us.
Even the creation of the Emergency-Disk went without a hitch. Unlike the Emergency-Disk from OS3.5 this one really earns the name. It seems that H&P have learned from thier mistakes of the last year and have made the necessary corrections.
In conclusion to this subject, let it be noted that the installation of all other components went just as smoothly.
NO NEWS FROM THE FRONT
As last October the new AmigaOS 3.9 was announced it became quickly clear that this update was not going to be a "revolution" for the classic Amiga - not even a tremor of one. With this in mind we were all quite anxious to see what H&P would serve us this time. With OS 3.5 the front was clearly marked: WarpOS as the new PPC interface, elimination of the 4GB barrier for hard drives, a new icon system, new gadget class GUI system (Reaction). With OS 3.9 it quickly became evident that these features could not be trumped. Modesty is the word here.
The one program on the OS3.9 CD for which we all seemed to have the most hopes for was Genesis - which should allow us Amigans (finally) an easy and unlimited access to the internet.
However the first start of Genesis shows the first long shadows in the light of the new. The preferences program for Genesis would not start. A short look using Snoopdos revealed that H&P simply forgot to include the required external MUI-class on the CD. How embarrassing! At least within minutes the missing file was located and downloaded from the internet and Genesis worked without further problems. How nice, however that makes it quite difficult for those of us that wanted to use Genesis to get on the internet. These users get put into a Catch-22 position: Without the Internet no functioning Genesis , but without Genesis no fuctioning Internet. Well, H&P that was a shot in the dark! So, one has to first install Miami from OS3.5 (Luckily it is on the OS3.9 CD!) and so on and so forth. You pretty much know the rest...
As I looked even closer at OS 3.9 I slowly got a wierd feeling. No, it was not the trailer from "Jurasic Park 3" in the video drawer on the CD that got me in that state - I had a wierd sense of "Deja vu" crawling down the back of my neck. Haven`t I seen all this before? The more I looked at OS 3.9, the more I got the feeling that that I bought wrongly labeled salami with beef. Did I buy by mistake an Aminet CD? Amplifier, MooVid, Deficons, RAWBinfo as so forth...I already had all of this stuff. Where are the new features? Are Genesis, Iomega-tools and Amidock the extent of the new features? In any event nothing new. If you disregard the system updates and Genesis then the CD is nothing more than a collection of Aminet programs. I was greatly disappointed. Nothing against the quality of the named programs, no they are fine! Why though does it have to be these programs? Is Amplifier really that much better than AmigaAMP? Is MooVid better than AMP or CyberQT/CyberAVI, and why only the 68K version? Where is the MPEG player? A new Clock! How nice..., but do I really need a clock on the Workbench? To my right on a shelf I have one standing there. What do I need a clock for? Why not include the PPC version of MooVid? Were there once again negotiating problems between H&P and the author ( such as there were with Holger Kruse with Miami on OS 3.5!)? I almost forgot. Where is the PPC support? Is the new picture datatype the only system component that supports PPC? I could have gone out and bought an AmigaPlus-CD for 20DM (roughly $10). You find those kind of programs there too. Only the internet is cheaper with a few downloads from Aminet. There fore I payed DM89 for an Aminet CD with Genesis as a full version. To put it mildly, I feel that I have been taken to the cleaners. Please excuse my being so direct, but I can not cover up my feelings.
"NURSE, SCALPEL PLEASE!"
Before more radical Amigans accuse me of being selective, I would like to present here a list that looks at each component of OS3.9 and its pros and cons. The final judgement I will leave up to the reader.
Positive: Generally an update to an operating system is always a good development. H&P has brought with this update the AmigaOS (CLI Commands, Prefs, CD-Filesystem, Workbench, WarpOS for PPC an so forth) up to date with the latest available hardware. The Workbench is now much more stable. WarpOS is a bit faster (faster context switches), the Prefs programs were somewhat expanded. Most importantly the new picture-datatype with PPC support!
Negative: Somewhat bitter is the fact that the external math libraries have been changed, without any kind of comment from H&P. As a software developer, I had to discover that the new math libraries changed the averaging flags of the FPU (if available!) so that the normal averaging method (float>int) now is different. This causes noticeable miscalculations with some software (including my own) Luckily this mistake is easily corrected though a adjustment in the software, but it does leave a bitter taste.
