Given that it is almost the end of the year, I thought it would be good to look back over the year 2012 and significant releases for AmigaOne X1000 and it operating system AmigaOS4 during that time.

I do know (and acknowledge) that there has been plenty of activity around MorphOS, AROS and Classic AmigaOS3.x platforms too in 2012 (I run all three of these platforms as well), but these are not the focus of this AmigaOne X1000 blog as it runs AmigaOS4. It would be interesting to compare MorphOS 3.1 and AmigaOS 4.1.6 performance on the same X1000 hardware, but that's another story!

It's been a great year in 2012 with so many things happening - let's get started!

On the Amiga hardware side in 2012, we of course saw the long awaited release of the AmigaOne X1000 running AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5! The systems are sold by Amigakit.com. The first batch of X1000's released was called the First Contact release, which I was lucky enough to be part of.

The first screenshot shows my X1000 from the front:

Next up shows the X1000 case from the back, highlighting how much Amigas have changed over the years - this has USB, SATA, DVI, PCI Ethernet, DVD burner, dual display cards and no parallel port, RGB port, RF modulator port or floppy drive connectors:

The bootup screen for the X1000, using it's own CFE pre-boot environment to boot AmigaOS4:

Although expensive, the X1000 system represents the fastest AmigaOS4 platform currently available, and is a credit to A-Eon and their various partners and distributors for their work to make this system happen for the enjoyment of the Amiga community. Thanks guys, I am certainly enjoying my X1000!

During 2012 we also had a firmware update released for the X1000 to support dual display systems:

Regarding other AmigaOS4 operating systems updates beyond AmigaOS4.1.5 - 2012 saw the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 for all AmigaOne systems. This included AmiUpdate, which allows AmigaOS4 users to automatically update their systems with new patches and rollback as needed, much like other modern systems like Windows and MacOS:

Showing off AmigaOS 4.1.6 further in the screenshot below you can see Cinnamon Writer (Word Processor), Sabre MSN Instant Messaging, TuneNet, Filer and GoldEd (click to expand):

In the next screenshot we see Milkytracker, Remote Desktop (connected to Windows 7 computer), and AmiPad (Click to expand):

Next up is Mame (Arcade emulator), MUI-OWB web browser, and AmiFTP client (click to expand):

In the final screenshot of AmigaOS 4.1.6 is DV Player and a game called Push Over:

As an Amiga user since Workbench 1.2 back in the 1980's I can tell you that AmigaOS4.1.6 is continuing to improve hand over fist with each version, supporting modern processors, many modern ATI HD graphics cards, USB2, PCI-e, SATA and so much more besides...keep up the good work Hyperion! I am really looking forward to AmigaOS4.2 including ATI Graphics HD card drivers with 3D support in hardware!

The evolution of the Amiga is so clear from these screenshots below from an Amiga 2000, Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000 and finally the AmigaOne X1000:

Amiga 2000 (AmigaOS 1.3 - 1989):

Amiga 1200 (AmigaOS 3.1 - 1993):

Amiga 4000 (AmigaOS 3.9 - 2000):

AmigaOne X1000 (AmigaOS 4.1.5 - 2012):

We are fortunate in 2012 to continue to have a colour Amiga magazine called Amiga Future released bi-monthly, 100% focussed on all things Amiga:

It is released in English and German language versions with a CoverCD containing a lot of software each issue. If you don't already buy it regularly or have a subscription, I strongly recommend it! You can get it from Amigakit.com, vesalia.de and other places as well. Their website is www.amigafuture.de

As a quick side note for those willing to go out and google, you can also get the electronic version of most of the classic and Next Generation Amiga magazines covering the period from 1985 to today! I can now view them all using AmiPDF on the X1000:

On the games front in 2012 we saw a number of games released on AmigaOS4, such as:

Hurrican (HunoPPC)

PushOver (Huno PPC)

Ami-Ingenious (Mrdarek)

7 Boings (Mrdarek)

1941 Extreme DX Dual (HunoPPC)

G.E.M.Z (Fabio Falcucci and Pascal Papara)

Swamp Defense (Amiboing)

Balance Blox (Amiboing)

Tap Jewels (Amiboing)

A Frog Game (Amiboing)

River Pirates (Amiboing)

Santa's Monster Shootout (Amiboing)

Flare

Equilibrio (www.amigasoft.net)

In addition to these games, I also got familiar with some other games released in the last few years for AmigaOS 4 that I had to catch up on such as:

BOH (Simone Bevilacqua)

Aquaria (www.amigasoft.net)

ULarn



Battle For Wesnoth

F1 Spirit

X-Moto

SuperTuxKart

Epiar

Phew - so many games released on AmigaOS4, and I certainly didn't cover them all - not even close! I did include reviews of a number of these games in my blog if you want to look through the game reviews I did this year.

Moving on to the Applications front now, we saw a number of important programs and program updates released for AmigaOS4 in 2012 including:

Timberwolf Release Candidate 1,2, and 3 (Port of Firefox Web Browser - HTML5 compliant)

NetSurf 2.9 (Web Browser)

AmiCygnix 1.1 and 1.2 (X-Windows environment allows porting of Linux based applications to Amiga)

Homebank (Financial Program)

Audacious (Music Player)

SketchBlock (Sketching program)

Cinnamon Writer (Word Processor)

Hollywood 5 & Hollywood Designer (Scripting/Programming engine)

SabreMSN 0.77 (Microsoft MSN Instant Messaging)

UADE (Unix Amiga Delitracker Emulator) and TuneNet plugins

JavaScript to integrate YouTube with MUI-OWB web browser

Some of the other interesting applications and emulation software I tried out during 2012 on my AmigaOne X1000 included:

MUI-MPlayer

Genesis Plus (Sega Megadrive emulator), Viceplus (C64 emulator), DOSBox (PC DOS emulator), VisualBoy Advance (Nintendo GameBoy Advance emulator), FPSE (PlayStation 1 Emulator):

HornyOS4 (MIDI Sequencer)

RunInUAE (E-UAE emulation of Classic Amiga ECS and AGA games and demos)

(Populous - OCS Game)

(Cyberlogik - AGA Demo)

Aladdin (AGA Game)

LoView (Graphic viewer)

There are plenty more applications I tried out in 2012, but this is turning into quite a long blog entry! suffice to say, this doesn't even scratch the surface of all the applications released and there is plenty more to explore!

In summary, it has certainly been an exciting year to be an Amiga user in 2012!

It is great to see new hardware (X1000) and operating system, application and games software continuing to be actively developed and released for Amiga in 2012. I continue to purchase useful and interesting AmigaOne hardware and AmigaOS4 software as much as I can to help support the development! More please! :-)

I am hoping 2013 continues the momentum in new hardware and software releases, with more focus on improving depth of modern hardware support in AmigaOS4, with AmigaOS 4.2, AmigaOne Netbook and more original games and applications being released.

I want to take the opportunity to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thank you so much for reading my blog during 2012. I hope you enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun writing it. Hopefully there will be a lot more exciting developments to come for the X1000 for me to blog about, long into the future!

I will be travelling to Japan over the New Year period and will not have access to my X1000 during this time unfortunately! So this will be my last X1000 blog entry for 2012, and the next entry should be around the middle of January 2013 at this stage, when I am back in Australia!

Bring on 2013!