Part 2

On the 31st of March, 2001 at the Amiga show held in St Louis, the Chairman and CEO of Amiga, Mr Bill McEwen, unveiled the full Amiga strategy. While only pieces of it had come out in the previous year, this was the first time that it was explained in detail and in full.

That presentation was an intimate affair, given to the few hundred attendees at the show banquet. This update now takes the information presented at the banquet and makes it wholly available for the world.

The future is a content future. Information and activity is slowly migrating from the physical and analog to the digital. Entertainment, research, work, shopping, conversation, education; all are crossing over to take advantage of the digital universe.

Access to this digital universe is via any device that has a microprocessor, understands the digital language, and can connect to that digital universe. In the past this was limited to million dollar mainframes. As technology advanced, the universe became accessible to two thousand dollar desktops. Today, technology has developed to such an extent that this digital universe can be accessed from three hundred dollar games consoles and one hundred dollar cellphones.

The user now has a huge choice when it comes to accessing the one constant; the digital universe. They have the workstation, the desktop, the set top box, the games console, the PDA, the cell phone. Which one they choose depends on many things - where they are, what they want to do, what time it is. For Amiga, this is the new challenge, the new frontier, the new WWW. Whatever, Whenever, Wherever.

All of these devices can access the digital universe, but each of them comes with a set of capabilities decided by price, market and form factor. Each plays a part and fits into a role that in the past defined the activity but which now describes only a profile. For instance 'Desktop' used to be synonymous with word processing, image manipulation and web browsing. Now those activities have escaped mere hardware to become activities in their own right on many other devices.

These activities have a set of requirements; services that they require in order to take place. Similarly, devices have a set of capabilities; services that they can offer to allow activities to take place. Future digital environments will simply match activities to devices based upon requirements and capabilities, scaling the activity up or down to match the capabilities of the host device. Activities will be free of a particular type or piece of hardware, and this will free users from the restrictions imposed on them by the restriction inherent in that hardware.

Increasingly it will be the digital content and the digital activity itself that becomes the only concern. This is a traditional sign that a technology is maturing, as the underlying technology becomes invisible to the user. Digital Living will finally deliver on its promise of Whatever, Whenever, Wherever.

Amiga intends to energize this transition through the creation of a revolutionary product, the Amiga Digital Environment or AmigaDE. The AmigaDE will provide a universal content layer that can sit on any digital device, irrespective of its hardware form or component set, and give both users and developers (content consumers and content producers) a common place in which to conduct digital activity.

AmigaDE offers the unique capability of being able to deploy itself either directly on hardware, co-operatively on a software host (running just like another application on an existing Operating System) or, uniquely, on a software host where the user only sees the AmigaDE but takes advantage of the feature set of the software host.

For the user, the AmigaDE provides a brand new source of rich, compelling content; everything from games through Internet adventures to productivity, content creation and serious work. All of this available on any device that supports the AmigaDE thus not tied to a specific device or computer type. The user gets freedom of choice handed back to them. If they want to add the AmigaDE to their existing computer set up, they can. If they want to use only the AmigaDE, they can.

The user chooses the activity they want to perform and the device on which they want to perform that activity. The AmigaDE works to match activity requirements to device capabilities and provides them with the optimum experience.

For the content producer, the AmigaDE offers a truly universal solution: Content can be created only once and then distributed to any AmigaDE user, irrespective of the device that they are using. As long as the device has the capabilities to support the content, it will work. No more having to create different versions of the same content for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. No more having a great product excluded from the new Set Top Box and PDA markets. The AmigaDE provides a level playing field and brings a multitude of smaller, separate markets into one common market with all the business advantages and opportunities that this entails.

The AmigaDE is a true content environment, allowing users everywhere on every platform and every device to enjoy great content. In the home, families can start to build collections of content (everything from games and productivity applications to digital movies, pictures, music and documentation) and access this content from any any of the devices in their home, and ultimately from any device on the planet.

This content will be downloaded from the Internet or across satellite and cable channels, or by good old fashioned CDs and DVDs and stored on the individual devices. However, as the family collects more and more of this digital content, they may want to collect it all together in a local digital repository, where it can be cataloged, protected and shared amongst all their digital devices without the hassle of having to carry CDs or DVDs between rooms or getting into a fight because eldest son is on the family computer and mother only has the game console.

Amiga intends to solve this problem and thus provide a complete solution for Digital Living, by offering yet another new product: the AmigaOS. This is a completely separate product from the AmigaDE and is not needed in order to enjoy the wonderful benefits of the AmigaDE.

The AmigaOS, together with compliant hardware, will provide a product that will sit at the heart of the digital home. As a repository, it will allow the family to store any type of digital content that they chose, securely and easily accessed. As a server, it will allow the family to move that content to any device within the digital home, and beyond if they so desire, guaranteeing optimum delivery quality at all times. As a gateway, it will provide a single source of entry for all digital content into the home, providing protection from attacks and incursions, allowing parents to control access to external content and consolidating all digital paths.

For the majority of digital families, the AmigaOS device will sit out of the way, requiring minimum maintenance whilst quietly and efficiently enhancing their digital experience. For those interested in a new level of multimedia experience however, the AmigaOS device can also be used as a powerful computer in its own right, and it comes with the additional advantage of the AmigaDE running co-operatively on it, providing direct access to the content that it is also busy serving to other AmigaDE enabled devices in the home.

The world is changing. The way people work, the way they play, the way they communicate, the way they shop and the way they produce and consume. The very act of living itself is moving forwards to a new age. Amiga understands this change; indeed, it has been at the forefront of it since 1984 when it introduced the world to multimedia for the very first time.

With its two new products, the AmigaDE and the AmigaOS, people no longer have to stumble over incompatible products and disappointing content. On their own, these two products offer outstanding performance and value for money. Together, they mark the beginning of Digital Life.

For those interested in using an AmigaOS device as a computer, or for a more technical explanation of the Amiga strategy, please click here for Part 2 of the Technical Update.

Click here for Spanish translation (en Español)