Castle and Tematic have sensationally merged into a single entity that aims to focus on "offering full design and engineering resources to customers wishing to licence RISC OS for use in their new products".Peter Wild, the founder of WildVision who produced many an exceptional podule card, especially for Computer Concepts, is also now the Chief Operation Officer of Castle, bringing with him experience in the electronic design and manufacture of multimedia and desktop technology. Speaking on his new employment, Peter is quoted as saying: "It is great to be back in the RISC OS world. We hope to clinch substantial licence deals with a variety of household names over the coming months. Things have never looked more promising for RISC OS".
Castle managing director Jack Lillingston gushed: "The combination of Tematic's engineering skills and Castle's marketing and product skills means that we have a company structure that can really tackle the opportunities that lie ahead".
Tematic will become the "Tematic Division" under Castle technology, pledging to "support an embedded version of RISC OS which has been designed for use in the new generation of smart multimedia products for the high volume consumer electronics market". How the Tematic division will distract Castle's overall concentration away from RISC OS desktop users will remain to be seen. We hope any development work on the embedded version of RISC OS will filter back to the desktop stream of RISC OS - real time scheduling, increased stability, reduced footprint, increased hardware support, you name your feature.
Is it selfish for us, the RISC OS community, to demand Castle to focus their efforts on the desktop market, as the company desperately forays into the embedded world, with RISC OS as their sword and shield? Is it now make or break for RISC OS, realistically, as an embedded OS suitable for use in "household name" products?
We also wonder where Select will fit into Castle's plans.
You may recall that the XScale powered Iyonix was produced as a result of work by Tematic and Castle. Tematic is also staffed with ex-Pace engineers who were once Acorn engineers - thus the wheel of the Acorn era continues to revolve, with changing names and objectives and yet the same old operating system. You, folks, are the audience.
Links
Castle website
Tematic website