At the End

Is the new Amiga still an Amiga?

Ther can be just one answer on this question: No - of course not. Because if you think about it, there was just one Amiga - the A1000. So, as Jay Miner (and the others) created it. All later models, beginning with the A500 and A2000 to the DraCo as extreme example - were modifications unwanted by Jay Miner, which just used the same operating system and "by random" used the same operating system and (maybe) were software compatible to the original. This is what the creators might have thought about it. Let's be honest: Is our AmigaOS3.5 very much like the first version 1.0 from 1985? The look is different - and what is the percentage of the Amiga software from the first days which runs without problems on the current hardware? If you have an objective look on the last 15 years you might have encountered two or three "new" Amigas. No matter, if you link this to the versions of the operating system or to the changed computer and additional hardware. And how is this with the AmigaNG? The AmigaNG is (not) an Amiga as the current VW Golf is a Golf of the 70's or just to stay with cars, as the "New Beetle" is an old VW Beetle.

Much more important is the question asked in the beginning: MAY the new computer bear the name "Amiga"? The future will show that. But one thing is certain: The Amiga 1000 set new references when it was released and made people amazed. It offered possibilities, especially with graphics and sound, which was previously only possible with much more expensive computers.

We have to consider the changed circumstances: In the domains of the original Amiga, graphics and sound, no price can be won anymore - e.g. graphics hardware, which is put on the marked grows old, just a few months later.

No, in the next years something different will become state-of-the-art: The continous growth of networking of the most different technological devices until their merging (by using the same CPU). This requires the ability of software to run on the different hardware platforms.

And this exactly is, what Amiga is targeting with the new Amiga and its extremely scalar operating system, which will run on mobile phones as on desktop computers or workstations! Not only, that programs, which are written in the platform independent language Java can run 22 times faster as on any other Java Virtual Machine. The "virtual processor" can be adjusted to any other hardware architecture without much work and allows platform independence on another layer.

AMIGA is currently working on getting a good position on the market of the future. Of course, this doesn't have to lead to success. But: The direction is the right one.

See you next month!

Yours,

Carsten Schroeder