Time for another fine interview from MorphOS Nordic.

* Can you tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Ilkka Lehtoranta, living with my fiancee in Jyväskylä, Finland.
I work in the machine vision industry working on C# and embedded projects.

* Tell us a bit about your computer history.

It was in early 80s when I found about Commodore VIC-20 and got immediately hooked at it.
It was very exciting but it was not until late 80s until got my first computer,
Commodore 64. I wrote simple BASIC programs on it but I never managed to do anything
serious with it. I tried to learn writing programs in machine language but without
knowledge resources it was hopeless. When I got Amiga 500 I started to experience
coding more seriously and crafted some small and rudimentary tools.

* When did you first get in touch with Amiga and later MorphOS?

It was in late 80s when my friends were getting new Amiga 500 and I had to get one, too.
Finally in 1990 I bought my first Amiga 500. Somehow I managed to get an access
to A68k compiler and some system header files to experiment with Amiga coding.
I wrote some small and not so small utilities in a 68k assembly. It was fun.

Many many years later in 2000 or 2001 when Piru was looking for beta testers for MorphOS.
The MorphOS was completely new to me. In fact I knew absolutely nothing about it nor its
competitor OS4. My interest on Amiga had been wading due to lack of progress,
news and general stagnation but I got interested because there were many talented persons
working on it. There was finally good use for my BlizzardPPC and about same time I got in
touch with people at #amigazeux who were huge MorphOS and MUI fans. I started converting some my
projects to PowerPC pestering Piru with lot of questions.

The AmigaZeux is not active anymore but I wish we can meet each other in the future.
Matthias Boecker who was author of AmiTradeCenter, AmiNetRadio, dynAMIte and many other
famous applications and games had strong influence to my coding and we had good time when
chatting about coding, chip tunes and everything in general.

* What do you do when your not working on MorphOS?

Nothing really. I just relax with my girlfriend. Going out and having fun.

* What are your part in the MorphOS development?

I am working on upper level components like disk based libraries and tools and utilities.

* Can you give us some examples of things you have been involved in?

Fontconfig, Mixer, Multiview, Ambient and some MUI classes.

* What is the biggest challenge you have been facing when developing MorphOS?

I dont think there have been any. If you have written software for Amiga then developing
MorphOS is only easier due to better tools and system debugging support.

* Are you working on some features that we will se in MorphOS in the future?

There will be new benchmarking tools in MorphOS 3.2. GfxSpeed is completely new program
I wrote last year and DiskSpeed is a new enhanced port from AROS. Some new APIs are also
coming.

* What are the biggest challenges MorphOS is facing?

It is the death of PPC. We can switch to x86 or ARM but can we survive if we are going
to drop the 68k compatibility?

* In the event of an architecture change, what would you prefer and why?

It would be x64. It is powerful and affordable. The ARM architecture is cute but
ARM gadgets on the market are highly specialized short living trendy customer electronics.

MorphOS tablet running OWB would be lovely, though.

* What future if any do you see for the PPC platform?

It is slowly fading into oblivion. Nobody cares it.

* Why should anyone chose MorphOS over any other OS?

They probably shouldnt :) it is highly specialized operating system that requires some understanding of Amiga concepts
and willingness to tinker with niche hardware and small software base. You can use MorphOS for managing photos,
online banking, Facebook, watching movies online and things like that but you can do that on cheap tablets, too.

But with MorphOS you can get your Amiga fix on cheap Macs and have a slightly different point of view to the world
of computing. MorphOS is luckily quite easy to use. My friends dont often realize it is not an OS X when they are
using OWB on my PowerBook.

* What future do you see for MorphOS?

It is promising but it will be a niche OS like it has always been.

However, although the PPC as a platform has stagnated we have established solid base for
future MorphOS versions. We are not just porting MorphOS to new devices or making new features
but we have got a chance to enhance existing functionality. For example we have replaced APDF by
VPDF and in the future old AmiTCP based NetStack is replaced with newer one. We dont have so many missing
pieces like we used to have five years ago. We have made good progress and I hope we continue to
do so in the future.

* What would you like to see in MorphOS in the future?

Many things. Better Unicode support, more new software from 3rd party developers and better documentation
to developers. Our SDK is great but autodocs are substandard. In fact in most places they dont exist.

