Independent Amiga Rejuvenation Survey

"The Independent Amiga Rejuvenation Survey"

IARS?

The Amiga Community is known for for its fanatic dedication to the Amiga
platform, and that has led to several quarrels with PC and Mac users over
the years.  Our dedication has maybe been strengthened by the fact that the
Amiga has never gotten any real chance to prove its advantages over the
major platforms, perhaps mostly due to mismanagement by its holders.

The last years has been an endless waiting for answers.  Who owns the
Amiga?, who will own the Amiga?, what will become of the Amiga?  etc.  This
has, to say the least, been very frustrating for those of us who strongly
believe that there still is a future and room on the market for our beloved
Amiga.  However, one side effect of the waiting is that tons of ideas have
evolved in the minds of the Amiga Community, a community which indeed is
rather superior in its technological skills compared to the PC- and
Mac-users.  The vast number of high quality shareware programs on the
Aminet proves this fact.

The problem is, as always, to make the manufacturers/developers of Amiga
hardware and software listen to the opinions and ideas of the Amiga
Community, or rather benefit from them.  One major reason may be the fact
that the Amiga Community is rather disorganized, no common views have ever
been presented.  Of course one can't expect that everyone should agree upon
a certain topic, but it would indeed help our cause and put a lot more
wieght behind out arguments if we could at least be rather agree upon some
major topics.

I strongly believe that if the highly skilled and devoted Amiga-users
around the world could agree upon a common document regarding the
rejuvenation of the Amiga, we will make an impact.  The Independent Amiga
Rejuvenation Survey (IARS) is meant to serve as the basis of such a common
document.  In addition to this it will also serve as a constant receiver
and resource of ideas from the Amiga Community.

It must be emphasized that this survey is not in any way meant to be
anti-VIScorp or anti-anyoneelse for that matter, it only meant to be
pro-Amigan.  The result of the survey could in fact indeed be pro-VIScorp
in the sense that we're just trying to be a development resource.

This is how it will be done:

1.  Initially I will receive documents (maybe even images, html documents
are welcome) - by e-mail - where you express your views and ideas
concerning the future of the Amiga.  Topics could for instance be:

  The hardware specifications (CPU, what kind of bus, expandability etc.)

  The casing (pictures are welcome)
  The OS (Libs, Devs, CLI, GUI etc.)
  Internet (TCP, Software etc.)
  Software (Bundles, killer apps etc.)
  Marketing (Advertising, strategy etc.)
  Education (Selling to schools, programming courses etc.)
  Programming (Bundles, preferred languages etc.)
  etc.

I would also like to have your views upon:

What was it that initially made the Amiga successful?  Whas it that it
inspired a new generation of programmers?  Whas it the hardware?  Whas
it....?  You tell me.

What are the benefits of Windows and MacOS, apart from the obvious ones
(availability, dominance etc.), i.e what's good about them?  What should we
copy?

Is it important that this future computer everyone's raving about really is
an Amiga, i.e do we care whether it's called Amiga or not?

     ...and anything else that comes to mind.

2.  After the deadline (10 dec 1996) the documents will be compiled into
one, where no views or opinions are left out.  However, I will of course
shorten it a bit, maybe using sentences like "The motivations for using the
PowerPC were:..........,........" .  (Mails received after the deadline are
not neglected, the ideas and documents may still be included in the final
document, however that may not serve as basis for the survey questions.)

3.  The compiled document will then be mailed to every contributor, and of
course it will also be available on this web-page.  Every contributor's
document will also be available as such, if nothing else is specified by
you.

4.  Based upon the document, a form-based survey will be presented here,
were everyone who's interested in the future of the Amiga should
participate.  Every question in the survey will have reference links to
descriptive pages so that you can really make up your mind, and maybe even
learn something along the way.

5.  The results of the survey will then be compiled into the final
document, project name: "The Independent Amiga Rejuvenation White Book",
which will not only be released here on this page, but also available in
printed form.  This printed document will be sent to VIScorp, Phase5, PIOS,
Soft-Logik, Almathera etc..  You will of course have the possibility to
mail your opinions regarding the final document before its printed.

The web-version of the document will also contain full versions of the
submitted documents, be it pure text documents or html-documents.

The future

Hopefully, the page may serve as a constant collection of the ideas that
the Amiga Community come up with, i.e it will be constantly updated, even
after the first publication of the document.  In conjunction with e.g chat
possibilities this could be the ultimate Amiga Forum.

Maybe this kind of user survey could be used even after a successful Amiga
relaunch, and would then serve as the users instrument to influence the
further development of the Amiga platform.  It would not neccesarily be
administered by me, the important thing is that we keep trying to influece
the future of the Amiga.

Start mailing!  Deadline for the survey basing documents is the 10th of
December, 1996..  However, submissions after this date are just as welcome.

Here's the address:

s96gunte@student.adb.gu.se

Gunnar Liljas, 1996.

Amiga Report Main Page Amiga Web Directory