Just saw your post on AmigaWorld.net saying that Trevor told you that his priority was to finish the AmigaOS4.1FE port to the Tabor board, instead of releasing the X5000 for sale, is that correct?

I don't understand why the priorities of A-Eon would have switched from the X5000 to the Tabor, for getting AmigaOS4.1FE ported, as the X5000 hardware has been completed longer. Of course it makes perfect sense if it turns out to not be the real priorities of A-Eon, but instead the priorities of Hyperion, to complete the port of AmigaOS4.1FE to the Tabor, before completing the port to the X5000, as the MorphOS Dev. Team has no intention to support the Tabor board. I hope that Trevor is not prevented from selling any X5000 boards or systems, because of some "Ben Hermans" contract, stating that each board and/or system must include an AmigaOS4.x license, and that no X5000's can be sold until the port of AmigaOS4.x for the X5000 is completed.

Seems that could be more nasty bullshit from Hyperion to thwart the further success of MorphOS, just like the timing of their announcement of the AmigaOS4.x laptop/netbook based on the Limebook, that was never released, but was conveniently announced immediately after the first version of MorphOS which supported the G4 PowerBook had been announced, when it was no where near being ready for release, and probably hadn't even gotten to the point of a final configuration of how much RAM and how much those rebranded Limebooks would cost Hyperion to purchase.

What incentive does Hyperion have for finishing the port of AmigaOS4.1FE to the X5000, when they know it is not going to compare favorably in head-to-head benchmark tests with MorphOS3.10? They also benefit by limiting the availability of MorphOS users to buy new hardware, instead of used Mac G4 & G5 hardware, to only the poorly performing (when compared to any G4 & G5 systems) SAM460. I hate turning into a conspiracy theorist, but it seems like a perfectly feasible course of action by Ben Hermans to delay the work to port AmigaOS4.1FE to the X5000, if in his eyes he thinks that such action can in any way harm, or disappoint MorphOS users who are waiting to purchase an X5000 to run MorphOS3.10.

Time to go do something productive, thinking about Hyperion gives me a headache.

[ Edited by amigadave 11.07.2016 - 13:05 ]

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If your ambition was to grow your customer base, a more affordable entry level product should be your highest priority.

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The 'success' of MorphOS does not depend on the X5000 nor does the X5000´s 'success' depend on MorphOS.

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I am afraid you are overthinking this and you are also overestimating the importance of additional hardware options.

I plan to come out this year as well. I've been asked to come as a vendor this year and offer repair service and setup a demo of how its done. I have agreed to do it as a possibility but haven't decided 100% if I will. Its looking more like I will though. It all depends on how much room and what I want to bring with me on the drive up. I want to bring my A4000T so I can get some help installing a working dual boot 3.0 4.X system.

I will be in town Friday afternoon to be available for the repair clinic and help get any boards fixed that I can though for sure.

> the AmigaOS4.x laptop/netbook based on the Limebook [...] probably
> hadn't even gotten to the point of [...] how much those rebranded
> Limebooks would cost Hyperion to purchase.

According to the reports of Trevor Dickinson and others, the purchase price was the deciding factor for the abandonment of the project.

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7967&start=100

David,
I have a different tack on this than Andre.
I believe the X5000 port of OS4 is close to ready for release.
That would be one reason for shifting focus to the Tabor port.
And, releasing the X5000 before Tabor also makes sense.
As it would be the only A-eon system available it might help sales.

I think when benchmarks comparing the X5000 to Tabor are made, people are in for a rude awakening.
Sure, Tabor will be cheaper, but its performance is not likely to be much higher than a SAM460.

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What I don't understand is why Trevor (and probably Matthew to an extent) continue to put up with the (non) performance of Hyperion. Wouldn't it just be simpler if Trevor (and Matthew?) bought Hyperion outright?

Hyperion has over promised and drastically under delivered for a decade. Are their programmers _that_ irreplaceable? Trevor, through Aeon, has already bought so many other big products. Wouldn't it only be to Aeon's (and eventually the customers') best interests to buy out Hyperion and bring AmigaOS development in house or at least be able to contract it out to a developer that could actually perform with payment firmly tied to non-negotiable milestones?

