Intro  

I must warn you that this is, an unusual kind of an article, starting by the way it was made.

I started to write it, even before I could put my hands on the Amiga DE. I'm hopping that by doing this; showing you how it all evolved, you could get a better impression of it, through the experience I had, seeing what kind of disappointments I may had encounter on the way (or may not)… from the moment I've beginning to write it, until the moment I've finally finished it… what I had imagined it would be, and what it really is.

     The beginning  

As an avid Amigan such as myself, I've fallowed the steps of all Amiga plans, back from the Commodore time, where Amiga was alive and kickin, through its bankruptcy, passing by Escom, Viscorp, Gateway, and the actual owners, and I must confess you, most of the plans were great and made a lot of sense, but they never got enough backup of the owners companies.

I recall with joy, the great time at Cologne98 with the QNX presentation, where I saw a great potential, accomplished with either a great leadership in the person of Jim Collas, a great partner- QNX and a big company to put the money where the mouth is, but… it got all wrong, Jim Collas begin to diverge immensely from the original plans, Linux was going to be the next big thing, a technology used by anyone else and their cats, with little or no space to the rebirth of the Amiga Philosophy (after all that is what the Amiga is, an philosophy, a better way of doing things), so my hopes were vanished, or so I thought…

Amino, founded by Fleecy Moss and Bill McEwen ex-employees of Gateway, had stepped in and acquired Amiga. They had a plan, so I started seeking what this plan was all about, one more time... as I've searched for all the other plans. They share a fate already seen before, their plans also like Gateway, turned into another direction, but these time they didn't step so deep as Gateway did. They opted for reviving the AmigOS, which is not an entirely a bad thing, integrating both AmigaDE and AmigaOS by its 5th revision.

 

  The plan  

The main focus this time was putted on the OS, instead of the Hardware, as many in the past, so they've chosen TAOS has their foundations and TAO, its creator as their partners.

This departure from the Hardware brings for the first time, the independence from the machine itself, giving the possibilty of conquering a much wider market, without having to worry where it runs, and giving the possibility to 'write once, run it everywhere' unlike others systems, where even if you have the possibility to run in many CPUs, the programs had to be compiled for each one of them. Other great feature was that it could run on multiple CPUs, fine, others also do that; you may say, but others can't run on different processor like TAOS can.

Another thing that this plan brings that others don't, is the fact that these one takes a much more realistic approach, and not a megaloman one as Gataway did. This plan turns to be affordable, even for a company as Amiga Inc., and, if the foundations on wich Amiga Inc. is building its core, share the main elements from the AmigaOS with a nice presentation, it has the potential to be successfull, bringing the Amiga name to where it belongs, with a new earth, but with the same soul.

This can be the turning point on Amigas fate, we could actually see the rise of a new paradigm shift in how the user interacts with the "digital being". Amiga can again lead the computer evolution.

We will see the time, where the programmers starts to take in special account the optimisation of their programs, and here, Amiga with its VP assembler takes a major role in easing this task.

People will be tired of boggus software that crash all the time, has its standards controlled... they will see the options out there, seeking for the best, a solution that don't cause them a nervous breakout, that leads them the way they want, and not the way around, this shift will turn peoples more productive at what they do, not feeling that kind of loss we feel knowing that there is a better way to do things...

  The promise  

After all this merchandise from Amiga, saying that they will implement all the Amiga spirit based on these foundations, one felt curious to know how good these really are... the pics shown, reveals only its potential, but don't do any good when it comes to know about performance. So when I found such an opportunity to get my hands on it, I simply couldn't resist... seeing for myself the new system in action without having to go to the shows (not a bad thing, but in Portugal there are none, and to travel to other countries is a rather difficult task).

Some pictures shown on the net, shows it in action, but give us no clues about its smoothness, of how it all behave.

Hey!! It just arrived!! Let's Party!! : )

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