Apple is now the modern Commodore/Amiga?

[persia]

Amiga never broke with the past because the company that produced it died.  Had the company survived they would have had to abandon motorola too.  Indeed look at OS4, a step that was originally supposed to take place years ago.  Amiga today is a living fossil, an OS from the days when security, networking, memory protection and the like weren't important.

Had the company that created the Amiga survived, what you call an Amiga today would look very little like what you called an Amiga 15 years ago.  Without the company there's no one to steer and hence the current situation.

You love your kids and two year olds are really neat but you don't want or expect them to be two forever.

[DigitalQ]

Here's my two cents.

First of all, back in the day, the Macintosh computer was outclassed as soon as the Atari ST hit the market.  That (and the Mac) were outclassed by the Amiga when it came out.  Yes, it's true; the Atari ST, for half the price of a Mac, was twice the computer.

Now, Apple did some very smart things.  They contributed heavily to Postscript, giving them a very good foothold in the lucrative desktop publishing industry.  Admittedly, the black and white graphical Macintosh of the day was an ideal computer for this single purpose.  

The Apple Macintosh and Amiga were completely different machines.  The Amiga could multitask; the Mac could not.  The Amiga capitalized on video and sound, while the Mac focused on printed output.  Most importantly, at least to me, the Amiga, while a different machine, tried to stick with industry standards; at least when it came to peripherals such as modems and printers.  

To me, the modern PC is closer to the Amiga than the Macintosh is.  Just like with an Amiga, you have a choice as to what peripherals you can use.  With the Mac, there was no such choice until it became more like a PC.  Also, just like PC's of today, the success of the Amiga platform came largely from user contributions.

Some facts:

Apple is a company.  PC is an INDUSTRY made up of many different and competing companies.

I worked for Apple tech support years ago.  They believed that Apple was superior then.  Today, it's much the same; a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of reality distorting, and a WHOLE LOT of comparing rather expensive Macs to bargain basement PC's that cost a FRACTION of the price.  They also seem to believe that Windows constitutes the entire PC industry; which it does not.  There are PLENTY of OS choices for the PC platform.  Always has been (OS/2, DR-DOS, etc), always will be (Linux, FreeBSD, etc).

My server is an AMD K62-450 that was a PC originally built in 1996.  Since its architecture was open, I have been able to upgrade it through the years.  It started as  Pentium 120 with 16k of RAM.  Today, it has over 200MB of RAM, a good sized hard drive, is Y2k compliant, and accepts modern hardware such as USB devices and runs a modern OS; Ubuntu Linux.  Anyone who believes that modern PC's only have half the life of a modern Mac is obviously referring to a bargain basement PC, and not a PC of comparable value which will, in all likeliness, outlive the Mac.

Honestly, the Mac is a nice machine; often attractively styled, reasonably priced for the level of quality you get, and clearly has appeal to people who would rather own a computer that functions as an easy-to-use appliance.  I would not fault someone for wanting to buy one.  On the same token, to say that a Mac is somehow better than a PC without really quantifying what PC, or even making an accurate, educated comparison, is absurd.  

[Krusher]

That informative post above me can be summed up:

x86 hardware platform is open to hacks (Like Amiga)
Apple hardware is a closed clam

Never liked the x86 platform, be it now Apple on x86 or Windows. It's just lazy programming and large amounts of resources needed. I love the micro kernel of the Amiga (which in these days is REALLY micro)

But I guess, clean writing of pure assembly is just insane and expensive these days.

My wish for an OS? Native Amiga binary compatible on x86 processors. Aros native but then able to run anything written for the Amiga, even if it hits hardware. Plus accelerated use of Ati/Nvidia gfx cards and pci(e) peripherals. Ah well, I'm dreaming.

[ChuckT]

I still view their chips as a Motorola product.

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

ChuckT wrote:

Invisix wrote:
Here is my view... now than Mac computers run only on x86 CPU's they are nothing more than an overpriced PC, simple as that.

The only thing special about Apple is Mac OS X -- however, even then it is based on a *nix variant called Darwin with a special graphic interface called Aqua. Also, it is hackable to be installable on a any ole PC system.

When it comes to Mac i'd much MUCH rather buy an older model, I can't wait to purchase one of the last multi-cpu G5 systems that they used to sell.

I think there were few things that Commodore did themselves and I think Microsoft even had something to do with their OS.  Commodore basic was still written by Microsoft and the 68000 chip was licensed by another party (Motorolla?).  You can't beat the big guys if you are dependent on them for your own game.

The custom chipset, they made that on their own.

[ChuckT]

Intel and Windows were designed to work on a network and I suppose that is why it is very good at being hacked.  I think my sister said the military got rid of their IBM PC's because they were getting hacked and went with Apple because they rarely got hacked.

Krusher wrote:
That informative post above me can be summed up:

x86 hardware platform is open to hacks (Like Amiga)
Apple hardware is a closed clam

Never liked the x86 platform, be it now Apple on x86 or Windows. It's just lazy programming and large amounts of resources needed. I love the micro kernel of the Amiga (which in these days is REALLY micro)

But I guess, clean writing of pure assembly is just insane and expensive these days.

