Year 2018 is ending, we can just count remaining days. So we can start a kind of summary - how it was like in Amiga world. Small world, in fact, because number of Amiga fans is decreasing month by month. We can feel like witchers from Sapkowski's books - archaic fighters in the world of ultrabooks, smartphone and cloud solutions. Of course, we can feel only in our heads, because rest of the world thinks, that we are similar to punched cards fans. Szymon "Szaman" Żyła will prepare article about good things in 2018, so I feel free to put there disadvantages and here are my opinions.
I called this article "Year of the nothing", because nothing important has happened. In fact we can copy article about missing things from 2012 and it will be still valid. I would like not to complain all the times, but there is nothing, which makes me happy. We can say, that "Amiga is just fun" and we still have Super Frog i AmigaAMP, so why am I complaining? Nothing makes me optimistic. Just after Pixel Heaven I was asking about vision and future of Amiga. What I received is just smiles and good mood of Mr. Dickinson and other AmiWest participant.
Good feelings, everybody is happy, so why I am asking? Maybe because current year's decisions looks more like chaotic moves then tactical operations of army. Development of AmigaOS through Enhancer Software instead new, significant version (4.2? 5.0?). Enhancer Software as a remedy for all problems looks like a bandage to be used as a medicine for pneumonia? Suggestion to build your own laptop instead vision of Amiga laptop. Funny, should I also build my own processor or a car? Anybody remember project ALICE? Version 3.1.4 of AmigaOS, which in fact just shows, that the cupboard is bare. It looks like in 2018 Windows 3.3 has been released to add into Win 3.1 more functionalities, which are in Windows 95. Sounds ridiculus?
We didn't receive Tabor aka A1222 (promised by last several years). The price of X5000 model is just shocking. New, modern browser was put into long-term freezer. Announcement of new Libre Office sound very enigmatic. Facebook's fan page of A-EON contains more photos from travel and fashion of Mr. Dickinson and retro parties than info about new products. Strange relationships between Hyperion and A-EON (covered by official info) are just mysterious. Of course we should not forget about army of layers, which woke up just after release of 3.1.4. Sorry, but I will not waste my keyboard to write about it.
That's disadvantages of Amiga world from my point of view. But we have also some positive points. English version of eXec.pl (amiganews.exec.pl), the oldest Amiga portal in Poland has been released and I take part in this project. Retro attacks, so prices of archaic machines are extremely high and the calendar is full of retro parties. Number of productions for Amiga 68k - it looks fine, but I would like to not discuss about standards. We should not expect Amiga machine similar to "PlayStation Classic" - army of layers, carrion-eaters, are just waiting to catch it. Emulation area is in the good form, the same like web projects to move Workbench into the browser.
Summary. Amiga NG (all of the three versions) is slowly and systematically vanishing. If you're not going forward, you're going backwards. There is no light of hope on the horizon. Classics Amiga will stay with us due to nostalgy and they will left together with owners. Young people have they own machines and will have different memories in the future. For them Amiga is ancient machine, which should be placed in the basement.
Author of blog Malinowa Amiga (PL) and FB fan page (PL/EN).
PS. After Chrimstmas we will published on eXec.pl positive point of view on 2018 by Szymon "Szaman" Żyła.
