====================================================================== ________ _________ ____ _|__ __ __|_______ _________ __\ _____ \\\\ \_ _/ //___// _____//______\ _____ \\ // \\\\ /. \\\\__ \/ __// \\ \\____. /// \\\\ /. \\ \\___\¯ /___///___\ /___\ \\_________//\\___\¯ /___// ¯ \/ ¯ ¯ \/. |¯ ¯|z!o ¯ ¯ \/ ¯ A M I G A |#010403 | U P D A T E |________| "SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW" ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * S P E C I A L A M I G A 2 0 0 1 I S S U E * O U R " T A K E " O N T H E S H O W A M I G A , S H A R P Z A U R U S , A N D O T H E R S S O M E D E T A I L S F R O M G A R Y P E A K E . . . . . . A N D D E T A I L S F R O M C T O F L E E C Y Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: Below are items pertaining to the just completed Amiga 2001 show held in St. Louis, USA, over the past weekend (March 30 - April 1). Due to the importance of the show, and the buildup before it, we thought we'd put together a small special issue to get information to you. As with most things, the true significance of events will probably not be known for some time. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- O U R " T A K E " O N T H E S H O W 3 April, 2001 By Brad Webb It was billed as "1985 all over again". In some ways, for some people, it probably was. It was definitely the changing of the guard. It had it's usual share of organizational problems. It was fun, and the place to be this last weekend. The most important news from the point of view of our readers may be that there will be additional versions of AmigaOS, and they will be Power PC native! The most important news from the point of view of the Community and its continuation is that there are once again good ways to make money as an Amiga developer! Logistics ~~~~~~~~~ There were problems with getting classes and seminars started and ended on time, and there was a terribly long wait to enter the banquet hall Saturday night. These things seem endemic to many Amiga shows and can often be traced to the small number of people willing to help. We hope as the new market develops and grows, more people will be available to help run Amiga shows. In the meantime, those who worked on Amiga 2001 did a fine job given the circumstances, and those in attendance were able to deal with the minor logistical problems and get real benefits from the events. The Sales Floor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The sales floor was well attended, especially on Saturday, and there seemed to be a good amount of buying. The number of vendors was not real high (about 14 or 15 key Amiga stalwarts), but the large booth belonging to Merlancia seemed determined to make that up by itself. It looked as if all the stock ever assembled by Amiga International was there to be purchased. They also had a nifty assemblage of items in a sort of mini-museum of Commodore and Amiga memorabilia. The two large vats of free bottled beer on Saturday didn't hurt matters, and went well with the incredibly huge pile of pizza in boxes brought in by Petro for his retirement luncheon. The pizza itself was first rate. There were only a few new products, the most interesting of which was a PC on a card from Mr. Hardware Computer. We haven't seen it in operation, but hope to have more information in the future. Petro ~~~~~ Genuine emotions and deep appreciation were everywhere in evidence for Petro throughout the weekend as his retirement was was both celebrated and regretted. The roast, which certainly had its hilarious moments, ran quite long as many in the Community wanted to share their affection and memories. It might well have been an event by itself on another night, so much needed to be said. A standing ovation for Petro was just one of many clearly deeply felt attempts to express appreciation. And just because he's retiring, don't be surprised if you see him very much in attendance at future Amiga shows. The Future ~~~~~~~~~~ When Bill McEwen finally got to the main presentation during the banquet, he tried to compress his remarks to save time. As it turned out, he had a lot of good things to say, and anything that had to be left out was covered later during the weekend. Much applause greated the statement that Amiga OS is planned out through vresion 5.0 and they're not going to stop there! The OS will become native PPC, beginning by moving OS 3.9 to PPC. Eventually, at version 4.2, the "old hardware" will no longer be needed and standalone machines can be built. Once again, emphasis was made that Amiga will not be making hardware itself. For the short term, a completed Amiga ONE board for the 1200 was shown. We discussed the status of an Amiga ONE for the A4000 the next day with Alan Redhouse of Eyetech. He tells us it's still firmly in the plans, but must be a money-maker to remain there. If it doesn't see the light of day, it will most likely be due to completion taking longer than Amiga OS requires to reach 4.2, when it will no longer be needed. It all depends on how fast the new versions of Amiga OS come along. The Amiga ONE is headed into beta in the June/July time frame and just might (no promises) be ready in time for the west coast Amiga show in Sacramento, California, at the end of July. The other key point made by Bill McEwen during his banquet presentation is that there is now, finally, a new and huge potential market for