This video has been out for some time, and the word spread like wild fire on the Amiga community forums. This, is by far, one of the biggest things to happen in the Amiga Community since the release of Amiga OS4. And I personally, wanting to be an OS4 user but not being able to afford new hardware, am as pleased as punch about this!While this certainly did eclipse the news about the AmigaOne X1000′s availability for this holiday season, the community as a whole, is very happy to see this. Lower cost hardware is a great way to help get the attention of former Amiga users and with luck, get them back into the community. Increasing the user base has long been our goal. The more people we have, the strong the community becomes. So with that, I give you Steve’s speech at AmiWest 2011.

And just for good measure, Trevor Dickinson’s speech about the AmigaOne X1000 at AmiWest, as well. After watching both of these videos, I have to wonder to myself how could I be a part of all this? The podcast is fun and everything, but I feel like I would like to do more.But, here’s Trevor’s speech at AmiWest 2011.

Ownership
One of the topics that’s been dominating the Amiga news recently, as I’m sure many of you have noticed, is the issue of Amiga licences. Trademarks, copyrights, OS 3.x, OS 4.x, PPC, Cloanto, CommodoreUSA, etc. To add to the problem, without citing any existing legal documents, a multitude of pundits in the Amiga community have made statements regarding the legality of this company or that company having the right to use a trademark or distribute software.

I always knew there was much work to be done until the OS and software library could catch up to the computing norms derived from dominant platforms like Windows and Mac OS X, but it seems it was more important to catch up with the likes of Microsoft and Apple in IP law turmoil. If this is what the thousands of Amiga enthusiasts and hobbyists were aiming for, then congratulations are in order. Mission accomplished.

I Agree with Uncle Carl
If Carl Sassenrath happens to read this post I hope he doesn’t mind me referring to him with what I consider a term of endearment. Whilst there were many creative and passionate engineering personalities involved with the delivery of the Amiga platform, I’m singling out Carl because of one of the key philosophies he adhered to way back then. He has been vocal about it over these many years, and he feels just as strongly about it today, and I agree with his philosophy.

To paraphrase; The user ‘owns’ the computer, and not the other way around. In everything uncle Carl does, the belief in this philosophy has shaped the solution. With other computer platforms the user comes second, and in some cases third, where with the Amiga the user came first. In fact, it could be stated with a high degree of confidence, the Amiga computer was the first computer ‘owned’ by the user. This simple philosophy contributed significantly to the popularity of the platform in the late 80′s and early 90′s, and in no small way accounted for the unique emotional reaction users experienced, and are feeling to this very day. Users own the Amiga.

Capitalism vs. Patriotism
So why all of a sudden have we preoccupied ourselves with this issue of corporate level IP ownership? I guess we all like to see a good fight, but why should we users care about names, brands, or IP rights to place specific program code on a specific microprocessor architecture? Have we all forgotten what owning and using an Amiga is all about? And it’s not about what we use it for, the forgotten question is why we use it?

Yes, it’s a commercial playing field out there. A computer platform is a business endeavor. Developers develop applications to create revenue. Even in the Linux world there is commercialization. There is no free lunch.

I’ll take this opportunity to introduce a polarized argument; Capitalism vs. Patriotism. I find this to be very relevant to the current Amiga landscape. Capitalism being the need to seed the platform in a commercially viable venture vs. the Patriotism-like devotion of the Amiga user base.

The western world, in particular the United States, is confronted by this in a very profound way. The reason the argument exists is that too many enterprising individuals, that would consider themselves patriots, will leverage lower cost labour/components from other countries to increase their profit margins, at the expense of depleting related market segments at home, and in some cases contributing to the complete collapse of domestic sectors, which then require government subsidies/bailouts. And let’s not forget the thousands of people left without work, which again requires government monetary support. Not very patriotic. There is a very excellent book published in 2006 called China Inc. that I recommend to anyone interested in this topic.

