Neues von AMIGA
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1. Offener Brief von AMIGA-Präsident Jim Collas an die Amiga-Gemeinde

�June/July 1999

Dear Amigans,

I apologize for posting my June (now June/July) letter so late. I was ready
to post it last week, but decided to scrap it and re-write it this past
weekend for several reasons. One reason is feedback I received from the
Amiga community. To better understand the desires of the Amiga community, I
have been following many of the Amiga public forums (in addition to reading
the thousands of emails sent to me). I have posted in a few of the forums
when I felt it was important to clarify information relative to Amiga's
plans. In the "comp.sys.amiga.misc'' forum I posted a message requesting
feedback on our strategy and plans. The post is in the thread titled
"Collas and LeFaivre - thanks for talking''. I received many good insights
and suggestions in response to my post, but while reading these responses
one thing was clear: I haven't given the Amiga community enough information
to clearly understand our plans. The community still doesn't have a clear
understanding of our product plans, and what we mean by the term "operating
environment.'' This is obviously not the fault of the community but mine in
not communicating enough information. This is why I decided to scrap my
original letter and address this issue.

In the past several months, I have attempted to disclose as much as
possible to the Amiga community without disclosing too much to our
competition or violating confidentiality agreements with our technology
partners. I don't think I have been effective at striking the right balance
in this regard, so I just initiated an activity to disclose more of our
plans. We are putting together a five to seven page product strategy and
technology brief that will be released to the Amiga community within the
next week. This brief will help you better understand our overall plans by
giving you more details on our new Amiga Operating Environment (OE) and
Multimedia Convergence Computer (MCC). The technology brief will also talk
about new and exciting Amiga technology. I will talk a bit more about some
of this technology later in this letter.

This brief will also disclose some of our 3rd party technology choices. We
have spent the last four months evaluating technology and defining the next
generation hardware architecture and software structure. We have now
finalized the architecture and structure. We have also finalized all of our
major technology and partner choices. A significant amount of effort and
resources went into the evaluation of 3rd party technology - you may be
surprised at a few of the decisions but I am confident you will agree that
they are the correct choices.

Before you read the brief you should understand that we are still not at
liberty to disclose all of the details of our plans. I don't want to
disclose too much to potential competitors and we are under confidentiality
agreements with our key technology partners. Within those boundaries we
will disclose as much as we can. The difficult part about not being able to
disclose everything is that some decisions don't seem to make sense unless
you have all of the information. We have no choice but to work around this
for now.

As background information for the technology brief I would also like to
discuss the concept of revolutionary products and our strategy for
implementing the next generation Amiga.

REVOLUTIONARY PRODUCTS:

rev�o�lu�tion�ary ("re-v&-'lü-sh&-"ner-E): adjective; 1 c: constituting or
bringing about a major or fundamental change in the way of thinking about
or visualizing something: a change of paradigm <a revolutionary new
product>

The original Amiga was revolutionary because it drove a fundamental change
in computer graphics performance, capabilities, and overall value. It
allowed people to do things that couldn't be done with other systems at the
time. It moved computers a big step into the future by fundamentally
changing the way people viewed and used computers. The next generation
Amiga must do the same but in the context of the present computer industry.
Faster CPUs and faster graphics alone will not drive a revolutionary new
computer platform. They are important but not revolutionary. Revolutionary
thinking requires us to let go of past preferences and envision a future
that doesn't currently exist. It requires us to develop technology and
functions that enable this future vision. This is the spirit of
revolutionary innovation. The same spirit that drove the original Amiga
development team.

The problem is that revolutionary paradigm shifts are difficult to envision
before they occur. Let me give you an example. When I was in college, I had
a job as a software developer programming video games for the Atari 2600,
Commodore64, and Apple II (This was before the first Amiga came out). At
the current time, all video games were programmed in assembly language.
This was great at the time because it gave you complete control of the
hardware. I couldn't imagine programming a game in a high-level language
such as C++ because it would be so incredible inefficient. It just seemed
like an unrealistic proposition. Well, the world changed. You can't manage
the complexity or extravagance of today's games in assembly. You need
sophisticated tools and a high-level language like C++. This was a
revolutionary paradigm shift that was hard to envision years before it
happened.

