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Okay. So this is the last issue of Amiga Format. And, okay, it's
a sad day for a magazine that has championed the Amiga cause for
almost eleven years. But it's not the end of the world.
Amiga magazines go and come. The fact is that is very difficult to make a profit publishing in this market. But life and the Amiga goes on. Consider it as simply as another twist in the path to computing nirvana. Just because AF no longer exists, it doesn't mean that your Amiga will suddenly stop working. It doesn't mean that people will suddenly stop writing software for your machine. And it certainly doesn't mean you should stop spending money on your Amiga. Other news-stand magazines exist if you want a hardcopy replacement for AF. There are plenty of websites, forums and mailings lists on the Internet where you can find similar sorts of information to that which you found crammed within the pages of AF. Your local user group can also be a source of news, information and help. I know this has been said a thousand times before, but I believe that the Amiga can rise again. The ideas put forward by new Amiga bosses, Bill McEwen and Fleecy Moss, are exciting. And with the backing of Tao (amongst others) there is no good reason why they should not succeed in actually creating a product this time. As far as the so-called Classic Amiga goes, I still think the only viable course is to open-source AmigaOS. This would be a path fraught with pitfalls, and, as I have said before, you cannot solve all problems with a simple wave of the open source magic wand. But the current AmigaOS has still plenty of scope for evolution. And I would still like to see a version to run natively on PPC hardware. So, this doesn't fit in with Amiga, Inc's revolutionary plans. Fine. Then let somebody else do it. What have they got to lose? I have outlived an Amiga magazine once before, having worked on CU Amiga until its close. Fortunately, this time, I actually have a new job to go to. But this is not the end of my involvement with the Amiga community. My Amiga will still be my computing workhorse, I will still be involved with several Amiga projects and you will still find me lurking around a host of different Amiga-related mailing lists. So, there's no more AF. But you can bet that, if the Amiga does take off again, then Future Publishing will be one of the first to a produce a magazine to cover it. Who knows, they might even re-launch Amiga Format. I've got this strange sense of deja vu . . . Rich |