Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: obscurepanic on April 21, 2010, 11:23:20 AM
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I do not know much between the histories between the OS component of Classical Amiga and IBM's OS/2. Any insight on this?
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I do not know much between the histories between the OS component of Classical Amiga and IBM's OS/2. Any insight on this?
The two systems are unrelated.
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Only rexx the scripting language in common.
What I'd like to know is how much MS copied Amiga for Windows 95.
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Only rexx the scripting language in common.
Yes - and only the language, not the interpreter. ARexx has lots of amiga specific features, I would guess that the OS/2 rexx interpreter also has lots of OS/2 specific features.
What I'd like to know is how much MS copied Amiga for Windows 95.
That's easy - nothing.
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Something I was thinking lately is whether Microsoft copied an idea from magic workbench for their Windows7!? In this programs can be started from BIG icons on the taskbar. This is very similar to Magic Workbench; http://www.sasg.com/pic/mwb_preview.gif
However I am not sure if maybe this idea was copied from somewhere else before!?
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Only rexx the scripting language in common.
What I'd like to know is how much MS copied Amiga for Windows 95.
Sorry but MS copied Apple :/
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Something I was thinking lately is whether Microsoft copied an idea from magic workbench for their Windows7!? In this programs can be started from BIG icons on the taskbar. This is very similar to Magic Workbench; http://www.sasg.com/pic/mwb_preview.gif
However I am not sure if maybe this idea was copied from somewhere else before!?
NEXTSTEP operating system, 1986
Arthur operating system, 1987
Apple got their dock thru NEXTSTEP btw ;-)
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I still laugh at Breadbox Ensemble 4.x, tho the GEOS for IBM PC was head of MS, but seriously 4.x released in 2001? not a littlebit late?
Hmm win9x look anyone? ;)
(http://www.breadbox.com/geoscreens/isui.gif)
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NEXTSTEP operating system, 1986
Arthur operating system, 1987
Apple got their dock thru NEXTSTEP btw ;-)
And "big buttons" as such has nothing to with Magic Workbench - those are ToolManager (http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/ToolManagerBin) docks. Sources (http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/ToolManagerSrc) are available, allthough only for educational purposes, according to readme.
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I still laugh at Breadbox Ensemble 4.x, tho the GEOS for IBM PC was head of MS, but seriously 4.x released in 2001? not a littlebit late?
I remember trying GEOS for IBM, still have a copy somewhere. It was very resource friendly (ran on a 8088?). I was far more impressed with its design philosophy than I was with Windows 3.x. Unfortunately, it was completely proprietary and difficult to get it to front the whole world of non-GEOS software.
Had the authors made it compatible with all existing software, computer history might be very different today.
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Pretty interesting article from OS News about GEOS.
GEOS: The Graphical Environment Operating System
http://www.osnews.com/story/15223
And just about everyone is copying that START buttong, task bar, tray clock design we see from Windows 95. Personally, we hates it, my Precious. I much prefer drop-downs. Though I have to admit that I have been using AmiDock since installing 3.9.
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I remember trying GEOS for IBM, still have a copy somewhere. It was very resource friendly (ran on a 8088?). I was far more impressed with its design philosophy than I was with Windows 3.x. Unfortunately, it was completely proprietary and difficult to get it to front the whole world of non-GEOS software.
Had the authors made it compatible with all existing software, computer history might be very different today.
So true, they where quite good with both multitasking and resource manegment, tho they 2001 release was to much for me ;) I could not get why they did that.
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If MS had copied Amiga for win95, I'd presume the thing would actually have bloody worked at times
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What I'd like to know is how much MS copied Amiga for Windows 95.
At least compression method for its .CAB files ;)
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What compression does Amiga use on it's CAB files?
At least compression method for its .CAB files ;)
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At least compression method for its .CAB files ;)
CAB files can use three kinds of compression. Which of them came from AOS: Deflate, LZX, Quantum?
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Only rexx the scripting language in common.
What I'd like to know is how much MS copied Amiga for Windows 95.
