| [Rant] Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 16-Jul-2002 23:29 GMT by Paul Smith | 71 comments
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If a serious software publisher plans to leave a platform with a huge userbase (surely we're talking in the hundreds of thousands for MacOSX?), then what chance does OS4 have of making it with promotion figures of about 600? (for forum)
Link to OSNews.com article
If nothing else, this proves what what many have been saying for the past 12 months (and openly ridiculed for). The days of binding your software to custom hardware are over.
Surely it is time that the people in charge of AmigaOS acknowledged that the non-mainsteam hardware route was a mistake. I'd bet that a similar promotion scheme for a version of AmigaOS that ran on the majority of the world's computers would have brought a much larger, and possibly commercially viable userbase. I'd also wager that the numbers sold would have been so, that it would have brought more revenue than the current scheme of selling hardware with it.
This is not intended as flamebait. I hope to provoke a discussion on the future of AmigaOS, rather than a flame-fest.
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List of all comments to this article| Sorted by date, most recent at bottom |
| Comment 1 | Mike Veroukis | | 16-Jul-2002 21:46 GMT |
| Comment 2 | Darrin | | 16-Jul-2002 21:55 GMT |
| Comment 3 | Joe "Floid" Kanowitz | | 16-Jul-2002 22:12 GMT |
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| Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag : Comment 4 of 71 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by gary_c on 16-Jul-2002 23:35 GMT | I agree that MS's threatening to kill Office/Mac doesn't have any implications for Amiga, really. There are other extenuating circumstances that make this a special case, as the other guys pointed out. Anyway, MS Office for MacOSX still sold something like 180,000 units IIRC, which may not be much for Microsoft, but is pretty solid for a $400 app, I'd guess. Amiga will be trying to attract much smaller developers with lower costs and fewer options, and obviously these outfits can manage with much smaller sales.
Still, the original question of how Amiga and Amiga developers can make it is a valid one, and ties in with Floyd's question of where's the drool factor. The early Amiga computers could come out on top in a specs/features one-on-one with other computers at the time. That ain't gonna happen this time, as far as I can tell. The BeBox, running BeOS, had clear advantages (at least momentarily and in some niches) over people's other options at the time, to give another example. You can make a case for buying, say, a Mac over a Windows box. But what exactly is the advantage that the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 has relative to people's other computing options? It's hard for me to see much of a rationale for the production of this thing other than to reward the patience of the old-time fans. Not to say that there *couldn't* be a reason for it, but I haven't seen one articulated, beyond the fluff pieces at amiga.com that have little basis in reality.
As for AmigaDE being the "killer app" for AmigaOS5 or whatever, I don't see that, really. Think about it. If having an application run on Windows is important, the developer can just write for the Windows platform. It doesn't make much sense to write to AmigaAnywhere and count on the VP thing to enable your app on Windows. It's better just to go directly there, since it already has 90% or whatever of all desktops. Unless AmigaAnywhere actually *comes with* new Windows installs, it's hard to see developers wanting to deal with the extra marketing obstacle of requiring users to buy and install AmigaAnywhere in order to run their app. Maybe if a developer has something really incredible he can bundle AmigaAnywhere with his app and ease the procedure for the buyer.
But anyway, this is all thinking about AmigaDE apps on Windows. How does AmigaOS benefit from AmigaDE? In my opinion, the more developers produce apps to run on AmigaDE rather than native on AmigaOS, the less incentive people have to buy into the Amiga platform. After all, the Amiga apps they want are already available on Windows, etc. via AmigaAnywhere. Amiga, Inc. is actually killing AmigaOS by pushing developers to produce for the multi-platform AmigaAnywhere instead.
-- gary_c |
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