| [Forum] RC5-72 contest, AOS4 could catch MOS | ANN.lu |
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| RC5-72 contest, AOS4 could catch MOS : Comment 63 of 110 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Janne on 13-Sep-2004 06:25 GMT | In reply to Comment 53 (Amon_Re):
>As for your point towards the Apple situation, it's bogus, the correct
>situation would be the 7.x towards 8.x transition on the Mac (wich was the
>time when 68k was dropped, and the final transition towards ppc was made)
Well... as there probably wasn't a RC5 client around Apple's first transition so we don't know what would have happened. IMHO for the Amiga community the OS 3.x to 4.0 transition is far bigger than Apple's first transition (relatively speaking), partly due to the time scale, the manufacturing politics, ownership changes etc. OS4 is a whole different beast when compared to its predecessor. Less so with Apple's gradual move to PPC.
I also don't understand why you considered Johan's point 2 as political. Obviously this thread was started to create buzz around said competition between MorphOS and OS4 and then it turns out the OS4 count really isn't just OS4 but also Classic users. The need to differentiate would clearly be there. Whether or not one wants to take this need into account is certainly up for debate, but it is still a reason, not politics. Point 3 probably was leaning towards that side, though, so it is best ignored in the debate I think.
Certainly AmigaOS has a right to be called PowerPC/AmigaOS, but given that it used to mean something completely else (PowerUp boards), I think changing the platform would have been a reasonable thing to do. Enough has changed to warrant differentiating between the old 68k, old PPC and the new (be that OS4 or MOS).
IMHO if we look past the names and politics, we could for example look at the past in three waves:
1) First there was Commodore. We can differentiate between OS 1.x with OCS, OS 2.x with ECS and OS 3.x with AGA, but mostly the changes were gradual and united by the same processor family, manufacturer, etc.
2) After Commodore, we got PowerPC by Phase 5 (and a competing kernel too, but the hardware was the same). H&P added support to "cosmetic" AmigaOS upgrades. The way the PowerPC applications worked was very different from 68k days, and very different from the future that would be laid down years later.
3) From all the confusion mentioned above, added with the rest that didn't have much to do with the original Amiga, rose the current crop of competing solutions: AmigaOS 4.0, MorphOS and AROS. I exclude AROS in my comparions simply because I lack the knowledge, but both OS4 and MOS are very different (although with varying degrees of compatibility) from Phase 5's PowerPC days. They are also very different from what Commodore made. They are essentially rewrites and, where OS4 is concerned, at the very least mostly recompiles to a new architecture. Both also introduce whole new ways of creating applications.
It certainly comes down to interpretation and personal preference how one would like to slice and dice the above. Perhaps one could also differentiate between different major releases of the classic OS, but given current use that would hardly seem relevant. The classic vs. PowerUp distinctions was already made in the years past (and I think was pretty relevant due to major processing power changes), so no point debating that really. Also, PowerUp is a dead-end anyway.
That leaves us with the current cream of the crop: OS4 and MOS. I personally think good reasons can be found in favour of making their results distinct, some of which I have tried to outline above. It could be fun to see the teams compete - and the current system doesn't really give us the whole picture (even if the PowerUp is only giving a baseline boost) and leaves all sorts of things open for interpretation. But, certainly, others might see it in a different light and, if so, then so be it. But IMHO its not all politics. |
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