Not really the Amiga alone, but Windows 95 was the first version of Windows where what you see in your folders is mirrored exactly with the organisation of files on your harddisk. Program Manager in Windows 3/2/1 was terrible and pretty screwed up. By doing this Micro$oft had done the bare minimum to keep DOS/Windows corporate users from the huge financial upheaval that would be a corporate change over to anything else. And at that point is where competition effectively ceased to exist (no doubt helped by M$ dirty tactics to lock out any other competing OS or even application).
OS/2 was also a pre-emptive multitasking system, these did exist before Tripos (and hence Kickstart/Workbench) but I think Amiga was the first desktop OS to combine such a feature with a GUI interface. Maybe UNIX but is Unix a desktop operating system in 1985? You could argue it is not. Certainly in 1985 you wouldn't be running Unix on a PC or Mac so I would argue it isn't. Whether IBM saw this as a key feature thanks to Amiga I don't know, however IBM did use Amigas for some specific multimedia tasks within its own house so they knew all too well about the Amiga I would say.
Only Apple or Atari could directly rip-off Kickstart/Workbench though given it is in 68000 assembler, and neither of them even bothered to try to replicate the superb multitasking on Amiga.
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Does this qualify as a "desktop" to you?
(http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/apollo-dm.png)
If so, then yes, there were "UNIX desktop" in 1985, and this was also running on 68k btw. Yes, I know the above shot is newer, but I have seen older ones, and they were similar and typically black&white.
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CAB files can use three kinds of compression. Which of them came from AOS: Deflate, LZX, Quantum?
Considering amiga has a compression tool called LZX, which one you'd think? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZX_%28algorithm%29
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@2 posts up
That's a command line interface. Does it have mouse support?
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We (and by "we" I might mean just me) called thos "TUIs" for Textual User Interfaces.
But I don't think we called them that until after someone created and coined the term GUI.
desiv
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We (and by "we" I might mean just me) called thos "TUIs" for Textual User Interfaces.
Just you then, TUI is something else, like ncurses etc. These things sold as graphical workstations, the user interface is not "drawn" using "characters", and yes there was a mouse and you could move/resize the windows.
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Considering amiga has a compression tool called LZX, which one you'd think? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZX_%28algorithm%29
Not really relevant since LZX never was part of AmigaOS.
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Not really relevant since LZX never was part of AmigaOS.
Splitting hairs. LZX was first developed for the Amiga. Good enough to say it came from Amiga, though AmigaOS is not technically accurate.
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Just you then, TUI is something else, like ncurses etc. These things sold as graphical workstations, the user interface is not "drawn" using "characters", and yes there was a mouse and you could move/resize the windows.
What else could you do with the mouse? Could you launch any executable program by clicking on its icon, make menu selections with it, open folders and drives, move, delete folders by clicking/doubling clicking. Hell. as late as 2007 I remember some well known Linux distro that wouldn't let you open to see the contents of a drive by double clicking its icon..
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Just you then, TUI is something else, like ncurses etc. These things sold as graphical workstations, the user interface is not "drawn" using "characters", and yes there was a mouse and you could move/resize the windows.
If it was drawn graphically, then it's definitely a GUI.
The screenshot appeared textual to me, but as it's graphical, I stand corrected.
desiv
p.s. The "Just you then" bit without a smiley, you still mad that I didn't agree with you on the intuition thing? ;-)
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If it was drawn graphically, then it's definitely a GUI.
Hmm. Is being not drawn by text characters enough to be a GUI. Does it satisfy the "UI" in GUI ie being a "user interface" in addition to being graphic? Where are the program icons and pull down menus? Can I actually make the computer do things by issuing commands with the mouse pointer or do I have to fire up a shell and start issuing text commands? Is this a bit like Ubuntu's half-arsed GUI implemetation where reliance on terminal commands is fundamental to its operation..
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Hmm. Is being not drawn by text characters enough to be a GUI. Does it satisfy the "UI" in GUI ie being a "user interface" in addition to being graphic? Where are the program icons and pull down menus? Can I actually make the computer do things by issuing commands with the mouse pointer or do I have to fire up a shell and start issuing text commands? Is this a bit like Ubuntu's half-arsed GUI implemetation where reliance on terminal commands is fundamental to its operation..
Yes..
