AMIGA
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AMIGA
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On Saturday, April 1, 2000, in conjunction with the Amiga 2K show in Saint Louis, Bill McEwen, president of Amiga, met with a group of official members from Amiga users' groups. The meeting was arranged by the Users Group Network (UGN). The complete text may be found at http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/A2KUGN.html McEwen was open, honest and optimistic.
The following is extracted aut of statements of Bill McEwen at this neeting concerning the present and future situation of Amiga. The statements themselves are not confirmed completely yet.
One of the things which McEwen discussed was the fact that Fletcher Haug, formally of the Amiga Informer and Amazing Amiga is now the editor of Amiga World. This is not the Amiga World that we all remember, from IDG Communications. Instead, this Amiga World will be the official publication of the Amiga company. It will focus on real news, not rumors. In particular, it will serve as a vehicle for Amiga to make official announcements about products and plans. This will be it's central function, and it will not, for example, offer tutorials. In time, if this function becomes less pressing, the publication will focus on the needs of third party developers.
Plans for Amiga World include distribution through the users groups and with each new Amiga sold. Amiga World will be available online in both an html format, and a downloadable printable format. Amiga World will also contain a listing of all other Amiga magazines. Amiga World will not be directly in competition with the present Amiga magazines, and will allow other magazines to fill in more complete details after official announcements.
There are currently two micro breweries bidding on the rights to produce Boing Beer.
McEwen was asked about the possibility of the Amiga company providing financial support to help the users groups stay afloat. He offered one avenue, which is that Amiga will be willing on occasion to take out advertising space in club newsletters. He advised interested newsletter editors to send e-mail to kari@amiga.com, with the subject line "Advertising Request". Kari will be the main contact at Amiga for users groups.
McEwen stated that within a quarter of a year, there would be 76 people working at Amiga.
The developer system shall be sold for a price of 750 US-$ (approx. 862.07 Euros) (excl. monitor), which is less than AMIGAs production costs.
McEwen talked about the fact that Amiga would also be willing to provide sponsorship for youth sports teams in conjunction with local users groups, just to get the Amiga name back into the public eye.
In the June/July time frame, McEwen promised there would be a "user's group tour". A high ranking representative from Amiga--possibly McEwen, Fleecy, or Randy Hughes--will visit each of the local user's groups.
Amiga is working together with their dealers to make the Amiga 1200 retail for less than US-$200 (approx. 229.89 Euros). Unfortunately, there is no design database left for the Amiga 1200. When the current stock of A1200s is depleted, there can be no more. There are 17,000 A1200s left in Amiga's inventory, but only 1,000 of those are NTSC.
At the US-$200 (approx. 229.89 Euros) price point, Amiga is loosing money on the A1200's, but they want to keep the community as strong as possible for the launch of the new product. An A1200 with a PPC accelerator will be able to run the new Amiga OS.
The dearth of PPC accelerators for the Amiga was also discussed. McEwen stated that Amiga is working very closely with MetaBox to produce the new AmiJoe PPC accelerator for the A1200, and that this accelerator was assured of being able to run the new OS. McEwen also stated that Amiga was working with MetaBox to bring the price of this accelerator in at under US-$200 (approx. 229.89 Euros). Where possible, Amiga is now working with third party developers to help drive the cost of third party products down.
Amiga is also working closely with DCE, who acquired the rights to produce Phase 5's old designs. McEwen said that among steps they would take would be to guarantee runs for third parties like DCE. The DCE accelerators are also certain to run the new OS when it arrives.
Because of the situation with the Amiga custom chip sets and the impending arrival of the new machine, Amiga will pursue no new development on the current platform. But, a properly accelerated classic Amiga can be used in conjunction with the new OS. The main reason that the new OS will not run on a 68K is that Motorola is an investor in Tao, Amiga's OS partner. Motorola is attempting to move all of their customers away from the 68K family of processors, and has told Tao not to develop their OS for the 68K.
Unofficially, the new Amiga may arrive by the end of summer 2000. When it is released, the goal is to have more applications available concurrent with system release than for the release of any other new platform in history. By the end of the year, there are 127 applications projected to be released for the new machine.
McEwen said that the announcement of Sun's partnership with Amiga this weekend almost included a video with McNealy (Sun's CEO). That is how excited Sun is about working with Amiga.
Sun's interest can also be seen in their cooperation in helping to make important documentation available for the new platform. As pointed out elsewhere, Java will be a cornerstone of the new Amiga architecture. There will be books made available at cost to people interested in Java development on the new Amiga, in conjunction with Sun and IDG.
In addition, Sun has donated two tickets to Java1, a developer's conference to be held this summer. These tickets will be raffled off to the user's community, probably through the user's groups. The tickets are valued at US-$3500 (approx. 4022.99 Euros) each.
Sun is also attempting to establish contact between local Sun reps and Amiga user's groups. In addition to Sun, Red Hat and Corel were about to be announced as Amiga partners.
Scala will be made available for the new Amiga as well as Real Audio, video and jukebox. When the new machine will be revealed, Quicktime and other multi media formats are expected to be completed.
To satisfy your curiosity, Jim Collas has a technological incubator at the westcoast of the US, which is not linked to Amiga in a way. His partners are some people, he formerly worked with at Gateway. Currently, Jim Collas is in *no way* linked to Amiga.
McEwen said, that he never would release a word processor or any other application. He determined that Amiga would never compete with third Amiga developers or the Amiga base.
McEwen confided that he spent US-$4.5 million (approx. 5.17 million Euros) to buy Amiga. This money was provided by venture capitalists, who now own 30% of the company. McEwen and his two partners--Fleecy Moss and Randy Hughes--own the other 70%. The VC analysts have placed the value of the company at US-$250 million (approx. 287.36 million Euros). McEwen was asked if we should be careful about keeping these plans within the community, which we had heard from someone else who recently stood at the helm of Amiga. The real question was do we have to worry about Microsoft.
His response was "I'm not worried about Microsoft. Microsoft represents no competition to us. We will have one OS that can run on everything from a cell phone to a server. No one else has that." McEwen pointed out that Cisco, whose only product is Internet routers, is now worth more than Microsoft, according to the value of outstanding stock. McEwen stated this indicates that the investment community believes that the PC is on it's way out, and that the future is in connecting devices together.
McEwen said that those who have been with the Amiga for a long time understood what it could have been. That is why they are still valuable as the Amiga moves forward. McEwen pointed out that he and his partners are the first owners of the Amiga who don't do anything else but Amiga. McEwen made an analogy for the original Amiga users, stating that "the earliest pioneers are the ones who got the arrows in the back".
(Source: http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/A2KUGN.html)
