The following is a followup to the Phase 5's response to Haage & Partner's WarpUp article and was obtained from Phase 5's web site. So read on.

Unfortunately, the public discussion about the Warpup product from Haage&Partner and the position of phase 5 digital products concerning this software has cast a shadow over the fact that with the introduction of the PowerUp product series the probably most significant innovation of the last years has taken place in the Amiga market, and that due to the intensive efforts, investment and cooperation of phase 5 and software vendors all over the world a new generation of powerful software applications is coming up in the very near future.

We have received many supporting opinions and emails regarding the Warpup discussion, but also mails from Amiga users who expressed their concern about a possible negative outcoming from the conflict between Haage&Partner and phase 5. Some of those felt that our open rejection has been too massive or emotional, an opinion that has been encouraged by the statement of Haage&Partner which accuses us of "aggressive attacks".

It is true that our first statement was very frank and direct, as it has been a copy of a posting in an internet newsgroup, where sources close to Haage&Partner had started to support the massive promotion campaign of Haage&Partner for Warpup. It also was - in this form - a reaction on the general massive marketing campaign with which Haage&Partner - being absolutely aware of our negative attitude towards their product - took us by surprise, what we feel is a betrayal of trust in consideration of our former support for them.

Fortunately, our open criticism has led Haage&Partner to a comprehensive reply statement, in which they clearly take their stand, and which we will use a base for an open discussion about truth, fiction and suggestive allegations in their statements.

We emphasize that the comprehensive statement from Haage&Partner is not correct to a major extend, and will revert to this statement with a comprehensive answer on our website on October 14, which will especially address technical issues in-depth. As Haage&Partner accuses us of developing against the Amiga, planning to intentionally generate incompatibilities, and trying to control developments in a "dictatorial manner", we will substantiatedly make evident that

1. Haage&Partner themselves have intentionally generated a software incompatibility in order to create a competition between exclusively working products

2. the allegation that we would plan to intentionally generate incompatibilities is an interpretation of Haage&Partner, while phase 5 is only interested in making sure that the PowerUp System Software may not be disabled by third party software (which would lead to incompatibilities that can't even be completely foreseen yet; to name just one example out of many, the drivers for the upcoming Permedia2-based PowerUp graphics cards, which integrate PPC-native CyberGL 3D and MPEG/videoscaling functionality, would be disabled after a program has installed Warpup)

3. our PowerUp System Software solution is based on open and future-oriented standards, which open new options for progressive software development - without necessarily forcing developers to use these options - that can be benefical for all developers as well as any future-oriented extension or upgrade of the operating system

4. the technical explanations of Haage&Partner which refer to their own as well as our software implementation are incorrect to a great extend and indicate their fundamental misunderstanding about the functionality of the hardware

5. the allegations of Haage&Partner concerning insufficient cooperation are a biased and incorrect representation of the events and

6. by pushing their Warpup software, which in contrast to their allegations brings massive disadvantages and significantly limits the performance of the PowerUp boards, Haage&Partner themselves attempt to gain extensive control of the software development for PPC/Amiga on all levels - an attempt that is seen very critically by many developers, who do not appreciate that a vendor of development tools, application programs and system extensions (JAVA) now also wants to define the unified standard for PPC-Amiga lowlevel software.

We ask all Amiga users who follow this discussion to look forward to our upcoming comprehensive statement.