Dave Haynie Talks About Developing The Commodore Amiga

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Dave talks about the past again.
Ever notice he never has anything good to say about the present?

Dave's a hardware guy, he talks about hardware... There is no new Amiga hardware, so he doesn't talk about the present.

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Fantastic video with some great history!

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Dave's done plenty of talking about software, which might be the core of why I resent his opinions.
Although the point about being negative about negativity sounds pretty valid.

Hehehe :-)

As far as there not being any new Amiga hardware...
What's the stuff the runs OS4 (when you're not running it on modified legacy hardware)?

Very boring commodity hardware with an overpriced, underpowered CPU originally designed for embedded applications.

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Then again, I don't feel like arguing that point yet again.[/QUOTE]

I have loads of different platforms, including a bunch of PPC machines (and a BlizzPPC), so I'm happy to discuss the point.

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Original?
Not really.
Xerox laid the ground work for this type of system, and then over priced their systems (as did Apple with the Lisa).
The Amiga was also slightly over priced, but in comparison it was much more of a commodity priced appliance.

Inevitably everything went in this direction.
Ease of adoption and intuitive use sold this approach.

But again, original?
No.

The Amiga brought together a bunch of different technologies in a single well thought out package in a format that people found useful to use. I consider that original.

There was nothing original about the components that made up the iPad, but until Apple put the right parts into the right package, no one was even slightly interested in tablet computing.

Engineering is always about compromise, and it takes a while to get the balance right.

The Amiga was a breath of fresh air when released and was such a strong design, it held its own for almost 6 years with little or no serious upgrades!

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"with little or no serious upgrades" - funny, most A.org posters would object to that, but I'd agree. Dave and company's enhancements were minor.

If you take the time to watch Dave's awesome talk, he says clealy that the C= engineers were constantly trying to push the technology... But the C= management would cancel any project that looked even slightly expensive... We were stuck with OCS for 5 years... Followed by ECS, and as Dave explains in the video, a very slight upgrade to AGA... Which was basically ECS where the C= had managed to figure out how to double the data rate on the bus for no extra cost...

The iPad isn't that impressive. And, as stated before, the elements that made up the Amiga had their foundations in other company's research.

I said nothing about impressive, I answered your original assertion of original. The only thing impressive about the ipad (other then the battery life) is the quantities in which people purchased it...

The iPad was an original approach to building table computers, by taking well established technologies and put them them together in an original package.

Edit - Then again, looking back over my posts, my attitude in this thread has been pretty fecal eyed.
I like old Sun systems for similar reasons, and they didn't invent a great deal of their earlier technology either.

You don't have to like Dave Haynie to watch and enjoy the video

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It is not always so simple. A failed research project could drain all money out of the company and Amiga didnt boom until Amiga 500 was launched in 1987. In Amiga history 1987 is quite late.

But the C64 was selling well and the executives were very well paid... It wouldn't have hurt to put some money back into the Amiga

Hey, its 2048x1536 retina display on 10 inch display is quite nice. Many new laptops dont support more than 1920x1080 pixels.

I was referring to the original iPad (which ignited the table computer revolution), and I agree... You'll have to prise my iPad out of my cold dead hand

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Maybe you want to squint at a 2048 by 1536 resolution displayed on a 10 inch device, but I find even 1920 by 1080 on a 15 inch display a little too small.
Sure, great for pictures, lousy for most text displays.

-Parse error...

Actually text is what makes the ultra high resolution iPad display worth it... Pictures are naturally antialiased, with few sharp edges and so looks fine even at low resolution (as long as you have a high colour gamut)... But text looks horrible on low res displays no matter what... On the iPad it looks like printed text!

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If you watch the Video, Dave says the AA (as it became known) was just a side project to extend the life of the Original Chipset (or more technically the "Enhanced Chipset"). they called it AA because that was one "A" less than AAA