Subject: Note from the Amiga R&D Team
Date: 1999/07/19
Author: Rick LeFaivre rickl@amiga.com

Very interesting and active debate over the past two weeks. We *love* the passion of (most of ;-)) the
on-line community. Linux? X-Windows? PCI? USB? MIDI? Floppy Drive? ATI graphics, etc., etc. While an
overwhelming percentage of our email is quite positive about Amiga's directions, there are those who
have raised quite legitimate technical concerns, and a small percentage who are just bashing
everything we do (more on them later).

One positive aspect of the Linux announcement is the huge influx of technical talent into the Amiga camp
from the Linux community. There are legitimate issues with Linux, as anyone with a technical background
will acknowledge. One positive aspect of the Linux phenomenon is that there are hundreds of thousands
of programmers out there working to fix those problems. There are also hundreds of companies working
on applications and drivers (and hardware) for Linux, that we can immediately tap into. Yes, there are
integration and testing issues to work on, but there are many, many more positives than negatives.
Please understand that the Linux decision was not purely (actually not mostly) a technical decision.
It was a decision driven by a reasoned analysis of what underlying OS would give Amiga the greatest chance
to succeed in the marketplace, and as a company.

Also understand that we have not yet seen a single technical issue raised in the news groups that we are
not already aware of, and working on either inside of Amiga or through partners. Will the Amiga MCC under
development be perfect? Of course not -- product development is all about tradeoffs. When it is shipping,
will it be at the heart of the best distributed multimedia computing environment in the marketplace
in terms of price/performance/usability? Yes! Even more important, the MCC is only one piece of a much
broader strategy that we have chosen to not really discuss yet. When Jim Collas talks about revolutions,
it's not a revolution in terms of what happens to be inside the MCC box (although some of the unannounced
components are, indeed, revolutionary); it's the entire distributed home computing/Internet environment
and experience that will be revolutionary as it rolls out over the coming year. DON'T JUST FOCUS ON BOXES
AND OPERATING SYSTEMS! (sorry for shouting.)

So, to those of you raising legitimate technical concerns, we will do our best to communicate solutions
as they are worked out. Better yet, help us track down those solutions. Linux is getting better every week,
with issues getting resolved at an amazing pace. ATI may not be able to ship their new graphics/video
accelerator (which looks great) on time, and rest assured that we're also looking at 3dfx and NVidea.
Yes, there will be a floppy drive (probably a 1.44MB / 120MB combo). We're working on the sound/MIDI
requirements. We're listening to proactive suggestions, and will do our best to manage the inevitable
tradeoffs to create the best next-generation system we can.

To the small number of individuals who have been sending vulgar, threatening hatemail because you don't
like what we're doing, and have announced that you're fed up and are leaving the Amiga community, goodbye.
Millions and millions of people will purchase Amiga-branded and Amiga-compliant products over the coming
years, and we're sorry you won't be among them.

Rick LeFaivre, Allan Havemose, and the Amiga R&D Team


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