August 98 As I sit here and write this it has been exactly 20 days since I first heard about Amiga Inc's plans for the future of the Amiga. At that first press conference there was a lot of confusion over exactly what the future had in store for us all, particularly those of us hard at work at the two remaining magazines in the UK. With our dropping sales figures we really need the proverbial shot in the arm of new readers to boost our circulations back to what we enjoyed a few years ago, with well over a quarter of a million readers jointly.

And we sit, and we wait, patiently. Although Amiga Inc's new sparkly website was trumpetted about at the show, there hasn't really been a coherent statement of intent posted on it to assuage panicky Amiga owners who've invested plenty of time and money in their machines. To top it off, some of you may have read Bill McEwen's interview in the Sunday Times (24th May), and seen that he categorically states that Amiga Inc would be a software-only company, offering the Amiga OS as an alternative to Windows. In fact, he is quoted as saying: " We looked at a number of Intel processors and how much it would cost to launch a computer - it just wasn't viable. Then we realised we could produce something to run Amiga software on a PC that is, in many respects, better than Windows."

Now, this doesn't sound very good does it? Bill McEwen is busy telling the Sunday Times one thing, while we're shouting about a completely different (and much sunnier) alternative. So, who's right? Without wishing to presume upon your trust of us, I think you'll find that we'll have the goods in the end, and that the level of paranoia in the Amiga Inc camp has reached such a high it's worthwhile justifying this Macchiavellian misdirection campaign. I dare say that you'll read similar, if not conflicting, stories to the one in the Sunday Times over the next few months in the mainstream computer press, just to allay suspicion that what Amiga Inc actually has is going to blow everyone out of the water. And mark my words well, what Amiga Inc has is going to blow everyone away. Given our privileged position in the Amiga world as it stands, we know more information than we are at liberty to divulge and if we can hang on that bit longer we'll be able to turn around to PC owners who've taken to mocking us and laugh in their faces.

Computing Armageddon is coming. The four horsemen of this apocalypse are the staff of Amiga Inc, and their weapon will be the new Amiga. Get ready!