Amiga developers, where they can actually make money! This is where the comparison with 1985 has some merit. In 1985, Commodore created a new market for developers with the original Amiga. Now, the new Amiga Inc. has created another new market for developers with Amiga DE. New Market ~~~~~~~~~~ Bill pointed out that the cell phone and handheld markets are starving for content. This content needs to be small games and utilities of the kind Amiga developers are well equipped to create. The Amiga DE provides a single solution for this new Java-centric small appliances world. In Japan, the Sharp Zaurus is already Amiga-able. More are coming, and coming to the rest of the world as well. We have a press release below which should answer most questions you have. Bill did point out there were over 1800 new Amiga developers now due to this new market. Bill noted that after the Zaurus comes the Psion, and that's just the beginning. It's a simple market. The user of the cell phone or PDA downloads an application / game / ringer sound / what-have-you and pays for it on-line. Price is perhaps $10 for a small game. 60% goes to the author, 40% to the distributor. There are no boxes, no shelves full of inventory, no manuals to take care of, and no returns. Simple, elegant, and with millions of potential customers. New Amiga OS Versions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bill also stated that Amiga DE would roll into the Amiga OS as it goes forward. During discussions Sunday morning, Bill explained the reason for going forward with Amiga OS was a business one, which means there's a good chance it will actually happen close to plan. The business reason is simple - the new Amiga needs server machines it can control for use as it's home server. There's nothing better for the job than the existing Amiga OS. A second, but very important reason, is that Amiga knows a number of the talented developers in the Community won't develop on anything else. There are a couple words of caution. At this point, it's not clear how compatible existing PPC based machines will be with the future standards. Compatibility will not be ignored, we're sure, but of course can't stand in the way of success for the future. In addition, this does mark a change in direction for Amiga from what was announced in the past. The Amiga DE was supposed to be scalable from PDAs to servers. Now it seems it is not, due primarily to its lack of memory protection as we understand it. A change in direction is not all bad when it's fine tuning an overall strategy. The problem is the Amiga community has seen little other than changes in direction in the past, with no direction lasting long enough to produce growth and meaningful product. This change doesn't seem to be in the same category as previous ones, but we're not surprised Amiga is being taken to task in postings on the net by long term disillusioned Amigans. As we've said so often in the past, "time will tell" - but we're inclined to be more reassured than frightened by this change. The Transition ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It might have escaped notice by some, but this event marked a significant transition for Amiga. Petro's retirement was one element of this, though mostly symbolic. The second is more subtle, but more important for the future. Amiga Inc. is now taking a firmer guiding hand. In the past, Amiga OS 3.5 and 3.9 (for example) were pretty much farmed out on a "bring us something" basis. From now on, Haage and Partner and other key contributors will be functioning more as project managers within an overall strategy maintained by Amiga. This will give the market some much needed direction and should be a help to all who depend on it. It's a sign of the maturing of the company, and is quite welcome. Interestingly, Bill McEwen stated Amiga enters this new state with a new Vice President of Engineering, a person he would not identify yet to spare him loads of e-mail, but who came from MicroSoft. The operating system side of development is being handled by Fleecy Moss and his team. Word Pictures ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There's always so much more to an Amiga show than the speaches and sales. We'd like to share a few "word pictures" with you from the weekend. 40 or 50 Amigans talking about every Amiga topic under the sun at Amiga's Hor's D'overies party Friday night. We finally got to meet Phil Vedovatti, the man behind New Icons, and found him delightful. Living in yet another hotel with strange floor arrangements. Last year's Henry VIII was torn down due to airport expansion, but this Sheraton maintains its spirit. We entered on the ground floor, then took an elevator down two floors to our room on the first floor. There, we had a door out onto a ground level patio. Shades of "Castrovalva" from Dr. WHO. Getting tossed out of the dining room along with "Mrs. Brad", JoAnn, Florence and John Zacharias (of "AE Mail" fame) when they closed it for the night. There was a lot to be gone over, so we just moved on ... The first day, the phones didn't work. Not just in the hotel, but all over this section of St. Louis. Someone cut a key cable somewhere. It was NOT a MicroSoft plot to keep the word from getting out. The Mardi Gras beads being handed out by Kermit Woodall of "Nova Design". No, we're not going to tell you what you had to do to get some. Yes, we do