Another point, despite the fact that the bugs of OS3.5 have been fixed, the most important fix is still missing. Making the Workbench itself multitask. We only can hope that this will be included in a boing bag for OS 3.9.
Multimedia - Programs (Action and AMPlifier)
Positive: Finally multimedia programs have been integrated into the OS.
Negative: What Amiga Inc. an thier programmers never has been able to accomplish, had to be done by hobby programmers from the shareware scene. - to write great multimedia software. Why H&P choose to select MooVid - which appears as Action in OS 3.9 and Amplifier is beyond me. AmigaAMP 2.8 is in its current version equally good, if not even better. MooVid is a fast program to play AVI and Quicktime files with GUI support, but the PPC version is still shareware. That MooVid has been intergrated into the OS in a 68K version only is saddening. The only reason I can see is the before mention licensing problems between H&P and the Author. The truth concerning this problem lies out there somewhere. H&P chose to simply ignore an important multimedia component - the MPEG player? Where is it? This is exactly where H&P could have shown what it means to write a central universal multimedia program. Where the programmers at H&P busy with something else? A single program for IFF-ANIM, Quicktime, AVI. MPEG would have been the best on the Amiga as far as multimedia and video is concerned, but lets continue dreaming then we Amigans can do that so very well.
Summary: Those of us that have access to the internet can download thier favorite player from Aminet and are nearly always better off than what the OS3.9 CD contains. Even those that do not have access to the net can get better software from the diverse shareware and Aminet CD`s that are out there. Wether or not a user prefers AmigaAMP or Amplifier, or CyberQT/AVI instead of MooVid is subject to personal preference.
AmiDock:
Positive: Easy to use program for quick starting of often used programs.
Negative: The program is nicely put together, but not very consistant in its functionality. Here the well known program ToolManager beats Amidock hands down - even when the configuration is not as easy as with Amidock. Amidock is unable to display alternative pictures for the dock icons like Toolmanager can do.
Summary: A nice, but in many points unnecessary program. "Yet Another Quickstart" would have been a better name for it - and much more realistic.
AudioCD Player:
Positive: The first CD player for the Amiga with Skin Support.
Negative: How many CD players are there now? More than enough for sure. Except for a new configurable look via skins, nothing new has happened. Audio tracks still are not played via AHI or Paula, depite the fact that it wouldn`t be all that difficult for a programmer that is versed with SCSI commands to set up an asynchronen I/O routine that would do just this. I have been waiting for that for what seems to be forever without any luck. The only alternative to this dilemma is AsimCDFS, which is the only filesystem that allows for the reading of audio tracks into a file.
Summary: Totally unnecessary in the current version.
VinceED
Positive: Finally a powerful Shell that takes a workload off of the the keyboard freaks back.
Negative: Should I be happy or should I be mad? This is the first time that the Amiga users are offered an alternative to the CON device for the shell. The original Shell is really only something for masochists. However, even here the programmers at H&P were not able to program something of thier own - they had to fall back upon the programs contained in Aminet. Is VinceED as a shell replacement really something totally new? No, already back in the Fish Disk days there was KingCON that functions beautifily. KingCON and VinceEd are both relatively equal in functionality. What surprises me is that this only recently has been discovered. KingCON is lean and very efficient and VinceED is customizable. My negative criticism is not directed toward VinceED, but to the inability of the OS3.9 programmers, within all the hectic to stay away from programs already available in Aminet.
Summary: Once again an Aminet program that is sold to us as "a new feature of OS3.9"
UnARC and XAD:
Positiive: An easy GUI to unpack many files via mouse clicks from the Workbench. Saves the user from having to input numerous shell commands and arguments. The XAD system is easy to expand and configure.
Negative: Saddening to say. no PPC support in the XAD modules! Is it really that difficult to take the source code and compile it for WarpOS?
Summary: A nice, but not consistently implemented tool.