I've never understood having a game developer develop an operating system. With his money and determination to see Amiga development continue and grow, taking control of your own destiny has to be a good thing.

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That information doesn't change the timing of Hyperion's announcement, to act as a counter measure to lessen the possibility of AmigaOS4.x users from considering switching to MorphOS and the G4 Powerbook, as they were tempted with a new laptop/netbook running AmigaOS4.x, which was not even close to being a reality, both in development, and it the completion of a contract to purchase the Limebooks at a price that made sense.

It was still false marketing (to some degree or other) used to keep AmigaOS4.x users hoping for their own portable systems, and here we are how many years later, and AmigaOS4.1FE is still without any portable hardware, unless you want to count running the Classic version of AmigaOS4 via emulation with UAE.

Even if it had been sold to Hyperion at an acceptable price, the performance would have been close to that of the SAM440, or Efika, which is nothing to brag about, and several times slower than the G4 PowerBooks that are supported by MorphOS.

Maybe Jim is right, and the focus of Hyperion and the 3rd party programmers that A-Eon funds, can be shifted to working on the Tabor, because all the work to port to the X5000 is done, or almost done, but it hardly seems to make sense to delay the release and sales of the X5000 by even one day, if as Jim said, AmigaOS4.1FE port to the X5000 is finished. Those boards have been manufactured for what, over a year now, close to two years? What advantage is there to shifting development focus to the Tabor before the X5000 is finished and available for purchase, unless as I said, Hyperion is delaying the obvious comparisons between AmigaOS4.1FE, and MorphOS3.10, which will be widely reported, as soon as the X5000 is purchased by users of both operating systems. Unless Hyperion is holding up the final release of the port of AmigaOS4.1FE for the X5000 for some other reason. A-Eon's owners, Trevor & Matthew, have no control over when AmigaOS4.1FE for the X5000 will be declared "finished" and available for release, so Ben has them over a barrel in that regard. It is hardly a secret that Trevor's attitude of including support for all Amiga derived platforms is in direct opposition to Hyperion's view point of only wanting the "Official", or only "Real" continuation of AmigaOS to be supported, so I am sure this creates some friction between the two main men, and the companies they directly control. I feel bad for Trevor, being dependent on the actions of Hyperion and Ben Hermans, but that was the path that Trevor chose to go down, so I won't feel too sorry for him and his ability to succeed, or fail. He is a great fellow Amiga user and very genuine and personable to spend time around, so I always hope for the best in all of his endeavors. As I wrote earlier, I really need to stay away from thinking about Hyperion and their practices & lack of performance in completing what they have promised, or stated they would achieve.

I don't think that sales of the X5000 will matter one bit to the success of MorphOS, other than proving the advantages MorphOS has over AmigaOS4.1FE, and possibly getting 1 or 2 AmigaOS4.1FE users to purchase a MorphOS3.10 license key, so they can run both. The success of MorphOS has already been proven. It competes very well in sheer performance, but not features or software, against even MacOSX for PPC, so it doesn't have anything to prove on the performance front. And for those who say A-Eon should just buy AmigaOS4 IP from Hyperion, they can't, at least not for a reasonable price. Ben would probably sell it for 10 million Euros, but from a business standpoint, AmigaOS4.x isn't worth 100th of that price, IMO. In fact, I think it might be a waste of money to purchase even if it were offered to A-Eon at 1,000th of that 10 million Euro amount. Then of course there is the legal nightmare of trying to determine exactly what Hyperion can legally sell to another company.

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Maybe Ben isn't willing to sell up.

By the way, good luck with everything going on in your life and I hope you can make it to Amiwest, you're Silent Paws A1200 is sure to get a lot of attention.

> I've never understood having a game developer develop an operating system.

I'm not aware of a single game developed by Hyperion Entertainment VOF or Hyperion Entertainment CVBA. All they did with regards to games is porting existing games from one operating system to one or more other operating systems.

> Those boards have been manufactured for what, over a year now, close to two years?