Whether or not it's a "good" or "full featured" User Interface doesn't change the fact that it is a user interface.
It does appear to have movable windows, probably mouse reactive. Although you can have a GUI with only a keyboard.
I don't think (personally) you need to be able to launch an application with a mouse/pointer for something to be a GUI.
It might not be a modern GUI, but it (now that I know it is graphical) looks like a GUI to me.
desiv
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To focus on the other unique aspect of Workbench, multitasking, there was a Sinclair home computer that also mutlitasked in 1984 (QL) but without the GUI it was a bit rubbish to use. Ditto Apple and Atari ran with a nice GUI but it was like a car with a lawnmower engine....nothing fancy under the hood.
I think with Amiga they got it right, multitasking and GUI was very nice indeed. I'm sure companies were influenced by this whether they admit it or not.
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Something I was thinking lately is whether Microsoft copied an idea from magic workbench for their Windows7!? In this programs can be started from BIG icons on the taskbar. This is very similar to Magic Workbench; http://www.sasg.com/pic/mwb_preview.gif
However I am not sure if maybe this idea was copied from somewhere else before!?
This feature was available previously in the NeXT OS GUI.
Regards,
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Howdy folks - noticed a screenshot from my site that someone linked here has caused a little debate; just wanted to stop in and give some quick info about it.
It's a screen capture from an Apollo DOMAIN workstation (a DN5500, with a 25 MHz MC68040, 8-plane color graphics, and DOMAIN/OS SR10.4.1). The screenshot shows the bitmapped graphical user environment (the Display Manager, or DM). The underlying OS is called AEGIS; by SR10 there was a fairly complete, parallel UNIX environment which one could choose to interact with in preference to the somewhat alien AEGIS shell.
The DM does not work like anything else you have used.
There is a three-button mouse, but the graphical UI is primarily command-driven... though you can, for example, position the mouse cursor over a filename displayed in a textual file listing (like, ls -l in the UNIX environment), and press the key marked OPEN, to have the DM open this file in a pad (the DM equivalent of a window). Windows can be resized and/or repositioned, though the mouse needn't be used for this. The three windows along the bottom of the screen (with Command: on the left) are where one enters DM commands, such as login, or cpscr (copy screen) to create a screenshot, or kd (key define) to remap the keyboard, and so on. A new pad can be opened by typing in the cp (create process) command - arbitrary programs can be opened by specifying them as options to cp. The center window shows an alert status; the window on the right displays any error text relating to the most recent command.
Just for example.
AEGIS and the DM date back to the first DOMAIN workstation (the DN100) in 1981. All of these features were present from the beginning, although the DN100 had only a black-and-white, portrait display. As you might imagine there weren't many people doing graphical user interfaces in 1981 for Apollo to copy, plus all the founders had come from PR1ME and the east-coast hacker tradition, totally isolated from anything that may have been going on at Xerox PARC.
Incidentally the screenshot appears as if it might be a textual interface only, but it isn't. At the time I created it I didn't know much about how to drive it, or have any apps which might display graphics. These systems were popular for CAE and circuit design; many very expensive software packages for doing these things were available. Also, Interleaf got its start on Apollo. For a while they competed (relatively successfully) with SGI in the high-end graphics market.
While many of the machines (and certainly nearly all of the later generations of machines) are in fact in desktop cabinets and are more-or less Amiga sized, it's debatable whether they could be considered "desktop" machines. Certainly in a business setting. They're not very "personal" though.
If you're curious to learn more about AEGIS and the DM, I have some Apollo manuals available on my site - you'll probably get the most out of the DOMAIN System User's Guide - http://www.typewritten.org/Articles/Apollo/005488-02.pdf
...or possibly the less detailed Getting Started with DOMAIN/IX - http://www.typewritten.org/Articles/Apollo/008017-00.pdf
It's an interesting system, in an alternate-dimension, parallel universe type way. Very much a dead-end. HP bought Apollo in 1989 and pretty much immediately began systematically erasing all traces of their (not inconsiderable) valuable IP. A tiny bit of their network RPC tech ended up in a dusty corner of DCE, and some of their source code control guys escaped HP and effectively spun that product off as ClearCase, but that's about it.
Cheers!