I was surprised when I read about MUI Royale. It doesnt do it like I want it. I am not a huge XML
fan. But it does support MUI 4 features and external MUI classes without having to write code
yourself. I wish we could offer something like this.

We should also concentrate on usability issues to help new users to use MorphOS. I always forget this because
I have been using MorphOS over ten years and have fresh install only when I buy new old Mac.

* Is there anything you would like to say to the MorphOS community?

Thank you for supporting us. Dont hesitate to send complaints to us if something is broken or missing.

[ Edited by saib0t 13.04.2013 - 20:47 ]

Good read, thanks for that interview. Best regards to Itix, I was lucky enough to meet him once :)

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me too

Nice interview - many thanks!

Another very interesting read. Thanks Itix and saib0t.

I'd love to see more things like this interview posted.

saib0t,
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I would personally miss it, and I am not a devoted Amiga fanatic.
And as to an ISA change, can't that wait a little longer?

@Jim,

I agree! It is simple, honest interview answers like these that make the MorphOS Dev. Team members seem more like real people, instead of someone that is difficult or impossible to get in touch with.

More statements, or interviews like this one from other members of the Dev. Team would satisfy most MorphOS users curiosity, and also bring us many more new users, because Hyperion is really failing in the communication department lately. If the MorphOS Dev. Team is shown to be more friendly and caring toward their users, I think we would see even more Amiga users trying out MorphOS3.x to see what it is like.

Edit: As I have said before, if/when the Dev. Team decides to make the switch to a different architecture, they might as well take that opportunity to ditch 68k compatibility, and just use complete emulation to run any old 68k apps, or games. That should make the job of switching much easier and a little faster. As long as emulation is still available from within MorphOS to run Amiga 68k apps and games, no one should be upset that the Trance code is gone from MorphOS. Specially if the Amiga 68k emulation can be included seamlessly, such as Run-In-UAE attempts to do for AmigaOS4.x.

Although I like the low power usage of ARM devices, I must agree with Ikka Lehtoranta, that x64 would be the better choice to switch to, for many reasons.

[ Edited by amigadave 14.04.2013 - 17:13 ]

> Hyperion is really failing in the communication department lately

I think there have been some interesting revelations there:

http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=863
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=33223&forum=14&start=320#702744 (ff.)
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=35809&forum=33&start=120#702951 (ff.)

> if/when the Dev. Team decides to make the switch to a different architecture,
> they might as well take that opportunity to ditch 68k compatibility

I think that's more of a constraint rather than an opportunity. What does come with that constraint however is the opportunity to modernize the API.

> That should make the job of switching much easier and a little faster.

Geit estimated 5 years for an ISA switch including API modernization. And he made clear that an ISA switch without concurrent API modernization isn't likely to occur because that would mean going through two stages of incompatibility instead of just one.

Andreas_Wolf,
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Well, unless development has started, I get to keep using PPCs for a few more years.
In a way I find that encouraging.

amigadave,
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Isn't Run-In-UAE style solution been possible and available always. Just configure Ambient mimetypes to do it... there are even some ready made scripts provided with Fab's UAE ports for it.

But if Trance gets ditched and we add UAE layer, I'd really want some patching for it. UAE should share clipboard with MorphOS, have programs' ARexx ports available, use same filesystem etc to think just few things. Without those it's quite useless for utility use. We'd also miss possibility to use 68k commands, libraries, devices, datatypes etc, that could make a big change for some people.

>> Geit estimated 5 years for an ISA switch including API modernization.

> unless development has started, I get to keep using PPCs for a few more years.

Based on geit's estimation, even if development had already started as long as 3 years ago, you'd have to keep using it for a few more years ;-)

> We'd also miss possibility to use 68k commands, libraries, devices, datatypes etc

...and not to forget the possibility to make m68k programs use native OS components.

jPV,
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Indeed, being able to run 68k-programs as they were native is one of the major reasons for me to run MorphOS. If it was stripped down to an UAE-layer, I might as well just use WinUAE on a windows-box.

Maybe there can be a classic and a NG version of MorphOS? :)

> Maybe there can be a classic and a NG version of MorphOS? :)

This would mean maintaining two different, source-incompatible operating systems. I doubt there're enough resources for this.