How is this related to the Amiga? The individuals that are looking to make a profit from our Amiga Patriotism are doing so at the expense of the very “country” we live in. All of them are so concerned by who ‘owns’ what because that is important in business, but all of them have lost focus on what they’re in business for.

A colleague of mine, who I think very highly of, will often use the market mantra of “competition is good for the consumer”. In this point he is mislead, the truth of the matter is that choice is good for the consumer. Though one of many ways to provide consumer choice, Competition is the worst way to do it because, whilst it may be good for a group of consumers, it is ultimately bad for the wider consumer group or “country” as a whole, and therefore can be argued to be non-Patriotic.

Competition results in conflict, conflict is a form of war, wars devastate entire landscapes, those who profit from war are those who have no problem counting their winnings whilst standing on the corpses of their countrymen. Not very Patriotic.

The Hearts and Minds
Not to paint too grim a picture of commercialism and the things laid waste in its pursuit, there are other ways to conduct business. To make a long story short, the key is to balance the responsibilities to the investors and customers. This is something Commodore failed to do, though not from a lack of dedicated and user focused engineers trying to balance against the corporate greed.

What many business ventures will attempt, but not many will succeed to do, is the proverbial “winning the hearts and minds” of their consumers. Trying to sell a compelling product that we can rationalise, and at the same time ensure we have an emotional reaction to it.

The Amiga 1000 out of the gate hit us with a clear value proposition aimed at our minds; Do things you couldn’t do with any other personal computer. Multitasking, vibrant images, colourful animations, multi-channel sound, and all at a fraction of the price of other personal computers. The emotional response came after people actually started using it to express their creativity.

The emotional response grew, and as Commodore began its decent, the speeds and feeds aspects that are aimed at the mind began to slip compared to the competition. This suicidal strategy was in no small part fed by the devotional following of the Amiga users, which stemmed from their emotional attachment to their Amigas. Commodore (mis)management felt that the Amiga user’s ‘heart’ will buy any new Amiga even if the ‘mind’ doesn’t think it’s good value for money. Think back to the early 90’s and many of us will remember having this attitude. Commodore sucked, but our Amiga could never do wrong.

Today we have a bunch of companies trying to make a business out of the remaining embers of the feelings we still have for this venerable platform. Everyone is going after the mind; Morphos is good value for money, A-Eon’s X1000 will be the fastest Amiga ever sold. But unlike the mid 80’s and the A1000, these companies cannot just sit by and hope we become emotionally attached based on our fondness for the Amiga. Any truly new “Amiga” will need to win our hearts and our minds. It will not have to be called Amiga, it will not have to run Amiga OS with Workbench. It will provide rational value and at the same time will evoke a visceral response. At our very core, within our hearts, we will feel that this new thing is not part of the problem but rather part of the solution.

Maybe it will be the next computer from A-Eon, a X2000 or X500. If not, it will be something delivered by another company. I don’t know who will make it or what it will be called, what I do know is that it will be a computing platform created to be owned by the user.

Eddie Cejvan

About a week ago in one of the frequented Amiga online forums I was engaged in a back-and-forth conversation to do with Amiga’s chances in the hands of A-Eon, where upon in order to defend my position and answer to some scathing accusations, I did what I generally don’t like to do, I flashed my credentials. My business credentials that is. Anyway, the other party, DAX, proceeded to make amends and continue the conversation with a new found zeal given my background. “Well at least shed some free advice, don’t just bash them ” DAX proclaimed, after which I pointed him to the many Op-Eds I’ve posted here which I consider ‘free advice’. After some time had past DAX asked in all sincerity “given that money restrains are REAL (this must be taken into account), what could Aeon/Hyperion improve in your opinion?”

A Bit of History
I have been researching the viability of a completely new computing platform since May 2001. I could say that it is Amiga inspired but that would be misleading, for it would bring up ideas of a platform resurrection. It would be more accurate to think of it as an Amiga reincarnation. It’s a large scale project that requires $1M+ to start-off and has nothing to do with AmigaOS 4, Morphos (MOS), or AROS. If you’ve read some of my other Op-Eds you’ll know what I think of all of these.

