Overview - Responsibility of Amiga

We´ve got a quite exciting year behind. As everyone can remember, the unrest of official Amiga began even before the arrival of the newly assigned president, Jim Collas. For the facts, we´ve got to go back in time, up to the period of the so called (and not entirely finished) kernel wars between Phase5 Digital Products, and it´s challenger, the notorious Haage & Partner.

The Amigan community in those days was divided in two, at one side with the people, who remained loyal to the almost one and only powerpc board supplier, the Phase5 DP, using PowerUP PowerPC kernel, Cyber/BVision graphic boards, and CyberGraphX graphic system, and at the other side the various user groups of the WarpUP PowerPC kernel (rival for PowerUP), the Picasso graphic boards (rival for Cyber/BVisions and CyberGraphx). To be honest, loudness and numbers were not equal: still today, there is no manufacturer behind the WarpOS, and the early signs of any WarpUP superiority have been completely faded by the time, and PowerUP is the silent triumphant, with more staisfied user, and more PowerUP based applications - althought we may say, that WarpUP is in no way worse than PowerUP, and as an advantage it has a far better marketing behind, and a quite sophisticated (and expensive to be honest) development system, and has the true loyal support of some developers. These three will play an important role in our little game of sketching a picture about responsibility of Amiga.

The second important matter was the question of QNX. Timedate is just before the latest events in the quite short life of the official Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer. Although Linux became the base system for AmigaOE (believe me, slowly this Linux will transform into Windows2000, as GateWay dictates), there was an early period of cooperation concerning the AmigaOE between QNX and the official Amiga. This will be an important issue, when deciding about responsibility of official Amiga.

The third and last important thing is the media, it´s hypothesises and opinions about the Amiga, and it´s community. For a couple of years Amiga was thin air for them, the community was a gang of fanatics, or lunatics, tied to a machine dead long ago. This media has changed it´s mind twice in a very short period of time, as the Amiga MCC arrived into it´s final stage. And this will be maybe the most important issue, concerning Amiga´s responsibility.

We´ve listed the three most important issue of Official Amiga activity in the past one year, it´s now time to speak about our original goal, responsibility of the Official Amiga.

In the first issue Amiga was at fault, when deciding about the supported PPC kernel and graphic standards. Look at the results, and the circumstances, and you´ll see. It´s late 1999, and there´s still no manufacturer behind the chosen WarpOS kernel, it´s still business of one and only one company. In addition, marketing, and Microsoft alike actions, and some disappointing and almost disgusting statements, coming from some WarpUP only "developers" successfully turned more users against WarpOS, than to it´s side. The community was divided by the kernel war, and Official Amiga sanctified the hardly bearable situation, and extended the conflicts for long.

The second aspect of the first issue was the question of the graphic system to be integrated into the Amiga OS. There were two alternatives, the Picasso and the CyberGraphX. To be honest, Picasso was the superior - it´s only drawbacks were that Picasso was only for machines equipped with zorro ports, that Picasso hasn´t got 3D hardware support, that CyberGraphX cards were far more numerous, and that by that time there were CyberVisionPPC/BVisionPPC cards, for all PowerPC equipped Amiga models. As we are wiser now today, there is one more drawback for the Picasso system: the almost complete withdrawal of Village Tronic, manufacturer of Picasso from the Amiga market.

This two is against official Amiga. Amiga is responsible for chosing two withdrawn or unsupported, baseless systems to integrate into AmigaOS, which we are forced to use. Thank you Official Amiga.

The second issue is the QNX. There were negotiations about porting QNX to the Amiga platform. Later, Official Amiga abandoned the idea of using QNX as base of AmigaOE. QNX stood thunderstruck, as they´ve already worked on the project, believing that they were the chosen operating system. It was not as they thought.

It seems that once more, it´s such an issue, which will strengthen Amiga´s responsibilitiy: fortunately just on the contrary. Amiga encouraged the QNX to work for the Amiga platform, and today´s situation is a result of this behaviour. Phase5 convinced the rejected QNX to continue the work for the Amiga platform, and sell the QNX OS with Phase5 PowerPC boards.

The first issue, when Amiga is responsible for positive results.

But the third and last issue won´t be so delightful. The question and opinion of the media is always a serious, if not the most serious question for all existing computer platforms. Activity of Amiga, announcement of the Amiga MCC made us good. More good than we´ve ever hoped for.

But the third issue has become a complete and drastic failure for the Official Amiga, and for the Amiga community. The situation after the complete cancellation of the Amiga MCC project shows that the media completely dropped us, and the situation is much worse than before. The media echoed "our" success loud, but echoed "our" failure much-much louder... Many amigans working in non Amiga media wish if these all could be rendered into not happened events - but could not be.

Along with some unmentioned issues the fact is that Amiga made us more wrong than good in the latest times. Althought Amiga wished to do us good, the circumstances, Gateway, in some cases even inefficiency, inability, or even misguidedness caused serious harms to the Amiga community. The worst of all that Official Amiga´s responsibility affects our everyday life, our efforts of keeping Amiga alive, our ways to keep the others informed about our whereabout... Unfortunately the Official Amiga´s successes and failures, as it posesses the brand name, are tightly tied to ours. Sometimes we hope if it weren´t...

And it´s the greatest responsibility of the Official Amiga.
Our fate and destiny. Our everyday life...

Emeric SH