Keep this section in mind as you read the technology brief that will be
released. It is not enough to bring out an incremental product. It must be
revolutionary in order for all of us to succeed. You must think in a
different dimension to understand the revolutionary nature of the next
generation Amiga environment. The technology brief will help you understand
this future vision - I look forward to getting your continuing feedback on
our directions.

PRODUCT IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

Our strategy for implementing the new Amiga is to integrate the best
technology in the industry into a new, efficient, exciting, and
revolutionary computer platform focused on the future. It is important to
understand this strategy so that you can better understand some of our
decisions. The computer industry today is much different than it was when
the first Amiga was designed. The initial Amiga was designed when the
computer industry was at its infancy. The computer industry has now matured
and the dynamics have changed significantly. The industry is replete with
companies developing and supplying great technology and components. As an
example, there are many excellent companies offering sophisticated
high-performance 3D graphics chips. All of these companies have one goal in
mind: to develop and ship the best 3D graphics solution. These graphics
companies have many world-class engineers. Trust me, I know these companies
well. To think that we could design our own 3D graphics chip that was
better is not reasonable. This is why all leading computer companies (IBM,
Compaq, Gateway, Apple, et al.) now depend on 3rd party graphics companies.
It was clear to them that internal resources couldn't compete with
companies specialized in this area. This is the normal cycle of a maturing
industry and is the reason why we can't think in the past when creating a
revolutionary product for the future.

Does this mean that the Amiga won't be unique or lead in performance?
Absolutely not! Firstly, you shouldn't define performance by exclusively
using narrow benchmarks of today's industry. We need to focus on addressing
the next computer revolution rather than competing with the last one.
Secondly, an extremely efficient architecture will make the most out of
commonly used components like 3D graphics chips. We can get remarkably
impressive performance by coupling an industry leading PCI/AGP graphics
chip to the extremely efficient architecture of the new Amiga. On the CPU
side we have selected a CPU that will bring exciting new capabilities to
the Amiga. I can't disclose what instruction set it uses at this time
because of confidentiality agreements. I can tell you that it's very
exciting and NOT an x86 architecture processor. Our plan is to disclose the
CPU in several weeks at the World of Amiga and AmiWest shows. At this time
I hope to disclose all of our technology choices and partners.

In order to pull this great technology together and develop our
next-generation platform, we are also developing our own technology in key
strategic areas. This technology will allow us to make the product unique,
integrate 3rd party technology and create the final revolutionary product.
For example...

A TEASER:

The technology brief will also include the description of new Amiga
technology that I think is particularly exciting. It is an object-oriented
technology developed by Amiga called the AmigaObjectTM. The AmigaObjectTM
is a powerful software structure that enables easy integration of
technology, distributed computing, high-speed network transactions, and
communication between applications. They are also powerful software
building blocks that will allow people to build impressive applications
quickly. AmigaObjectsTM are portable and transferable across platforms
allowing AmigaObjectsTM to proliferate throughout the network, the Internet
and the world. Do I have your attention yet? This is just one piece of the
new Amiga operating environment. It is this type of technology that will
allow us to build a revolutionary computer platform. We can discuss this
technology because we have now filed patent disclosures giving us some
protection against competitors. More on this in the technology brief.

IN SUMMARY:

The upcoming technology brief will be released early next week. While it
will of necessity be at a fairly high level, it will still be the most
comprehensive description to date of the new Amiga product and operating
environment. I think it will go a long way in helping you understand
Amiga's future and the new products. I am very excited about releasing this
information and getting your response. After you read it, I think you will
agree that Amiga and the Amiga community has a chance of driving the next
computer revolution.

Sincerely,

Jim Collas
President, Amiga�

(Quelle: AMIGA)


Eine deutsche Version dieses Briefes erhalten die AMIGA-aktuell-Abonnenten 
in den nächsten Tagen in einem Special.