A very welcome new face at the SW show was Michael Grunditz, the developer behind the ARMBook port and the OWB port. We were very keen to find out more, and knew you would be too...

Would you like to introduce yourself?
I am a former embedded programmer. Nowadays I don't work for money because of health issues.
 
How long have you been using RISC OS?
Since the latter part of the 90ies. I was a fulltime Amiga user before that and before the switch I used a Amiga1200 with PPC accelerator and graphics card.

But when Acorn still was around I started to be interested in RISC OS. I started to subscribe to the c.s.acorn groups on usenet. After some year/years (when Castle released the Kinetic) I bought a Kinetic 300 RIscPC. I sold my Amigas and used the RiscPC as my only computer for 3-4 years. I had a 586 pc card in it and it was enough for Windows need.
 
But after RIscPC there was a long break, I think my interest sparkled again when RISC OS went "open source".
 
What does RISC OS look like from the Swedish viewpoint?
If you are a RISC OS user in Sweden you are very lonely. I know only one person that uses RISC OS, in the retro sense, and that because he bought my Iyonix.
 
What other systems do you use?
PC, MorphOS , Android.
 
What is your current RISC OS setup?
ARMX6 and TiMachine.
 
What do you think of the retro scene?
I think the retro scene is both good and bad. Good, because it makes history known. Bad because that it makes every alternative system from the late 80ies look like a playground. It also raisees prices to unbelievable amounts.
 
Do you attend any of the shows and what do you think of them?
I did just this weekend. SW show. IT was great and I have never seen RISC OS users IRL before!
 
What do you use RISC OS for in 2019 and what do you like most about it?
I use it for chatting irc and browsing, I also makes some dtp when needed. The results are always better than my Word using wife.
 
What is your favourite feature/killer program in RISC OS?
StrongED and Zap. I used Zap exclusively , but it tends to lock my machines when running with 30+ windows. StrongED just works and have a very nice global search features. I also use SideDiff a lot.
 
What would you most like to see in RISC OS in the future?
I don't know.. maybe a better way of building applications. Some way to compile very large sources. It breaks now because of wimp slot limit.
 
Can you tell us about what you are working on in the RISC OS market at the moment?
Yes. I work on a webkit browser and with the Pinebook (ARMbook, as Andrew calls it) port.
 
Any surprises you can't or dates to tease us with?
Stay tuned the following months for browser news.
 
Apart from iconbar (obviously) what are your favourite websites?
ROOL forum. Twitter (blush)
 
What are your interests beyond RISC OS?
I do a lot of music, mostly electronic art music.
 
If someone hired you for a month to develop RISC OS software, what would you create?
I don't work for money. But I would do exactly the things I do now.
 
Any future plans or ideas you can share with us?
No
 
Any questions we forgot to ask you?
I have a comment.. It is very interesting to compare the Amiga scene and RISC OS. They started of in the same era , and faced the same problems in the 90ies.
Amiga has a healthy community here in Sweden with Amiga site with 1500+ members. However a very few of them actually use Amiga for day to day use. I think RISC OS can learn from how the NG Amiga systems (MorphOS,AmigaOS4 , AROS) do.
 
You can read lots of other RISC OS Interviews on Iconbar.