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Interview with Felix Schwarz

Editor: Anton Preinsack

Mr. Schwarz, how and when was IOSpirit founded and who, besides you is behind it.

IOSpirit was founded 01/02/2002, planning and construction of the needed infrastructure for software distribution took its time from the end of 2000 until April 2002, whereas I could only spend few hours a day.

The end was marked by a monster of a database, controlling all kinds of moves, ins and outs for distribution, getting expanded and adapted for facing new challenges continously and creating new possibilities.

In a few months, with our new website we will offer a broad width of services like no one else as far as I know.

I am the only full time employee at IOSpirit, market doesn´t allow more. But there are a lot of freelancers, like the developers and graphic artists and many personal friends from the in - and outside of the AMIGA market. IOSpirit wouldn´t be the same without them.

Whats your current Amiga setup ?

A4000T Cyberstorm PPC 060/50, 604e/180 as main terminal, including a VLAB Y/C, a Highway, a Thylacine - prototype, an Ariadne 2 , Cybervision PPC and a Buddha Flash.

Which tools do you use for software engineering ?

SAS/C for 68K, vbcc for PPC, GoldED as editor and Directory Opus as "projectmanager"

Are classic Amigas still involved in developing software, or do you use WinUAE or Amithlon ?

The A4000T mentioned above gets used.

You are one of the most active developers on the small Amiga market. What do you like about the Amiga in general and why do you still like to develop for it ?

I like AmigaOS and MorphOS for their special grade of complexity, "slim" APIs and still flexible enough to meet requirements in most cases.

How comes IOSpirit offers the new version of "IBrowse" ?

Stefan and his team were looking for a publisher and we are looking for interesting developments without a good publisher

A little preview for the next update ?

Stefan gave me one, but I dont want take away anything in front right here.

One of your flagships is "fxPAINT", recently released in version 2.0. Anything about updates coming up ?

There are plans and ideas, beeing realized over the year. But it will take a year for the next update, so I dont want to fix anything right now.

Are you satisfied with feedback and sales of "fxPAINT" and your other products ?

Feedback is from positiv up to enthusiastic, analizing the registering cards since 1995 showed 96% rated their first impression with "good" or "very good". Says everything, doens´t it ?

Sales are generally that low, its getting hard to make any profit at all. A weak market, frustration and piracy are somewhat responsible, in Great Britain we suffered from product piracy, so we dont advise to buy used software products, which we dont support anyway. The balance of 2002 has been lowered by the exhibition, but still ended with a plus. Everyone should be aware, that IOSpirit, as the last active developer of graphics manipulation software and publisher with a specialized infrastructure, can serve the Amiga market only as long as there is enough demand and after all profit can be made. And everyone should consider if there is a chance for an Amiga market without IOSpirit.

Another popular piece of software of yours is "fxSCAN". Are there plans for a new version or an update at least ?

Plans yes, but no development until now.

"VHI Studio 6", an application for accessing digital and analog videocameras, same question here: upcoming updates or a new version ?

Look above...

Could you imagine developing Firewire support for "VHI Studio"?

Not as long as there is no working Firewire stack.

Is IOSpirit going for further Amiga Classic support ?

As long as the classic Amiga supports us.

Do you plan to support AOS4 if available ?

I have access to the beta of OS4 and will do any needed modifications. OS4 will profit from the already implementes MOS support, because a lot of work for PPC only systems has already been done here,

Are you continueing support for MOS ?

Of course, its always been my philosophy to support as many platforms as possible, no matter if its MOS, Amithlon, OS4 or OS3.x with or without PPC. Until know I worked this out quite well I think.

Is "AmigaDE" of any interest for you as developer ?

Nope, its neithert spreaded very well, nor has ist basic OS interfaces, so its nothing more than a nice toy.

Which other projects besides the ones already mentioned are planned by "IOSpirit" ?

The relaunch of our website will give developers using this infrastructure new exciting possibilities, our customers will benefit from it as well. New contracts have already been made , Ibrowse wont stay the only surprise this year.

Which other hobbies do you have ?

My biggest one I made a profession with IOSpirit. Besides I collect records, CD and vinyl of Faithless and other colleagues from Cheeky Records, like Rob Dougan, Skinny, Pauline Taylor, Dusted. I´m interested in history and buddhism as well, and there are a lot of other things in life.

Thanks a lot, and all the best for the future.

Same to you - keep going!