have some. They were everywhere in evidence, all weekend long. Seeing Dave Haynie and Leo Schwab again, Leo in full medieval costume as in days of old. Wonder where he gets the hats? "Schwabbies" (remember them?) might be just "the thing" for the new small appliance market. Rollie and his clarinet, performing "A Very Good Year" for the banquet crowd. Actually kept everyone quiet in appreciation of the music, no small task! High marks for the organizers for this one! The dancing Petro baby during the Petro roast video. Not to mention the speach by video from Bill Gates - or a darn good rendered likeness, anyway. The stories of Petro's driving. It's a good thing he's skilled at it, or we might be short a large number of Community members. The UGN folks in the corner, doing their best to get the word out to the world. We didn't get to discuss the phone failure and how it affected them, but it can't have been a help. The many good restaurants, bars and shops in the West Port area right outside the hotel. Definitely an improvement over the old venue. There are a lot of word pictures to come from events in a few of the bars, which we won't be bringing you. The collision of the Amiga crowd waiting to enter the sales floor on Saturday morning and 100 or so children with parents heading through the same area on their way to an early Easter Egg hunt. Can't blame the organizers for this one. Incidentally, the wandering Canada geese outside the hotel seemed slightly confused by all the colored eggs lying about. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A , S H A R P Z A U R U S , A N D O T H E R S ST. LOUIS, MO, March 30, 2001 - Amiga Incorporated, a pioneer in the development of multi-media and content, today announced a long-term partnership with Sharp Corporation, a worldwide developer of innovative products and core technologies in electronics, in which Amiga will develop content for next-generation Sharp handheld computing devices. In March, Sharp announced its plans to market the Zaurus PDA in the United States and Europe as one of the world's first Linux-based handheld device. The Linux operating system is gaining wider acceptance in the computer server market because its underlying code is freely distributed on the Internet. Easily adaptable for different hardware devices, the Sharp handheld will be able to run software written in Sun Microsystems' versatile Java software language that supports different operating systems. In this partnership, Amiga announced that its developer community would either develop new content or adapt existing content for PDA applications, using their reputation for innovation and leadership in gaming, 2D, 3D, animation, video, and music applications. Amiga-developed content can be downloaded directly through wireless networks, using desktop computers, or ported directly into the new device. "By working with Amiga as one of our content partners we are able to expand the applications and content available for our new devices," said Dr. Hiroshi Uno, Ph.D. Division General Manager - Mobile Systems Division, Communications Systems Group, Sharp Corporation Japan. Amiga has an outstanding reputation for software development. We anticipate that the alliance with Amiga will create a lot of momentum for the Zaurus PDA." "Amiga is excited to be part of the Zaurus PDA project, and we look forward to bringing the excitement, brilliant content and magic of the Amiga community to Sharp," said Bill McEwen, President/CEO of Amiga Incorporated. "Amiga is adding new dimensions of content for the next generations of computing devices, and we see the new PDA platform as an important area of strategic business growth and applications for the Amiga community. We intend to develop some really great applications as consumers more fully understand the great potential and skill set of the Amiga community." About Sharp Corporation Sharp Corporation, a worldwide developer of the core digital technologies that are playing an integral role in shaping the next generation of mobile computing products for consumer and business needs. Since creating the Wizard(R) electronic organizer in 1989, Sharp has led the market in introducing innovative handheld computing products. Sharp is also the global leader in LCD technology, which is incorporated into leading-edge LCD monitors and projectors. From the small office/home office (SOHO) to large corporate environments, Sharp provides a variety of innovative, computer-related solutions designed to help increase productivity while providing functionality to meet customer demand. Dedicated to improving people's lives through the use of advanced technology and a commitment to innovation, quality, value and design, Sharp Corporation employs approximately 60,200 people worldwide in 30 countries. More information is available at http://sharp-world.com/index.html. About Amiga Amiga Inc. provides technology to developers for writing and porting applications to a new multi-media operating systems which is hardware agnostic. AmigaDE is a joint development effort between the Tao Group of Reading England, and Amiga Incorporated. AmigaDE based applications can run unchanged on x86, PowerPC, M Core, ARM, StrongARM, MIPS R3000, R4000, R5000, SH 3, SH4, and NEC V850 processors. The Amiga OS can run hosted on Linux, Embedded Linux, Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, CE and QNX4. Amiga is based in Snoqualmie, WA, 28 miles east of Seattle and has offices worldwide. Amiga can be reached at (425) 396-5660 or visit Amiga on the web at http://www.amiga.