Nevertheless, I felt that it would be a nice exercise to put down how I would have approached the situation were I asked for a plan or strategy, or if I were the primary angel investor in this chapter of the Amiga story. The year is 2009 and the mediation process has just been finalised with a somewhat favourable outcome for Hyperion, and in this version, Trevor Dickinson has not yet had any discussions with Ben Hermans.

What Have We Got
Since the parties involved are not all that forthcoming with the details I have made some educated guesses based on uncomfortable silences, question evasion, reading between the lines, slipped comments, and thanks to video, body language. Plus there are some hard facts that don’t need to be spelled out.

We have an operating system largely based on the source code of the classic AmigaOS that has been, for lack of a better term, uplifted to the PowerPC architecture. Currently usable at 4.1 and there’s a lot of work still to be done. We have a software company with the worldwide rights to distribute AmigaOS 4 and the rights to the AmigaOne brand. There are no full time coders and everything is done via contracts. We have a community of several thousand Amiga stalwarts spread all over the world. We have some competition in the form of Morphos and AROS. There’s a good chance that the settlement awards conditional rights to the AmigaOS 4 (OS 4) to do with processor architecture so porting to another architecture is out, even if it were economically viable to move to ARM or MIPS. We have AMCC SoC based PowerPC boards from ACube Systems; 440ep and 440ep-flex. There is free and shareware applications for OS 4 but not a lot of commercial software, which makes sense given the small size of the install base; If I had to guess, around 50 running on classic w/ PPC, around 70 on the Eyetech AmigaOne boards, around 30 on Pegasos boards, and around 150 running on the Sam 440 boards. There are many quick and beta-like ports from the open sourced Linux world and the OS 4 install base can’t grow much as a lot of applications get ported to MOS and even AROS. We can’t blame the developers, they’re just trying to reach as many customers as possible.

Hypothetically Hyperion
So as an angel investor and a long time Amigan I decide to do something about it and start having conversations with Ben Hermans about my plan to grow the OS 4 install base. Ben likes the idea and wants me to put together a pack. I put together a business plan based around small amounts of investment from some other angel investors I have worked with before. I meet with Ben and present the plan for starting small and growing slowly but steadily.

I ask him “what’s the number one road block for you to selling more OS 4?” He answers “software”. “Exactamundo”. Ben knows as well as I do that that the Sam440 boards are fine for most purposes. What’s stopping people from buying more of them to run OS 4 is a lack of software. I’m not talking about the high end professional niche kind of software, I’m talking the kind that my friend’s grandma is taking for granted, the kind that every kid at school is using, is available for free at very high quality and user satisfaction, the software without which the masses would be wondering how they lived before it.

I ask him “Out of the 300-500 OS 4 users out there, what do you think is their number one item on their wish list?” Ben shrugs. “That’s OK Ben, I’ve done the research; up-to-date web browser with flash support.” Whilst there have been some commendable efforts in this area in terms of WebKit and Firefox ports, this needs to be taken in-house. We’ll get some of the more popular plug-ins ported as well. We can follow-up with Thunderbird and Sunbird ports as well at a later date.

Even though the users will be able to access online office apps, the second thing needed is offline office apps. OpenOffice is nice but what we need is something more lightweight, we’ll port KOffice, start with KWord and KSpread, and then slowly do the others later. It’ll be a nice ongoing thing.

“For my next wish I want unlimited wishes.” Ben chuckles. What I mean Ben, is we port over a platform with existing software. I’ve talked to Adobe, and with the right level of sponsorship we can have the PowerPC version of Adobe Air ported to OS 4.

You know Ben, I’d like to make this an ongoing partnership and I’d like to be able to talk to you over the net, so I spoke to Skype and negotiated the porting of the PowerPC version to OS 4.

