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{subhead} Jim Collas Executive Update{def}{p}
Article by Jim Collas
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It looks like Jim Collas is staying true to his word, because here's
another open letter from the man himself...
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Executive Update{p}
ˇ ˇ  OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY{p}
June/July 1999{p}
 Copyright by AMIGA{p}
Dear Amigans,
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I apologize for posting my June (now June/July) letter so late. I was
ready to post it last week, but decided to scrap it and re-write it
this past weekend for several reasons. One reason is feedback I
received from the Amiga community. To better understand the desires
of the Amiga community, I have been following many of the Amiga
public forums (in addition to reading the thousands of emails sent to
me). I have posted in a few of the forums when I felt it was
important to clarify information relative to Amiga's plans.  In the
"comp.sys.amiga.misc" forum I posted a message requesting feedback on
our strategy and plans.  The post is in the thread titled "Collas and
LeFaivre thanks for talking".  I received many good insights and
suggestions in response to my post, but while reading these responses
one thing was clear: I haven't given the Amiga community enough
information to clearly understand our plans. The community still
doesn't have a clear understanding of our product plans, and what we
mean by the term "operating environment."  This is obviously not the
fault of the community but mine in not communicating enough
information. This is why I decided to scrap my original letter and
address this issue.
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In the past several months, I have attempted to disclose as much as
possible to the Amiga community without disclosing too much to our
competition or violating confidentiality agreements with our
technology partners. I don't think I have been effective at striking
the right balance in this regard, so I just initiated an activity to
disclose more of our plans. We are putting together a five to seven
page product strategy and technology brief that will be released to
the Amiga community within the next week. This brief will help you
better understand our overall plans by giving you more details on our
new Amiga Operating Environment (OE) and Multimedia Convergence
Computer (MCC). The technology brief will also talk about new and
exciting Amiga technology. I will talk a bit more about some of this
technology later in this letter.
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This brief will also disclose some of our 3rd party technology
choices. We have spent the last four months evaluating technology and
defining the next generation hardware architecture and software
structure. We have now finalized the architecture and structure. We
have also finalized all of our major technology and partner choices.
A significant amount of effort and resources went into the evaluation
of 3rd party technology you may be surprised at a few of the
decisions but I am confident you will agree that they are the correct
choices.
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Before you read the brief you should understand that we are still not
at liberty to disclose all of the details of our plans. I don't want
to disclose too much to potential competitors and we are under
confidentiality agreements with our key technology partners. Within
those boundaries we will disclose as much as we can. The difficult
part about not being able to disclose everything is that some
decisions don't seem to make sense unless you have all of the
information. We have no choice but to work around this for now.
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As background information for the technology brief I would also like
to discuss the concept of revolutionary products and our strategy for
implementing the next generation Amiga.
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{bold}REVOLUTIONARY PRODUCTS:{nobold}
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revˇoˇluˇtionˇary ("re-v&-'lü-sh&-"ner-E): adjective; 1 c:
constituting or bringing about a major or fundamental change in the
way of thinking about or visualizing something: a change of paradigm
<a revolutionary new product>
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The original Amiga was revolutionary because it drove a fundamental
change in computer graphics performance, capabilities, and overall
value. It allowed people to do things that couldn't be done with
other systems at the time. It moved computers a big step into the
future by fundamentally changing the way people viewed and used
computers. The next generation Amiga must do the same but in the
context of the present computer industry. Faster CPUs and faster
graphics alone will not drive a revolutionary new computer platform.
They are important but not revolutionary. Revolutionary thinking
requires us to let go of past preferences and envision a future that
doesn't currently exist. It requires us to develop technology and
functions that enable this future vision. This is the spirit of
revolutionary innovation. The same spirit that drove the original
Amiga development team.
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The problem is that revolutionary paradigm shifts are difficult to
envision before they occur. Let me give you an example. When I was in
college, I had a job as a software developer programming video games
for the Atari  2600, Commodore64, and Apple II (This was before the
first Amiga came out). At the current time, all video games were
programmed in assembly language. This was great at the time because
it gave you complete control of the hardware. I couldn't imagine
programming a game in a high-level language such as C++ because it
would be so incredible inefficient. It just seemed like an
unrealistic proposition. Well, the world changed. You can't manage
the complexity or extravagance of today's games in assembly. You need
sophisticated tools and a high-level language like C++. This was a
revolutionary paradigm shift that was hard to envision years before
it happened.
