He Is Really Really Coming???
by Zito/Darkage^Layout^Reason

What`s up there with Amiga Inc.? Since years now, we - the community of Amiga users get one booby-prize after the other! Even the new boinbag on OS3.1 named OS3.9 isn`t that worth writing about (but if you are interested to read anything, have a look at the article `Totally New Stuff???` also to be found in this section)!
So why should we stay on a machine that is practically dead, but kept alive for the money making of a few comercial guys? Tell me...

Where is the AmigaOne? The DE machine? The non-concurence computer labled Amiga? Promised to be released in march 2001 for the public. Well, let me have a look at my watch... Seems to go wrong, I guess. It is already april, but I haven`t heard anything new about it or even saw this mystic piece of hardware. Surely we will be forced to read another Billy "I am so cool in my big chair" McEvan letter in one of the last remaining Amiga paper magazines where he will tell us that he is feeling so fine (why not with the money he gets for his smile?) and that we should be a bit patient again. This is reality, guys!
The 68k is definitive dead, but the DE still not born. Means there is no Amiga around besides the few models still in use of some freaks. Cope with this.

But why am I so pessimistic? Now AI shows interests in developing some new kind of PDA or was it just the software? Isn`t that great, my friends? At least they are searching for software programmer, but can`t or don`t want to give any information about it. Silence or secrets, nothing more to gain from our leaders! But how shall a programmer decide if this could be intersting for him if he has no information? Damned, is this the new way of AI? Then it would be the last one. Definitively.

And if some too optimistic persons among you haven`t recognized it: OS3.9 is the last official Operating System, if one could really call it this way. I am sure there will be no v4.0. The offical part of the Amiga will vanish within this or the next year after squeezing the rest of the money out of the last Amiga users.
The only chance we have is to stay as a strong community and organize ourselves like the rest of the portfolio or c64 users do for example. With those new flashroms I heard of we could code our own (free) new OS. We still have a lot of talented coders among us and also artists. And with PD and shareware the Amiga can stay alive for a long time. Maybe in some years the community is stronger than ever and able to build up a new official computer firm again, but at the moment I see no sense in Amiga Inc. Does anybody out there?
We can not continue stating to all sceptics/peecee users that the Amiga is still used at the NASA office, because this is not us! Most interesting software, newssites and magazines are no commercials/officials today anyway. More than 90% of new stuff for our beloved machine is produced by semi-professionals or even amateurs.
We are stumbling from one Amiga fair to the other, always hoping that the next one will bring us something new. I guess this isn`t the way we dreamt to be. So the only thing we seemly could do, is waiting for Amiga2001. Maybe there will be something REALLY new for us, but I guess not. It will be a presentation of selfish personylities using the last change to be praised for past things they did (or not) and to get some applause.

But I am sure these were promises only again. As always just promises. Nothing more than hot air...
Cringley`s prognoses will be right, but we, the fools, will continue following Billy`s finger that points to nowhere as long as he doesn`t leave or somebody else takes over his position. And I am still one of these fools. I am afraid.
So the only right conclusion is to phone my doctor and to beg for a place in a special hotel with this big wall around and featuring those nice masculine nurses giving morphine in regular overdoses or something similar to calm down my sad heart that`s filled up with wrath. More and more with every day.

I will see you there. Someday...