I’m proposing we form a new company under partnership that will produce and own these software assets, and license them exclusively to AmigaOS 4. As you can see in the business plan, we expect to double the user base in the first year. To incentivise the rapid bump up in install base, you’ll need to offer OS 4 for free with the next 500 Sam boards. From our investment fund we’ve allocated $50,000 to subsidise the next 500 Sam440 boards to make them even more appealing; $50 off of the 440ep or $100 off the 440ep-flex. With the four software projects costing $150,000 that brings it to a $200,000 investment. All the software except the office suite will be given away for free. The office suite will have a very reasonable price.

“That all looks pretty good Eddie, are you sure the Sam440’s are up to the task?”
“No they’re not Ben, but that’s OK”. In the research conducted we discovered that the majority of users will trade speed for functionality. Does it really matter that OWB runs really really fast? Plus, it’s a business approach that has been proven several times in the past, 12 months from now there’ll be faster hardware and it will cost less. I bet with twice the install base ACube will move quicker to make a faster board. And if they’re not interested, we’ll find someone in China who is. I know you’re a fan of complete systems, but initially we start with the board, no need to make the higher shipping costs a deterrent, the users we’re targeting in the first year are capable of putting together their own system, they actually kind of prefer it. We’ll include a nice sticker.

The key is to get people to use these things on a regular basis. It’s been shown that when users are vested in a platform, they’d rather upgrade than move to another platform. In the first year we’re targeting the wider everyday usage scenarios. The second year we’ll start working on software that is more targeted to a specific use and will make OS 4 appealing to users outside the Amiga community. And as you can see in the Year 2 financials of the business plan, the foundation we laid down in Year 1 will help us go to market much faster to fill specific niches.

Meanwhile, Back on Planet Earth
The above scenario is not as fantastical as you might think. I have actually done market research, and since Apple’s announcement that Mac OS X 10.6 will be intel only I have spoken to Skype, and Adobe about the PowerPC versions of their clients and what it would take to continue working on them.

I know DAX was referring to the contemporary A-Eon/Hyperion and what they could improve on. Unfortunately A-Eon have asserted on several occasions that they are a hardware company, and they’ve kind of promised to release the X1000. They’re a good way down the track and it would be silly to pull the plug now. But there’s really nothing stopping them from executing, for the most part, what I’ve outlined above after they release the X1000.

Eddie Cejvan

Hosts: Rich Lawrence and Bill P. Guest: Trevor Dickinson from A-Eon Technology.

Trevor stopped by to answer questions about A-Eon, The AmigaOne X1000 and a little bit of his life outside the community. We even left him ask some questions to Rich! This episode also set the record for most number of viewers for a live recording session of a show! 80 Viewers!

I was altered to this post just now…

In episode #46 of Amiga Roundtable in an interview core OS4 dev Rogue he said he would like OS4 to go x86. He also point out how ridiculous development work OS4 is. This episode is kept off of the web probably because Hyperion threaten Amiga Roundtable.

Just so we have the record clear, no one made any threats about this interview. And it was released by Mike Blackburn at one point as raw audio. I just simply haven’t had time to edit all the back audio. But if someone wants the raw audio.. you can have it. I think it’s still live out there. If not, I’ll post it here or email it to whoever wants it. As for what Rouge said, I’m not sure. I don’t really remember all of it myself. But I’m guessing that if you say he said that, you must have listened to it.

So to summarize: Threats? Nope.. Interview Audio? Ask and ye’ shall receive. I just need to go into the back up HD and grab it is all.

UPDATE (Jan 5th,2012) : The audio of this interview and a more recent one was released in Episode 52 – Rogue for the Holidays. Enjoy!

Hosts: Rich Lawrence, Bill P. Guest: StrayFarce.

• Project Timberwolf progressing nicely. New screen shots and bounty now over $6000.
• OWB 3.19 now available.
• PowerBook G4 MorphOS sneak preview.
• Upgrade offer for those that have been abandoned by their 3D animation software vendor.
• November should be the month that the mystery buyer of Amiga.org reveals themselves.
• Tricks & Treats from DiscreetFX.
• More information on Hyperion Entertainments most ambitious project.
• New videos from HKvalhe and he is launching his own magazine. Does he have ART in his sights next?