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- S O M E D E T A I L S F R O M G A R Y P E A K E . . . {The following items were found posted on the net and should help clarify the announcements from Amiga 2001. Brad} 3 April, 2001 As has been discussed here several times, AmigaDe has no memory protection. This and a couple of other issues are the reasons for the announcement. Basically, here is what we are doing and why: 1. Developers are starving to death and will leave unless we find a way to help them make money fast. Dealers have the same problems. We need more oomph to take advantage of higher fps games, etc. This IS a multimedia platform community after all. My mail box tells us developers and dealers need something quickly. We can get AmigaOne and OS4.0 out by summer without losing any time developing the DE. This is with our thanks to Haage & Partner and Eyetech who have agreed to meet PRD's we set before them. We could not implement this plan so quickly without their valued help. Also we should include Hyperion who is assisting our team with a level of GL and video capability that will enhance game developers potential. 2. Users want new hardware. Amigas are starting to fail and frankly it is just too expensive to start R&D for new (modified) chips in the amounts we would probably be able to sell and just as expensive for fabbing the older chips as well. So, off the shelf, open designed, new machines based on PPC is the most inexpensive way to get the Amiga user onto a newer platform. 3. Amiga users have always been partial to PPC. Dean Brown, Dave Haynie, Mick Tinker, and Joe Torre (four of THE best and brightest Amiga minded hardware gurus I know) are all for a PPC based platform advance. Dave had the PiosOne design that he allowed us to release openly to help people see what can be done with an open hardware design based around PPC. We did not release Dave's specs the week before the announcements by accident. It was to open people's minds to what can be done by thinking outside the box. Dave Haynie doesn't know what a box is. Remember, we already run on a bog standard PC. :) 4. Our Zico base specs are an open spec based around PPC. Alan Redhouse at Eyetech has a full plan, knows when to freeze the design and ship, and has met our Product Requirements Document. Dean Brown has approved his design. Dave Haynie saw it in St Louis and thought it was cool. Joe was there also and while I didn't ask Joe specifically for his ideas, he is open enough to have said if he thought the design was bad. Haage & Partner have met our PRD's on the software side. Both have excellent reputations for actually meeting deadlines and shipping product when they say they will. While they are contracting to us, these projects are being managed by us now. 5. Amigade provides us with binary compatibility, distributed processing capabilities and many other things we can get no where else. This line of development will continue as previously planned. Note: There are NO changes to what you have been told we plan to do with AmigaDE. 6. We intend, as we have stated all along, to cover everything from PDA's and cell phones, set top boxes, and servers. This plan allows us to do that with ease. 7. AmigaOS will continue to be developed and will be merged into or under AmigaDE so that we eventually have our own familiar base to play on and it will be a full AMIGA base that is server capable and cell phone capable as well. But we will not drop Windows and Linux compatibility either. Think of this as adding yet another playground for AmigaDE. It is no different from deciding to also play on top of Be or any other OS out there. We will continue to find playgrounds that provide us, our developers, and dealers even more opportunities. 8. As far as splitting the community and the developers: We have over 2,000 developers currently involved with us. Another 30 added themselves today after the news from St Louis. My mailbox is so full I spent all day JUST answering new mails from developers and companies wanting to come to Amiga and play and I didn't get them all answered yet. Half of the developers are firmly in the PDA, cell phone, and set top box camp. The other half are either desktop oriented or want to do both. This gives everyone a place to utilize their talents and make money. 9. Most notable request from developers I have is "please also give us a desktop". As Bill noted in his banquet speech, he made certain promises to me based on what Team AMIGA members (6000 plus) and others in the community have said they want from whomever has the Amiga name. I took this job based on those promises. Bill keeps his promises. 10. This is a business and this is fun. We do what we do because we want to and we can. If someone tells us we can't, we do it just to show them we can. This is also a family. This was very evident over the weekend. I hugged more people in St Louis than I do at a family reunion. Bill had tears in his eyes as he talked about us losing Bob Cosby. We care. We have to make sure our friends and family can finally make money but we have to do it in ways that keep us afloat as well from a business standpoint. 