| [News] Interview with Ben Hermans from Hyperion | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 07-Nov-2001 20:45 GMT by Christophe Decanini | 194 comments
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Christoph Gutjahr interviewed Hyperion about AmigaOS 4.0.
You can read the interview on amiga-news.de in English or in German.
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| Interview with Ben Hermans from Hyperion : Comment 113 of 194 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Mekanix on 08-Nov-2001 15:32 GMT | In reply to Comment 58 (Ben Hermans/Hyperion):
> The only problem is that x86 means
> Windows and Windows stiffles competition.
> Theoretically, an x86 box which cannot run
> Windows would do the trick but unfortunately
> that would be a custom product making the
> whole affaire "expensive" again.
Gnargh! How often are you going to repeat that nonsense? There is so much wrong with your reasoning that my head hurts and I really don't know where to begin.
Firstly you assume that when people have access to Windows they'd be lured to boot Windows over anything else. This assumtion is flawed on 2 counts. Reality check: most amigauser (if not all) *do* have a windows-box, so the "Windwosfactor" would apply for the current situation if not more. Wouldn't a running Windowssession (next to your Amiga) make you use Windows more often? While the hassle of dualbooting would make you less inclined to boot into Windows unless need be?
But all this really doesn't matter, because your Windowsassumption is just plain wrong. A huge amount of people are *not* running Windows on their x86 equipment, and I'm one of them.
Secondly I sence a strange notion of "failure" and using all kinds of "lessons" (Be, Loki etc.) wrongly. To me it almost sound as if you don't know the difference between marketshare (percentage) and installed userbase (absolute numbers). Focusing solely on the former while the latter is the only one that would make sence.
Looking at marketshare is easy to spell failures. BeOS' marketshare about 0% and Linux between 1-5%. That must be failures. But looking at installed userbase, BeOS possibly had something that's easily surpassed something AmigaOS haven't seen in a decade or something. Just look at the number of downloads not speaking of all those coverdisks on magazines.
And Linux, don't make me laugh. It's running in the millions, possible bigger than Amiga ever was. How you manage to get failure out of this is beyond me.
Now, look at the current path for AmigaOS 4.x. Your target is current installed userbase (don't expect any increase in that number) which runs in about 20-40.000 (how many copies did OS 3.9 sell? Less than 20k right?). Now, this number is dramatically reduced to that little fration who would shelve out a lot of doe on some expencive novelty HW and that little fraction you'll have to share with the MorphOS/Pegasos-team. That would optimistically mean a installed userbase between 5-15k for OS4, which is laughable compared BeOS (which you've labeled a failure).
But then again, OS 4 would have a marketshare of about 100% of AmigaOne equipment, and that's success, right? ;)
And 5-15k users? How difficult would that be to surpass for the x86/Amithlon-platform?
And from a pure businessperspective aren't you running the risk of loosing out to a renegade product (AROS/Amithlon)?
I really don't get this x86-angst.
>> Amiga on x86 is THE only way for survival.
> It certainly isn't. Cheap hardware is the
> way for survival regardless of the make of
> CPU and as long as it isn't a machine capable
> of running Windows.
> Hell, even that isn't true. Apple is doing
> fine and their hardware is quite expensive really.
Unless your name is Steve Jobs, running in novelty HW will not get you far. That's a lesson the Amiga-community learned a long time ago; if your locked to a singular platform your fucked!
Be (remember, that's who you keep refering to for learnt lessons) learned that with BeBox, hey even running on niche HW (Macs) will not get you far. Be shifted to x86 to late.
Hey, even Apple have been through a long rough ride almost loosing out.
And lastly I'd like to comment on some of the other stuff you've posted.
1) Trouble at Loki.
Well, duh. Loki have this really insane businessplan of porting month/year old games and releasing it at full prise to a community that long since have finished playing the value/budget release. Sounds familiar?
2) Trouble at Corel.
Yeah, duh! What do you expect? Corel was burning through millions a week and didn't really have anything to sell. No Corel-linux 1.0 wasn't release-materials; Suse, Mandrake, RH and others do it so much better. Hey, Corel-Linux couldn't even be installed on my machine.
3) Trouble at VA-Linux.
Are you really that surprised? VA-Linux are one of those dot-com businessmodels that relies on revenue comming from investors rather than selling products. Guess what happens when there are no more investors?
4) Failure of Linux.
How about a reality check? My guess is that it's the secondlargest desktopOS. Yeah, even larger than MacOS. And no, Linux isn't targeted at Joe User, yet. But it's getting there. As others have pointed out, have you had a look at KDE 2.2.1 recently? It gives me everything OS 3.9 haves to offer and so much more and so much better!
It isn't Windows you should fear, it's Linux. And there noveltyHW wont save you. Linux will get there!
5) Failures of BeOS.
Windows didn't kill BeOS. Be did! With their constant shift in focus (BeBox, Mac, x86, BeIA) everytime leaving user hanging. Lack of driver support. Giving away their primary source of income while betting on BeIA way way to soon. |
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