Contributions, Audio, Video...:
Now I understand how they brought the amount of data up to 470MB! Thank you H&P, with all these theatrical trailers you have saved me a lot of download time from the internet, but was this really necessary? We all believe that MooVid is a great player program, but did it have to be 370MB worth?I believe that this space would have been much better used for things that really have something to do with the OS. The same goes for the bonus Annex audio track and the mp3 drawer. They would have been better saved for a bonus CD rather than an OS-update!Also, a "Thumbs-down" for the contribution drawer on the CD. Either there are programs here that only a few will really benefit from, or they can easily be downloaded from Aminet or other nearly all Amigans known servers.
Total Mystery: AHI V5 and WarpOS V5. Sadly I once again seem to be going blind. I searched long and hard in the AHI V5 documentation about the new features in comparison to V4. Too bad, I wasn`t able to fin anything. Were any of you readers able to find something?
Marketing Genius?
After my blood pressure and andernalin level finally sank back to normal levels I contemplated for hours about "Why?".
In diverse listservs, IRC channels, my Amiga club and with others I have discussed and argued the pros and cons of OS3.9. These brought opinions to light that could hardly be more diverse. . From "Super" to "Fraud" everything under the sun was represented. I took all these positions in and compiled some of my own thoughts, that I would like to share with the Amiga community.
After a total silence for seven years in the area of Amiga-operating system updates, Amiga INC. in cooperation with H&P announced a new overhauled OS for the Amiga which will include new technologies concerning Graphics cards, Accelerators and SCSI/ATAPI (HD, CD. etc...). This was AmigaOS 3.5.
I was much more surprised to when I heard last October about the update to OS3.5. Was it the long awaited Boing Bag2, that was supposed to fix the last remaining bugs in OS 3.5? It quickly became clear that it is a commercial update to OS3.5 with "new Features". No Boing Bag 2, the wallet needed to be reached into again. The suspense was huge and everyone was looking toward H&P wondering what secrets they have been keeping from us all. One thing however was a bit strange. For seven years there was silence and now all of a sudden there are two major OS updates within a single year. What was going on? Amiga Inc. has - under thier new plan basically abandoned the classic Amiga platform and are concentrating on the AmigaONE on the basis of PC standard hardware - with a small disclaimer to not totally forget the classic Amiga.
Was there a sudden magnonomous or sympathetic force driving this push of the classic Amiga`s operating system?How is one to interperate the release of two OS updates within a single year? In the first instance one nearly jumps like a child on Christmas day , but after a second glance a few inconsistencies become evident like a high sales price and the rushed programming of OS 3.9 and other things.
With all possible interpretations one thing remains constant. No company develops a product out of sheer sympathy, but with the idea of generating a profit. Amiga Inc. and H&P were also convinced that the sales of OS3.9 would do just that, so that in the end a satisfactory profit would be achieved.
If one looks at the contents of the CD, it soon becomes clear that the actual development investment for OS 3.9 was rather minimal. No wonder, since you just take the source code to all OS 3.5 programs - fix some bugs and add a feature here and a feature there and there you go - a finished OS3.9. To round off the whole thing you add a bunch of Aminet programs and declare them as "New Features" and fill the rest of the CD with audio and video so that it doesn`t appear so empty.
If you take into account all the arguments that were raised in the discussions then I have reach the following possible answers to the question "Why"?.
1.) H&P needs money. It seems that H&P doesn`t generate enough income from thier Amiga products to continue normal operations. So, they need a "new" product that they are sure of that will sell a few thousand times. An OS update is perfect for this.
2.) Amiga Inc. wants to know how much of a user base is still interested in the classic Amiga, to determine if the further development to a PPC OS is worth the effort. Especially the statement from Fleecy Moss stating that only with a significantly large sale of OS3.9 will a PPC-OS be considered. His statement makes this possibility a very realistic one.
3.) Unlikely, but prefered by many Amigans, simply because it is what they want to hear, is the "official" reason for OS3.9. Development continued to show that the classic Amiga line - despite its age, still is a super product (even if it isn`t competitive anymore).
Final Summary:
In its current form this new OS doesn`t deserve the "3.9" label. Are we really a decimal point away from a PPC-OS? Hardly. The "9" has more a rin of finality to it - "So, that was it Amiga". That was that. Generate one more time a bit of money, and then that`s it. In no way does it deserve "3.9", more like "3.6".
So what is OS3.9? This question is also in my mind answered. You can refer to it as a "commercial Boing Bag 2 for OS 3.5" or as an "Aminet CD with an OS 3.5 update and Genesis full version". That any ways is how OS3.9 was presented to me and it isn`t worth the 89,- DM I paid.The only really worthwhile product is Genesis and even the price of 89,- DM for that is questionable. In my opinion a definite, "NO"! Not much has happened except bug-fixes to OS3.5. Nothing worthwhile has changed.
As I, just for the heck of it - looked at the in January released Boing Bag2 for OS 3.5 I noticed many similarities. Many system files of OS3.9 still have a 44 series version number - the identical version numbers that are in Boing Bag2 for OS 3.5. In hindsight I could have saved the money for OS3.9 and spent 10 Pfennig (about 5 cents) to download Boing Bag 2 and kept using OS3.5. The rest of OS 3.9 is in Aminet and other diverse websites.
What further saddened me was the inadequate implementation of various OS3.9 components. Often the programmers stopped just when things could have gotten interesting (e.g. the CD Player), or the PPC support is totally missing. Only the picture datatype has received PPC support. With other programs, where it was definately more needed nothing was done. The reasoning behind this is beyond me.Doesn`t H&P use thier own StormC - compiler with which one can easily write WarpOS programs? Can`t the authors of the XAD - library write any PPC modules? To name a few: JPEG-, GIF-, ILBM-Datatypes (missing PPC decoding) and the important XAD modules for LHA, LZX, ZIP, BZIP, and GZIP. OS3.9 will not have any positive effect on the sales of PPC boards.
One question still remains in my mind. When did H&P start with the development for OS3.9? It couldn`t have been very long ago, because it is evident that it was very quickly thrown together. If they would have taken a bit more time and listened to what the Amiga users want/need then they would have definately presented us with a much better product.
The only amigans that in my opinion really have to benefit from OS3.9 are those that do not have access to the internet - have not been using the Amiga for so very long and therefore don`t yet have the knowledge of the Amiga scene, and thier only way of getting new data is via CD`s. For all the rest of us, the cheaper variant is OS3.5 & BB2. I myself am an avid Amiga user since 1987. Hardy ever has such an important software update dissapointed me as much as OS3.9. Looking at the price versus value of OS3.9 I feel I have been duped by Amiga Inc. and H&P. I will remain true to my "girlfriend", for the hardware isn`t responsible for the software that runs on it, but as far as future releases from Amiga Inc. and H&P for the classic Amiga are concerned I have lost all confidence.
I can only hope that the new AmigaONE can win that confidence back.
Achim Stegemann <achimste@gmx.de>
Translator: Jerry Withers <amiga@mediaone.net>«
Translators notes:
I personally know Achim and have to say that I believe him to be quite right with his comments, I just felt that I should add a few comments of my own.
When I first heard of OS3.9 I was not really expecting more that the awaited BB2 for OS 3.5. My expectaions were not very high for OS3.9. As Achim article demonstrates I was right in that respect. Including a bunch of Aminet software does not make a new OS...
For me the important thing that all other platforms have, and the Amiga has long been lacking is the creation of an OS baseline. - meaning the minimum that all of use Amigans have on our harddrives to ensure that a program installed on one machine will work just as well on another. OS 2.0 over version 1.3 was a huge step and created a baseline from which everyone worked upon - it was badly needed then as was OS 3.5 badly needed when it came out. Both OS2.0 and OS3.5 raised the bar and drove development - both commercial and shareware/freeware in a new forward direction.
OS3.9 had a great opportunity to raise the bar even further, however in most regards it failed in this. Instead of raising the bar a big step, it crept up a notch not really deserving of the name "OS3.9".
Most of the real concrete features of OS 3.9 are basically in bugfixes and the most important change - making the Workbench multitask was prepared for, but still left out to hopefully be included in a Boing Bag. For me personally, If this is released then OS3.9 despite all the things it lacks will be worth it.
