Hello World:

Today is June 3, 2000, the six month anniversary of our first day of operation as the proud new owners of Amiga.*

When we got involved with Amiga, it was with the clear vision and goal that we were going to change computing forever.
We were going to be able to create an operating system that was scalable and would run on different platforms. Hardware will evolve as quickly as possible, and Amiga would be able to take advantage of that--not be limited by it.

I wanted to create long term partnerships with our developers and OEMs where we could truly be partners and not competitors.
That is being achieved by putting into practice logical, common sense ideas, and by working hard to succeed in achieving our goals.

After an interesting twisting of events, we are here and everything that is mentioned above is now within our grasp.

Many of you did not think that we would make it this far. Suffice to say: we are going to be here for a long, long time.
It takes time to take over the world, we are planning to do it one customer at a time-- No, correct that: by adding one more member to the Amiga family at a time.

As many of you already know, I sometimes get some depressing and rather negative e-mails. Recently I had one of those mornings where I was inundated by hundreds of negative messages.

Someone in the community felt that they had been slighted, and they took their grievance out into the public forum.
Personally, I was feeling rather down because no matter what I said or did, it would be reactive, instead of pro-active.
It was with this heavy attitude that I attended an impromptu meeting with a group of visiting Japanese consumer electronics companies.

I had never met them before, but they had heard what we were doing, and they remembered the Amiga fondly.
After our presentation, one of the gentlemen sat back, and informed me that what he had just heard, and saw was the most exciting opportunity that he had seen in years .We were absolutely the correct company for them to work with.
What they had not told us yet was that these three gentlemen were actually representing a group of over 50 consumer electronics companies, and they were looking for a long term partner!
Let's just say that they liked what they saw and heard.

I left that meeting with a new attitude: Never Give Up, and Never Surrender.
wait,.... I think that someone else may have borrowed that.
Ok, how about this: I will no longer accept that I must apologize for Amiga and neither should any of you. We do not need to apologize for being better.

Now we may not always do things that way--the way "others" may think we should. We may not always get it right the first time, but we are moving forward with our plans, and we will win! No, we are winning.

If you have friends that used to come to your user group meetings, call them.
If you have an extra Amiga not in use, please let a friend try one for the first time. If you know places in your community where you can shine, then do so. Do you want to learn how? I know there are some guys over at Amiga Atlanta that can help you learn.

The Amiga changed computing forever with the introduction of the A1000.

We are about to do it again.

Today we announce the release of the first product since our acquisition, the Amiga Software Developers Kit. This is the first step in creating the content and applications that are going to change the way people look at computing.

As many of you are aware, what we are talking about goes well beyond turning on a computer, and waiting, waiting, waiting, saying "oh @%!%!," restarting, waiting, waiting, and then, finally, starting our tasks. But that's what the world got with Wintel. We are changing this, just like the color and brilliance of the A1000 shamed the green-on-black rows and columns of the IBM PC and low-res black and white interface of the Mac.

What we are talking about here is creating a new and exciting computing environment: one where you turn on your machine and guess what: it's on.

The environment embraces the user, as opposed to the user being forced into a certain method of doing things. And all the while we stay true to Amiga.
As I have been told many times before, Amiga just did it right.
We continue that pledge to you.

Make no mistake, though: this product is truly for developers. This SDK is not for people looking for the next version of the Amiga.
This is a developers kit that provides the tools to start developers on out writing VP code and Java.

This is designed as a reference platform to get started, and there will be more releases of the SDK over the coming months. We will add new features and expand the AmiVerse.

This is a change from the announcement in St. Louis on April 1, 2000. We had originally planned to release a hardware and software only solution, but we received so many comments and emails suggesting something different that we decided to take the time and launch a software version of the developer release. Yes, we listened.

We have also changed our plans on the hardware portion of the announcement also. We had planned to be the sole source for the dev-box, but within hours of the St. Louis show we had numerous companies coming forth saying that they could build the developer boxes for less.
Again, we listened and changed our plans.

We have gone with a regional approach now, and are finalizing the list of Amiga Dev-Box companies authorized to sell an approved system.

These will be local companies in each of your areas, which should help with hardware support and warranty concerns.

Fleecy has been hard at work. He has written an excellent document that offers a glimpse into the SDK and the way that developers will be able to get the most out of it in a short time.

You can read it in Amiga World or in the developers support area of the site.

For those of you who think that we are sitting around, please note the following:

Currently there are over a quarter of a million lines of code written for the new version of Boopsi. We call it BOOPS. It is in testing and optimization. It will be ready for release very soon. We are also working very hard on a new scripting language, very similar to AREXX, that we know that everyone will enjoy.

Also I am pleased to announce that Dean Brown has accepted our offer and will joining us full time. He is preparing to move his family to the "great white north"--another positive move.

We have some other talented folks joining us along with Dean, but I am not at liberty to tell you their names until after the first week of July.

I am also very excited about the new Amigatainment section of the web site being introduced this week. This is where you will be able to see works in progress on Next Generation Amiga entertainment titles.
These are all products being developed for the new Amiga OS, and they will be ready almost as fast as we will.

Amiga dealers who are planning on stocking the new SDK, can be found in the Products section of the web site. Please support them, as they have continued to support Amiga.

We took over Amiga on January 3rd, 2000, and six* months later we have delivered on our promise to you: a new developer platform.

There will be more announcements and partnerships, changes to the web site, and developer updates over the coming months.

I know that our silence can be extremely frustrating and there are some who try to take advantage of our silence, but I do not want us to pre-announce and build false hope and expectations. There was far too much of that activity in the past and we can no longer afford to pay for those sins. Amiga developers and users have already paid enough. Let us all move forward together.

So my friends, today I am 38 years old. It is my birthday, and I could find no better way to celebrate with you than this. Well, actually there are a couple, but I'll just keep those to myself. I thank God for what we have accomplished so far, but this is truly only a small glimpse of what is to come, and we have set even greater goals.

Sincerely,

Bill McEwen, and the Amiga Team.

Bill McEwen
President/CEO
Amiga Incorporated
Tel 425-396-5660
Fax 425-396-5671
bill@amiga.com