Paul Cundle wrote:

> From: "Francis G. Loch" <francis@...>
>
>> the Amiga does lack in a lot of areas like a full modern
>> web browser, but I am
>> confident that most of those gaps will close.
>
> I have to say I think this is misguided. With MS working
> constantly on IE, Mozilla on Firefox, and now Google on
> Chrome, I can't see a platform which has a negligible number
> of serious users - let alone developers - producing
> something competitive.

I don't think it's really a question of being competitive, at least for the
moment. Taking the web browser as an example there are a number of sites
which are not displayed properly or cannot even be accessed using the
current versions of IBrowse or AWeb. OWB is a new browser capable of doing
this, but it still lacks a lot of functionality so it's not ideal for
everyday use.

The Amiga really needs to play catch up in these areas so that things like
surfing the web is as a general user would expect. I doubt that the general
user would need most of the up-to-the-minute bells and whistles that
Microsoft or whoever add to their browsers. Besides, once things progress a
bit more there is every possibility that easy porting of apps like Firefox
to the Amiga will become more of a reality.

>> As for Windows, I find it very slow and cumbersome in
>> comparison to AmigaOS
>> and that's comparing my quad-core 3.4GHz PC running
>> Windows XP/Vista to my
>> 'lowly' 800MHz Amiga running AmigaOS 4.
>
> That may be so, but my issue remains: how on earth is OS4
> ever going to attract the number of users required to make
> it viable? Having a hardcore of Amiga users who know that
> "more MHz" isn't necessarily better, is simply not enough.

There were discussions of OS4 being used in embedded systems to generate
additional revenue, but I haven't really been keeping up to date on what is
happening in this area.

As for attracting general users, who knows. I think that the Amiga still
needs to catch up in a number of areas before it can become a more
mainstream platform that the general public would take an interest in.

I still believe that the Amiga can make it, but it's not an easy road.

Kind regards,

Francis