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Keep this section in mind as you read the technology brief that will
be released. It is not enough to bring out an incremental product. It
must be revolutionary in order for all of us to succeed. You must
think in a different dimension to understand the revolutionary nature
of the next generation Amiga environment. The technology brief will
help you understand this future vision.  I look forward to getting
your continuing feedback on our directions.
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{bold}PRODUCT IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:{nobold}
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Our strategy for implementing the new Amiga is to integrate the best
technology in the industry into a new, efficient, exciting, and
revolutionary computer platform focused on the future. It is
important to understand this strategy so that you can better
understand some of our decisions. The computer industry today is much
different than it was when the first Amiga was designed. The initial
Amiga was designed when the computer industry was at its infancy. The
computer industry has now matured and the dynamics have changed
significantly. The industry is replete with companies developing and
supplying great technology and components. As an example, there are
many excellent companies offering sophisticated high-performance 3D
graphics chips. All of these companies have one goal in mind: to
develop and ship the best 3D graphics solution. These graphics
companies have many world-class engineers. Trust me, I know these
companies well. To think that we could design our own 3D graphics
chip that was better is not re asonable. This is why all leading
computer companies (IBM, Compaq, Gateway, Apple, et al.) now depend
on 3rd party graphics companies. It was clear to them that internal
resources couldn't compete with companies specialized in this area.
This is the normal cycle of a maturing industry and is the reason why
we can't think in the past when creating a revolutionary product for
the future.
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Does this mean that the Amiga won't be unique or lead in performance?
Absolutely not! Firstly, you shouldn't define performance by
exclusively using narrow benchmarks of today's industry. We need to
focus on addressing the next computer revolution rather than
competing with the last one. Secondly, an extremely efficient
architecture will make the most out of commonly used components like
3D graphics chips. We can get remarkably impressive performance by
coupling an industry leading PCI/AGP graphics chip to the extremely
efficient architecture of the new Amiga. On the CPU side we have
selected a CPU that will bring exciting new capabilities to the
Amiga. I can't disclose what instruction set it uses at this time
because of confidentiality agreements. I can tell you that it's very
exciting and NOT an x86 architecture processor. Our plan is to
disclose the CPU in several weeks at the World of Amiga and AmiWest
shows. At this time I hope to disclose all of our technology choices
and partners.
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In order to pull this great technology together and develop our
next-generation platform, we are also developing our own technology
in key strategic areas. This technology will allow us to make the
product unique, integrate 3rd party technology and create the final
revolutionary product. For example,
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{bold}A TEASER:{nobold}
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The technology brief will also include the description of new Amiga
technology that I think is particularly exciting. It is an
object-oriented technology developed by Amiga called the
AmigaObjectTM. The AmigaObjectTM is a powerful software structure
that enables easy integration of technology, distributed computing,
high-speed network transactions, and communication between
applications. They are also powerful software building blocks that
will allow people to build impressive applications quickly.
AmigaObjectsTM are portable and transferable across platforms
allowing AmigaObjectsTM to proliferate throughout the network, the
Internet and the world. Do I have your attention yet? This is just
one piece of the new Amiga operating environment. It is this type of
technology that will allow us to build a revolutionary computer
platform. We can discuss this technology because we have now filed
patent disclosures giving us some protection against competitors.
More on this in the technology brief.
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{bold}IN SUMMARY:{nobold}
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The upcoming technology brief will be released early next week. While
it will of necessity be at a fairly high level, it will still be the
most comprehensive description to date of the new Amiga product and
operating environment. I think it will go a long way in helping you
understand Amiga's future and the new products. I am very excited
about releasing this information and getting your response. After you
read it, I think you will agree that Amiga and the Amiga community
has a chance of driving the next computer revolution.
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Sincerely,
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Jim Collas{p}
President, Amiga