The statements which were issued in the advertising, press
releases, websites, packaging
and documentation of certain products, and which Cloanto considers
to be factually incorrect, include:
- "This provides the first Amiga laptop
that many users have been waiting for 16 years to see." ("Erstmals
ist es nun möglich, einen PC-Laptop mit einem AmigaOS
Betriebssystem zu installieren. Ein Fortschritt, den viele seit 16
Jahren erwarten.")
- "With the ... it is possible for the
first time to transparently make virtual memory available for the
AmigaOS." ("Mit dem ... ist es erstmals möglich, dem
AmigaOS transparent virtuellen Speicher zur Verfügung zu stellen.")
- "The most powerful Amiga you can use
now..."/"The most powerful Amiga you can use
today..."/"The most powerful Amiga of all times"/"The fastest Amiga
ever" ("Der leistungsfähigste Amiga, den man
derzeit einsetzen kann..."/"Der
leistungsfähigeste Amiga, den man derzeit einsetzen kann..."/"Der schnellste Amiga aller Zeiten"
/ "Der leistungsfähigste Amiga aller Zeiten")
- "The most powerful and compatible AMIGA you have ever seen!" ("Der
schnellste und kompatibelste Amiga
den sie je gesehen haben!")
- " The most functional Amiga
ever" ("Der funktionellste Amiga aller
Zeiten")
Cloanto trusts that these texts were written and disseminated
in good faith, most likely by individuals and organizations who
were new to Amiga emulation. Nevertheless, because of the
potential for confusion among users, and the possible disruption
of fair competition in an already challenged
market, on October 22, 2001, Cloanto asked the issuers of the
statements to kindly issue prompt corrections.
Amiga Forever made Amiga emulation legal and officially
accepted in
1997, allowing it
to evolve and prosper. The Amiga emulation and operating system software
included in Amiga Forever were recognized even by the
Gateway/Amiga companies as an Amiga computer, and were authorized to
carry their "Powered by Amiga" logo. Amiga
Forever made it possible to everybody, from Amiga users, to
developers, to senior
Gateway/Amiga management, to enjoy both the power of virtual
memory ("transparently made available to the Amiga OS")
and the freedom of using the Amiga operating system and software on a
notebook computer. Since all of this took place in 1997, claims
that such features were first introduced in 2001 cannot be valid.
For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that even
before 1997 small projects resulting in more or less finished
portable Amiga computers which combined Amiga motherboard hardware
with an LCD display and a custom case were known to exist, and
were often displayed at Amiga shows. Also, Amiga utility programs
which provided a certain degree of support for virtual memory to
the Amiga operating system and applications were distributed before 1997.
On the side of performance, without even considering that
statements such as "The most powerful Amiga you can use
today" were issued several months before the product being
described was actually released to the public (on or about October 20,
2001), little thought seems to have been given to another very
powerful member of the Amiga family, the PowerPC CPU, which at
least until the year before was being promoted using the slogan
"The real speed is Warp speed!", and which was
still officially supported as an Amiga CPU in the "Amiga OS 3.5" and "Amiga OS 3.9" packages.
Cloanto has been a supporter of the PowerPC architecture and
one of very few beta sites worldwide for certain (non-Amiga)
PowerPC products before that CPU even was mentioned as a possible
Amiga CPU. When, in May 1997, Cloanto
published native PowerPC Amiga
versions of some of its Personal Paint libraries on both Aminet
and on the Personal Paint 7.1 CD-ROM, it became the first to do so
(not counting development tools). Even assuming that the PowerPC
hardware for the Amiga did not evolve, as it did, benchmarks using
popular programs such as MPEG video players and other
CPU-intensive code running on the same 200 MHz PowerPC CPUs that were
available in 1997 (but using 2001 PowerPC software) indicate that the native PowerPC code is at
least twice as fast as the same code compiled for the 68K CPU and
then running, using a CPU released in 2001, in the emulation referred to as the "most
powerful Amiga of all times". If even a 1997 Amiga is twice
as fast as "the most powerful Amiga" of 2001 we cannot
but wonder if maybe by "power" something other than
speed was meant. Could that be the power of... marketing?
Comparing emulation with emulation on the same hardware, even
assuming that the statement "the most powerful and compatible"
refers to one and the same program (and host operating system),
which it apparently does not (QNX seems to be used as a host for
"compatibility", while a stripped-down GNU/Linux is
preferred for "power"), and assuming that the "most
powerful" software actually runs at all (on most computers
tested by Cloanto it failed to even boot the Amiga), during a
public benchmark conducted at the Pianeta
Amiga 2001 show it became evident that the emulation software
for Windows as included in Amiga Forever performed the same
CPU-intensive tasks in the same 21-22 second range as "the fastest Amiga
ever" did. Additional tests involving intense DirectX
graphics activity demonstrated the superior power and
compatibility of the software included in Amiga Forever.
While it is always very possible that benchmarks be chosen
and/or tweaked to favor one or the other package, we believe that
when one of the two packages consistently fails to even start on
the same PC hardware on which the other package runs smoothly, this
casts strong doubts not only about its performance, which
inevitably falls to zero, but also on statements such as the "most compatible"
and "most functional".
Cloanto first tested the release version of the "the most
powerful and compatible" package on a variety of computers,
which all were capable of running Amiga Forever, and which
included a ThinkPad A21p, a ThinkPad 760 ED, an Asus P2B
motherboard with Matrox Millennium AGP graphics card and
SoundBlaster Live! sound card, and notebooks and PCs by Siemens
and Compaq. On the first four computers the software either failed
to even boot from CD, or produced scaring random noise on
screen, or kept animating a bouncing ball (an interesting
variation on the Amiga "forever" theme), or refused to start in
anything other than text mode (not very useful, since even the
first Amiga had bitmapped graphics). On the fifth computer the
software did not recognize the mouse and keyboard (USB), and
therefore was unusable. An Amiga without mouse and keyboard...
another "first"? (No, of course: the CD³² was the first
Amiga without mouse and keyboard.)
Probably as a a result of incompatibilities like the above-mentioned
ones several
resellers had to resort to selling complete PCs with
carefully chosen components, so that "the most compatible Amiga"
would actually work. However PCs are designed to be expanded, and when a handful of developers has to
keep up with the work of thousands of programmers who write
drivers for new PC peripherals and standards mostly designed for
Windows, what are the chances of compatibility with whatever
components one may wish to add to such a computer? How can a
system which was released without even support for a USB mouse or
keyboard give peace of mind about compatibility with the latest
graphics or sound card, or that other exciting gadget which may be released tomorrow?
About the last statement, that of the "most functional
Amiga", Cloanto is not sure what it was meant to mean. From
the point of view of drivers, the software associated with this
vague claim is certainly less "functional" than an
emulation which has access to the wealth of Windows drivers. If it
doesn't support a certain notebook, or display card, or wireless
networking card, or file system, or camera, or input device, or
security or digital rights or power management standard, if it even requires a
reboot into isolation, rather than being able of running side by
side with another operating system and its applications, how can
it be more "functional"?