My wish for an OS? Native Amiga binary compatible on x86 processors. Aros native but then able to run anything written for the Amiga, even if it hits hardware. Plus accelerated use of Ati/Nvidia gfx cards and pci(e) peripherals. Ah well, I'm dreaming.

[DigitalQ]

ChuckT wrote:
Intel and Windows were designed to work on a network and I suppose that is why it is very good at being hacked.  I think my sister said the military got rid of their IBM PC's because they were getting hacked and went with Apple because they rarely got hacked.

What I had heard was that the military were big customers of OS/2 because of its security and stability.  It was also the preferred operating system for ATM's for a very long time.

[HopperJF]

leirbag28 wrote:

Hmmm, I dont think there is anything bad you can say About Mac OSX right now and Macs.

These are Currently the best Computers in the World with the Best OS......Also extremely Amiga Like.

And about expensive?  Amigas even today are more expensive than Macs.......thats right!

That is unfair since Amiga hardware is nowhere near as mass produced as the Mac hardware (if produced at all) which keeps prices high.

[HopperJF]

DigitalQ wrote:


What I had heard was that the military were big customers of OS/2 because of its security and stability.  It was also the preferred operating system for ATM's for a very long time.

I wondered why I never remember seeing them crash about 10 years ago whereas now everything with a computer in it almost everywhere seems to crash!

[ChuckT]

The hard drive on the Mac is encrypted so if someone breaks in then "so what"; you aren't going to get much.  The PC hasn't started offering it until maybe Vista came along.

DigitalQ wrote:

ChuckT wrote:
Intel and Windows were designed to work on a network and I suppose that is why it is very good at being hacked.  I think my sister said the military got rid of their IBM PC's because they were getting hacked and went with Apple because they rarely got hacked.

What I had heard was that the military were big customers of OS/2 because of its security and stability.  It was also the preferred operating system for ATM's for a very long time.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

ChuckT wrote:
I still view their chips as a Motorola product.

Explain? :-?
AFAIK the power of Commodore was that they could design chips by themselves...

[Colani1200]

ChuckT wrote:
The hard drive on the Mac is encrypted so if someone breaks in then "so what"; you aren't going to get much.  The PC hasn't started offering it until maybe Vista came along.

Sorry, this is just utter BS.

[persia]

Learned to use three new bits this week.

Podcast Producer - which makes podcasting easy
xGrid - All my Macs now work together on a problem.
Screens - Like the Linux multiply screens utility.  Keep UAE off in it's own screen!

A relative over in America had a problem with their Mac, I just had them turn on screen sharing and fixed the problem for them.  So many neat toys.  I doubt CBM would have come up with half of them in twice the time.

[chiark]

IMHO, yes.

Amiga, to me, is a powerful GUI and a powerful shell to meet whatever need you have, day to day.  It's about getting the job done.  It's about things working, and being customisable to do whatever you what it to do.  It's about fitting your way of working, rather than enforcing you to do something one way, which seems to be the Windows directive.

For Workbench, read Desktop.  (Finder sucks and I've still yet to find a truly decent replacemet)

For CLI, read Terminal.

For AREXX, read Automator (sorta).  I was never big into AREXX though...

I do compare OSX with AmigaOS: I think it's got the same approach with a more modern base.  I use it, it works.  Finding it was very much like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers .  I've been using it as my primary home os for a little over a year.

As for hardware, apple hardware is just as open as the Amiga ever was!  I've replaced the 30GB drive in my ibook with 160GB, changed the DVD/CDRW for a dual layer DVD drive, upgraded the RAM...  All without using apple products.  The comment about drives being encrypted is simply baffling!  Sure, you need to buy carefully, but you did with the Amiga too!

O/T: I strongly think that AROS should drop the "3.1 compatibility at any cost" ethos and do what's needed to create a workable OS.  Clinging to the 3.1 API is damaging the chances of a decent browser, for starters, and is a nostalgic hangover.

GOod topic, interesting viewpoints and some FUD in here.  Let's keep it sensible, informed and open to debate.

[ChuckT]

Everyone thinks that Commodore was so great but if the truth was told, there was a split between Irving Gould and Jack Tramiel.  The guys that worked at Commodore went to Atari and there was a disk drive that was "missing".  So who is the real "Commodore"?  Atari or Commodore?  When the C-64 was upgraded to the C-128, was there really a great advancement in processor speed?  The C-64 was 1MHZ and the C-128 was 2MHZ?  Couldn't they do better with that technology and why not?  Didn't they have the capability?  The only reason Commodore got the Amiga was because they assumed a loan and the people behind it which were people who worked in the field of Motorolla.  If I assumed a loan to buy AMD or INTEL, would those companies and patents be my achievements? No..   Yes, they made a custom chipset.  I would expect anyone to be able to copy what was made and make a subset of that.  Just because you can buy the capability to do more doesn't mean you were capable to make a C-128 run faster than 2MHZ.  It was other people's technology.