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I'm sorry, but I think that many people are vastly over-estimating the importance of this little geek-market. Sure, a few (some thousand or so) Pegasos motherboards has been sold here (during a three year period or so), but it should be very obvious to everyone that this hasn't been even remotely enough to fund the development of neither the Pegasos nor the MorphOS to this point (it has probably merely been a contribution to Ralph's Jolt Cola budget ). It was possible for Genesi to do what they did for this market at the time when they were living on (their own!) "VC" money, and they weren't as dependant on income from real sales as they are now. They obviously can't carry the community on their shoulders anymore, and I think that you are greatly mistaken if you for a second believes that the couple of hundred potential buyers or so that still may be left in the world-wide Amiga community in any way has been the end-goal for Genesi (or Eyetech/Hyperion/AmigaInc/anyone who aims for a rewarding business). This is not what they are aiming at. However, this does not in any way mean that they aren't interested in MorphOS, I would dare to say it's the very opposite. They seem to see a power in a combination of a propreitary hardware and OS (eventually combined with some kind of service). As far as I know, Ralf Schmidt is one of the owners of Genesi, and Genesi has spent all these money on the development and marketing of MorphOS for a reason. I definitely think there will be a place for MorphOS in future products from Genesi, but those products won't necessarily be specifically targeted towards the Amiga community, but instead to a broad consumer device market of some kind. If you have read bbrv's leads on ipods, stb's, etc, you would see what I'm getting at.

Edit: Besides, looking from that angle, what purpose would Ambient serve in an ipod device? Or a stb? MUI is another thing, that would make more sense since MUI could speed up application development a great deal, especially if the future development of MUI is more tailored towards these kind of devices and areas of usage. But even if Genesi obviously *wants* to keep Ambient inside the future MorphOS package (otherwise they would have publically thrown it out days ago already), there is probably a somewhat limited purpose of Ambient in any real, money making future devices that Genesi may develop for any of those markets. I guess this fact sets the limit of how much Genesi is prepared to sacrifice of any other important area that currently needs their financial attention.

Perhaps a future desktop would be best developed in open source after all? I said this in another thread earlier, but I say it again: Since the situation is the same for OS4, which will also be targeted at similar markets and devices, thus facing the same requirements and priorities (and possibly AROS too if that would ever become anything more than a hobby of a few developers), perhaps it would be a good idea of a common [open source] desktop project? A common denominator, a joint effort maintained and developed by the entire Amiga *community*? After all, it will be the *community* (and not Genesi/Hyperion) that would want/benefit the most of a desktop application like Ambient/Workbench, while Genesi/Hyperion could focus their efforts and limited resources on the *core* of their respective OS? I don't think it will happen, but what about the idea?

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma on 2004/11/23 22:35 ]

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma on 2004/11/23 22:46 ]