11. Tao Group is a great partner and is providing Amiga with opportunities we have never been able to land before. Good business means taking advantage of this opportunity they provide and we intend to do that with their help and asistance. 12. Listen to the facts and ask questions here and in other Amiga forums where we are there to answer your questions truthfully. Don't listen to the naysayers, the hype, the conjecture, and the innuendo of people who have no clue. We will tell you the truth. Bad or good, you get the truth. 13. We have taken flak from certain people because they say we provide no value. Our value is in uniting as many people as we can into a formidable force. We can not do what we plan alone. It takes unity, solidarity, team work. All of us must work together and together we will slowly conquer the world ... just because we want to. Sincerely, Gary Peake Amiga Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- . . . A N D D E T A I L S F R O M C T O F L E E C Y {Also found on the net, and dealing with things at a bit more technical level, are these notes from Amiga's CTO, Fleecy Moss. We found this as a posting from Alexander Lohrmann and answers from Fleecy, which we indicated with *s. Our thanks to Mr. Lohrmann for asking the questions! We've removed a few things for clarity but added nothing beyond the *s. Brad} Apr 1, 2001 Will there be any improvements over OS3.9 like: - A really integrated TCP/IP-stack *Brand new, written from scratch. - Memory Protection for new apps (I know it is impossible for old ones) *Virtual Memory will come in OS4, which will make a big difference. MP is much harder and will be done in OS5. - recource tracking *the Amiga Component Model will give you that. - SMP *OS5 - A new datatypes-system, especially for streaming and anims *The ACM and streaming system will give you that. - a new and better soundsystem, with support for surround and 3D *The Audio system will be the best of any system out there. We have 5 of the best audio people in the world working on it. - 2D and 3D APIs, integrated into the gfx-system instead of hacked-in like now *Already underway, and with our close alliance with Matrox, there will be not only standard high level APIs but GLIDE like low level APIs to really take advantage of Matrox cards. - a new Workbench *OS4.5 - an improved intuition.library (we really need one !) *OS4.5 - hardware-independancy *OS4.2 - a new filesystem *OS4.0 - - a good printer-system with drivers for more printers *Probably OS4.2, waiting for USB, and for the full benefits, OS5, the PDP media system. 2) AmigaDE We always heard that the AmigaDE will run on everything from PDAs to servers. I think you have left this idea behind, I have understood it that way that it will run on STBs and PDAs and the new AmigaOS 4. Is this right *That's correct. ? Do you think that there will be a really native version for x86 & co, I mean a real desktop-os, later in the future ? *It will integrate into existing desktop OSs. That is what all of our big customers tell us is necessary for success. What I liked about the AmigaDE as it was announced in the past was the fact that (as I understood it) developers would have the possibility to write an application or a game for the AmigaDE and contribute some kind of runtime-environment including all necessary stuff like the translator, the Elate-kernel, GUI, Sound and 3D-APIs or whatever is needed by the product for every supported operating system with it. This could bring developers to the AmigaDE and if there is a version of AmigaDE hosted (or really part of) on AmigaOS 4 then there would be many new apps and games and then maybe there will be some new (or old ? :-)) users. Will this still be possible ? *Yes. Will the AmigaDE still contain stuff like OpenGL, a sound-API or some gui-stuff ? Or will it only contain things PDAs need ? If it would contain everything needed by big apps like office-packages or games I think many developers would come along, even companies, because they could increase their sales from let´s say only Windows-users to Mac, Linux and AmigaOS 4 users without the need to make several version. Write once run everywhere *The AmigaDE has a capabilities system which dynamically matches requests to capabilities. If you are on a desktop, you can use AmigaDE desktop apps. P.s.: Will AmigaOS 4 run on existing PowerUP-hardware ? I think this is a must-be, otherwise many users will feel traited ... (Is this the right word ?) *At the moment no 8-( Anyone who has bought PPC accelerators understands the drag the architecture has placed on those products. To code an AmigaOS4 around that solution is to condemn it before it even begins. The new AmigaOnes will be cheap enough and expandible, and will be orders of magnitude faster than the existing products. It is hard, but this is the first Amiga certified hardware in over five years - the line has to be drawn somewhere, and this is it. *There is a possibility of a software compatability layer, but the performance would most likely kill its usefulness compared to an AmigaOne. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: All back issues available at: http://www.globaldialog.com/~amigaupdate/index.html Stop by and check out our archive! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ A M I G A /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ amigaupdate@globaldialog.com ======================================================================