For about one year.

http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/?p=7873

> A-Eon's owners, Trevor & Matthew

...and Trevor's wife ;-)

> Hyperion's view point of only wanting [...] AmigaOS to be supported [...] creates
> some friction between the two main men, and the companies they directly control.

Was or is there any such friction between Hyperion and ACube regarding MorphOS for the AmigaOne 500 (aka Sam460)?

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I don't think you could reasonably expect that a Limebook with OS4 would hold much appeal to anyone considering a G4 Powerbook with MorphOS. As you say yourself, the performance would be pretty poor in comparison. I think the timing was simply because they decided to announce it at Amiwest and any announcement after the news of MorphOS on Powerbook could be viewed as cynical if you're inclined to view it that way.

I don't think there was any deceit here. The project simply failed because the manufacturer had dramatically increased the price by the time they were ready to negotiate an order. I'm kind of glad it didn't happen because I think that even if it had been under £200 it was simply too weak. It's just a shame that Hyperion's limited resources were spent getting the kernel up and running, hopefully the PowerVR support never went beyond a framebuffer.

@amigadave

Your entire discussion is based on the presumtion that "Hyperion" is a actually functioning entity, capable of handling development at this kind of level. But not much during the last years suggests this would be the case.

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 12.07.2016 - 19:59 ]

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Good point, but I am fairly certain that most of us are referring to the Friedens when we talk about OS4 development. They are the primary developers that the work has been contracted with.
I am not sure if Hyperion has any in house programmers.

Yes, we have a better OS, but then we also have more developers (in my opinion, better developers), and MorphOS has been around longer.

While stalagmites may seem to have a faster growth rate than OS4, for a project pursued primarily by two guys, part time, they have done a fairly competent job.
And I'd never trade places with them, the Amiga fanatics have really treated them rather poorly.
Maybe if Hyperion paid them enough to devote themselves to the project full time, things would happen more rapidly.

Again, blame Ben. He doesn't seem to take the entire project seriously.

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That's a little bit of a disservice to other OS4 coders. The Friedens may have taken a lead role, but it was never a two man operation. Much of the OS had nothing to do with them at all.

The Friedens, with the help of others, managed to getting OS4 to a stage where it was a fully working, fully operational OS with no help at all from Ben Herman's terrible design decisions. But they were never fast. Even before OS4, anything coming from them seemed to take forever. This got even worse when Hyperion stopped paying them.

Yes, maybe they were treated poorly, but they were and still are idolised beyond their abilities by the OS4 userbase, something they never seemed to try to prevent. Indeed, their announcements of announcements and early attention-grabbing statements pretty much invited much of the flak they ended up getting.

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Ben's attitude towards OS4 has oftentimes been pointed out as an obsession. It's been a long time since any decision he took was rational, even compared to his record of poor business decisions. The rumour mill said he racked up serious, unpayable debts taking on Amiga Inc because of the crappy contract he put together, and ever since then seems to have been engaged in some eternal Sisyphean attempt to make OS4 mainstream.

> I am not sure if Hyperion has any in house programmers.

They don't.

> for a project pursued primarily by two guys, part time, they have done
> a fairly competent job. [...] Maybe if Hyperion paid them enough to devote
> themselves to the project full time, things would happen more rapidly.

Allegedly, the Friedens were paid full time for work on OS4 until some years ago.

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=9360&start=58

>>Allegedly, the Friedens were paid full time for work on OS4 until some years ago.

And all these other programmers everyone seems to think have made significant contributions?
I am not aware of there being much value added there.

What about you Andreas?
Can you name a core component that was farmed out?

>> Allegedly, the Friedens were paid full time for work on OS4 until some years ago.

> And all these other programmers everyone seems to think have made significant
> contributions?

Not paid, essentially. Quite to the contrary:

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11140&forum=3&start=11

> I am not aware of there being much value added there. [...]
> Can you name a core component that was farmed out?

As Hyperion does not have any in-house developers, every work on OS4 has to be farmed out. I'm not sure what exactly you regard as "core components" of an OS, and I'd say there's more to an OS than just its core. You can read articles by some non-Frieden "AmigaOS core developers" about their work on OS components on the official Hyperion blog:

http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?author=3
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?author=6
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?author=7
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?author=11