Has the PowerPC got a future? Has the Alpha been given a kiss of life? Did Amiga Inc. know something vital when it opted to push aside the PowerPC in favour of something radically different?
When I first heard that Amiga Inc. had ditched the PowerPC as the primary Amiga CPU, in favour of something exotic I was intrigued, but took it in my strides - with those mystery chip specifications, who cared if it wasn't PowerPC? Recently, with the announcement that IBM and Motorola have parted company and opted to take the PowerPC chip down divergent paths, I've been giving the situation some thought. There was a big fuss that, due to the Gateway connection, Amiga Inc know Intel's strategy for the next three years - so why not Motorola and IBM's strategies as well? Did Amiga Inc know what was about to happen and think ahead?
It's an interesting thought, because now it seriously looks like the PowerPC is no longer the hot option for desktop markets - IBM is edging towards the Alpha, Apple are soaking up the ever-decreasing PowerMacintosh market (the main consumer/controller of PowerPC desktops) and Motorola will be focussing on the embedded systems and telecommunications markets. There's not much left for the PowerPC Amiga, which is a real shame considering the investment companies like PIOS and Phase 5 have made in this area. Look at the comments about PowerPC on the Access Innovations site, they're probably not far off the truth.
Surprisingly, the Alpha option is increasingly looking like a useful proposition, though the Alpha Amiga project has been depressingly quiet after the initial proposals were unveiled. Fears of Alpha being crushed by Intel or Compaq takeovers have been quashed, and replaced by growing support, as well as a more focussed set of developers and appreciative R&D. Could the Alpha be set for a bright future as the big Pentium rival? After all, and I hate to say this, Windows NT runs on the Alpha, but not PowerPC. Be broadened itself by porting its OS to the Intel architecture - was Be secretly worried about the PowerPC future? Having said that, they haven't yet announced BeOS for Alpha - but I know they have considered processors other than the x86 and PowerPC... an Alpha version is probably only a matter of time.
Alpha is being touted by many as the Merced-killer, Merced being Intel's new (and heavily delayed) heavy duty 64-bit processor. PowerPC tends to get mentioned in the same terms as the Pentium... which is not exactly the performance area high end markets are looking at for technology.
Having said that, the embedded systems market has that key link with the digital convergence market Amiga Incorporated have placed a great emphasis on - could a future PowerPC be something different to how we imagine? Not a sleek, grey tower system with quad CPUs and a boing ball logo - but a palmtop or mobile phone. I don't see the Alpha being much of a digital convergence CPU...
By now you've probably all seen the OS 4.0 mock-up shots. When I saw the link, I was drooling with anticipation - fingers crossed that it wouldn't look like MagicWB or, worse, Windoze. Please let it look professional, please let it look... oh.
I'm glad the interface will be customisable, with a plug in module for the interface you want to use because I'm a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the two screen shots I've seen, but I'm not sure I personally want to use a desktop which looks like the one demonstrating 'Pro Paint'. I used to get ignorant PC owners laughing at the 'games machine' GUI (their words, not mine) of my Amiga. A RiscPC owning friend (a bit of a NetBSD nut) has similar comments about the GUI - he was impressed by the new Amiga specs, but said he would only be buying it if it had a radical change of GUI.
Well, it's radical alright... but it looks too clumsy, chunky and awkward. Ugly. I like the sleek, minimalist approach of the AmigaOS 2 and 3 Workbench - clean, uncluttered, rather stylish. I'm hoping this sample interface is aimed more at games players and children, than serious users - Amiga Inc have just lost their RiscPC convert otherwise (and I'll be hunting for a Workbench 3 style GUI module...). When I first glanced at the screenshot, the first thing I saw was the 'System Menu' at the side - quickly followed by a cold sweat and a scream as thoughts of the abysmal Win95 taskbar entered my head. Anything but that... please...
The idea of expressing what information needs to be displayed, then letting a selected GUI module decide on how best to represent that information is an outstanding idea. No need to worry about anything other than what you should be thinking of - content, information, interaction. Contrast this to Micros**t's approach to GUI design where they try to take each new idea and merge it into the others. Win95/98 looks ugly because they've bolted on multiple personalities to the interface. There's a great deal of annoyance expressed from users regarding the changes - it shows that Micros**t haven't seriously thought about the basic interface design, and highlighted the fact that Windows still hasn't got it right after all this time.
If you own an Amiga and one of the wonderful Palm Pilot palmtops, you may be interested to know that work has begun on Amiga support for the Palm series. Check out the excellent Project Palmiga website for further information: