Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: A6000 on June 28, 2014, 11:08:35 AM
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The Apple macintosh started with 68k processors, changed to PPC and are now using X86, they have also used several operating systems, yet the community prospers, so why is it so hard for the Amiga community to get along with Amiga users who have chosen to use slightly different hardware or OS variants?
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Because there is no one true ultimate Amiga hierarchy to dictate to the world exactly what an Amiga is through an actual continued retailed product in which they have the rights to solely monopolise and develop as they wish. Instead all that we are left is rehashed, chopped and changed, and beaten senseless versions of what used to be - in 3125 different versions of it. And then, because opinions are like arseholes and everyone has one, and because everyone thinks theirs doesn't stink, they let the internet know about all the perfections and imperfections of all the current flavours of what is available. People then "discuss" these opinions.
Good enough explanation?
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But if Commodore had not gone under, it would have switched to Hombre using a PA 7150 chip and AmigaOS 4, so what is so wrong about what A-EON has done? (except the price).
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Nothing at all.
Our current NG solutions probably have better compatibility than an Hombre based Amiga would have had.
But, Amiga users are a notoriously contentious bunch.
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@A6000
People are very tribal. They like to attack other people's totems while holding there own above criticism.
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But if Commodore had not gone under, it would have switched to Hombre using a PA 7150 chip
But wasn't the plan, to use the Hombre just for a new game console call it "CD33".
Which was a side project and unrelated to AMIGA?
Wasn't the plan for AMIGA was to bring out AAA?
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But if Commodore had not gone under, it would have switched to Hombre using a PA 7150 chip and AmigaOS 4, so what is so wrong about what A-EON has done? (except the price).
Nothing is wrong with what A-Eon has done. Wrong is an opinion.
To go back to your original question and my original answer. Because now there is so many variations available of what is now "Amiga", along with that comes so many different opinions. And with the internet now allowing everybodies opinion to become easily known, they do just that. And people read and respond. That is what causes "discussions" on it all.
But, if there was one. And one only. And no more than one. And I mean ONE only company that completely owned E V E R Y T H I N G that is Amiga, and THEY dictated what an Amiga is to the world, there would probably be much less "discussion". Because there would only be one "Amiga". And not 3152 incarnations to compare and "discuss".
Make sense?
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But wasn't the plan, to use the Hombre just for a new game console call it "CD33".
Which was a side project and unrelated to AMIGA?
Wasn't the plan for AMIGA was to bring out AAA?
From what I have read, Commodore had money troubles and delayed development of AAA until it was practically too late, they then realised it was too late, cancelled AAA and started on Hombre, which was also too late and the company folded.
If Commodore had better management they would have brought out a AAA based Amiga at the right time and continued selling Amigas, they did licence the Z8001 processor for use in another aborted project so they could have licenced the 680x0 and made it part of future chipsets.
It is amazing how these management types believe they are worth million dollar paychecks with absolutely no evidence to back up their demands.
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Nothing is wrong with what A-Eon has done. Wrong is an opinion.
To go back to your original question and my original answer. Because now there is so many variations available of what is now "Amiga", along with that comes so many different opinions. And with the internet now allowing everybodies opinion to become easily known, they do just that. And people read and respond. That is what causes "discussions" on it all.
But, if there was one. And one only. And no more than one. And I mean ONE only company that completely owned E V E R Y T H I N G that is Amiga, and THEY dictated what an Amiga is to the world, there would probably be much less "discussion". Because there would only be one "Amiga". And not 3152 incarnations to compare and "discuss".
Make sense?
My opening post was really asking "if Apple owners can accept the changes to their platform, why can't Amiga users do the same".
There is no single company, but we should be able to deal with that and move on as a fairly united community.
EDIT, There is no single company in the PC market either.
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From what I have read, Commodore had money troubles and delayed development of AAA until it was practically too late, they then realised it was too late, cancelled AAA and started on Hombre, which was also too late and the company folded.
If Commodore had better management they would have brought out a AAA based Amiga at the right time and continued selling Amigas, they did licence the Z8001 processor for use in another aborted project so they could have licenced the 680x0 and made it part of future chipsets.
It is amazing how these management types believe they are worth million dollar paychecks with absolutely no evidence to back up their demands.
the basic difference between the apple community and the amiga community was that there was always apple as company leading the development and thus forcing the developer and user to go with them. Would Commodore have survived the same would have been the case for amiga. There would some form of AmigaOS (however it today would look like), no MorphOS or AROS. 68k would propably only existing as emulation (if ever) because they would have changed the hardware. Chipsets propably would not exist anymore. It would be a different machine today. But that did not happen, AROS is the oldest OS, MorphOS was started in the late 90s, there were the last 68k updates around 2000. That was the first split in NG and 68k. Then AmigaInc. decided to do their own "official" OS and the PPC platform started to divide too. I think what I read was that at the beginning both AmigaOS and MorphOS were running on classic hardware supporting PPC accellerators but both supporting different standards. I read discussions that this would destroy the last remainders of the market. Then arguments between Ben H. and MorphOS teams started and escalated with Ben H. claiming that MorphOS (and AROS) are illegal using 3.1. sources. And since then we have our current situation. All are using different (closed) standards and different components and are different on API level. But it is how it is.
When I have summarized something wrong be free to correct me. That is what i read in different sources.
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My opening post was really asking "if Apple owners can accept the changes to their platform, why can't Amiga users do the same".
There is no single company, but we should be able to deal with that and move on as a fairly united community.
EDIT, There is no single company in the PC market either.
On PC you have windows dominating the market
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In my opinion the reason why Apple users accept changes is because they are passive consumers. Steve Jobs told them what they want and they accepted it. Amigan's are a more educated bunch and don't fall for such baloney ;)
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Is 68k emulation on NG Amigas good enough to create a virtual 68k platform that is compatible with classic machines to the extent of running classic software, only faster?
Is it possible that the various APIs can evolve into a unified API across all Amigas or are we stuck with systems that will never be compatible.
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the basic difference between the apple community and the amiga community was that there was always apple as company leading the development and thus forcing the developer and user to go with them. Would Commodore have survived the same would have been the case for amiga. There would some form of AmigaOS (however it today would look like), no MorphOS or AROS. 68k would propably only existing as emulation (if ever) because they would have changed the hardware. Chipsets propably would not exist anymore. It would be a different machine today. But that did not happen, AROS is the oldest OS, MorphOS was started in the late 90s, there were the last 68k updates around 2000. That was the first split in NG and 68k. Then AmigaInc. decided to do their own "official" OS and the PPC platform started to divide too. I think what I read was that at the beginning both AmigaOS and MorphOS were running on classic hardware supporting PPC accellerators but both supporting different standards. I read discussions that this would destroy the last remainders of the market. Then arguments between Ben H. and MorphOS teams started and escalated with Ben H. claiming that MorphOS (and AROS) are illegal using 3.1. sources. And since then we have our current situation. All are using different (closed) standards and different components and are different on API level. But it is how it is.
When I have summarized something wrong be free to correct me. That is what i read in different sources.
IMO it came down to one thing-they all wanted to make the biggest buck...and it started with Amiga International not wanting to pay what 3rd parties wanted to paid for having their software included in OS 3.5- MUI I believe was the first choice GUI, but deemed too expensive by Amiga Tech, so we got Reaction (a tarted up Class Act). The included TCP stack apparantly wasn't paid as agreed, but included anyway.
Then H&P claimed they didn't get paid in full for OS 3.9 so that was another dispute.
phase5 were the only ones that actually got a PPC working on the Amiga, and wanted control of both the hardware and the software. To me it looked like H&P saw it as a Microsoft opportunity-bugger the hardware, its the software that matters and they wanted to be the ones to control the PPC OS. Hence the first split on the ppc market.
If they actually worked together and pooled their resources then things may have been better-but in the end it was all about MONEY and GREED. I wonder if any of them have actually made anywhere near enough money to at least cover their time. I doubt it.
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Is 68k emulation on NG Amigas good enough to create a virtual 68k platform that is compatible with classic machines to the extent of running classic software, only faster?
Is it possible that the various APIs can evolve into a unified API across all Amigas or are we stuck with systems that will never be compatible.
A unified API? I believe not. For that the systems are already too different. And all camps have too big EGOs. And all platforms have developed in different directions.
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IMO it came down to one thing-they all wanted to make the biggest buck...and it started with Amiga International not wanting to pay what 3rd parties wanted to paid for having their software included in OS 3.5- MUI I believe was the first choice GUI, but deemed too expensive by Amiga Tech, so we got Reaction (a tarted up Class Act). The included TCP stack apparantly wasn't paid as agreed, but included anyway.
Then H&P claimed they didn't get paid in full for OS 3.9 so that was another dispute.
phase5 were the only ones that actually got a PPC working on the Amiga, and wanted control of both the hardware and the software. To me it looked like H&P saw it as a Microsoft opportunity-bugger the hardware, its the software that matters and they wanted to be the ones to control the PPC OS. Hence the first split on the ppc market.
If they actually worked together and pooled their resources then things may have been better-but in the end it was all about MONEY and GREED. I wonder if any of them have actually made anywhere near enough money to at least cover their time. I doubt it.
It seems that Phase 5 and H&P hated each other. I have read about Prodad trying to make a new modern GUI and tried to convince the others to support it. If all parties involved had really worked together the chances would have been better. The only chance would have been to agree on one standardized platform, but there we are at the big EGOs again.
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Wonder what happened to the people behind H&P and phase5?
{edit} form the H&P website:
"These days, no company can survive without cooperation. During the last 15 years in business--and especially since we formed this company--we have strived for, and fostered significant cooperation and partnerships with both companies and individuals"
Hmmm
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Commodore had money troubles
And management caused the money problems by burning millions on their failed PC clone projects while they left Amiga development to starve. I've pondered how might it have all worked out differently if only....
I had to support their Colts for a couple of years. Poor DOS compatibility killed them, and their price didn't make them too attractive to start with. I had a couple of customers that were convinced their machines had been virus infected. Nope. And I spent most of a day proving to them DOS version compatibility issues. It's not hard to figure out what eventually happened to their Colt sales. And not to just pick on Commodore, AT&T clones suffered the same type problems and eventual fate.
Plaz
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Because Mac users have a superiority complex and are rude as heck on most forums.
I try to get along with those using other hardware or variants but it seems some people see that I use UNIX and automatically discredit what I say as heresy. That's neither fair nor makes a good representation on the community. I think we need to remember that the everything we say is totally public and that a ton of users may be offended by our petty disagreements. Nobody wants that now do they?
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Because Mac users have a superiority complex and are rude as heck on most forums.
I try to get along with those using other hardware or variants but it seems some people see that I use UNIX and automatically discredit what I say as heresy. That's neither fair nor makes a good representation on the community. I think we need to remember that the everything we say is totally public and that a ton of users may be offended by our petty disagreements. Nobody wants that now do they?
You can take a look at aeros:
http://www.aeros-os.org/
It is combining both Linux and AROS and could go in your direction. People here use a lot of different OSs for everyday use and work and nobody (or almost nobody) hates your preferred choice. But this here is a Amiga forum and I do not see how both are connected.
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It is combining both Linux and AROS and could go in your direction. People here use a lot of different OSs for everyday use and work and nobody (or almost nobody) hates your preferred choice. But this here is a Amiga forum and I do not see how both are connected.
Thanks for the info but I'd rather just stick with BSD, GNU/Linux does not meet my standards for usage and adding stuff on top doesn't really change that. I use FreeBSD and IRIX as my daily driver while tracking DragonFly BSD, once DragonFly BSD is ready for desktop use I'll switch to that.
And look at my other thread - it seems that infosec is either not appreciated by some members of the community or they're so dense that because I'm a UNIX user I'm somehow a traitor.
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Thanks for the info but I'd rather just stick with BSD, GNU/Linux does not meet my standards for usage and adding stuff on top doesn't really change that. I use FreeBSD and IRIX as my daily driver while tracking DragonFly BSD, once DragonFly BSD is ready for desktop use I'll switch to that.
And look at my other thread - it seems that infosec is either not appreciated by some members of the community or they're so dense that because I'm a UNIX user I'm somehow a traitor.
It is a little difficult to understand (and explain) when you do not know what happened in the recent past. There were a couple of times (in this case) Linux supporter trying to sell their distribution as "Amiga" to the people so some are perhaps a little too sensible on that.
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It is a little difficult to understand (and explain) when you do not know what happened in the recent past. There were a couple of times (in this case) Linux supporter trying to sell their distribution as "Amiga" to the people so some are perhaps a little too sensible on that.
I see. I guess I gotta earn the trust by showing that I'm not out for money ( I have a great job as a datacenter tech currently ) And that I'm not interested in pushing BSD or System V as Amiga - thats not the case at all. I'm just a UNIX user who doesn't want Amiga users to think GNU/Linux is the only option out there for a more practical OS.
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I see. I guess I gotta earn the trust by showing that I'm not out for money ( I have a great job as a datacenter tech currently ) And that I'm not interested in pushing BSD or System V as Amiga - thats not the case at all. I'm just a UNIX user who doesn't want Amiga users to think GNU/Linux is the only option out there for a more practical OS.
I see...
then you should make a thread on "other operating systems" and not compare it with Amiga (any variant) and say "xyz is better". On that people react a little sensible. Better stay here on amiga-related topics. We are aware of the shortcomings and tackling them already. There are a lot of interesting things you can do (even without multi-user support and memory protection). Or (when f.e. ARIX is officially there supporting SMP) than it is interesting to discuss about concepts and ideas but not in a negative way.
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It's simple.
Too many idiots in Amiga community try to fight with powerpc.
This jihad against powerpc is the main reason why amiga now is where Apple was in 1999.
68k is too slow, x86 is useless because it does not allow for easy integration with the old 68k Software.
Apple succeeded move to x86, because Jobs was smart enough to first make the transition to Unix on powerpc, then transitions to other other processors.
Too many stupid people in the Amiga community wants to skip this necessary step to x86.
Thats why on Amiga after all these years we still have something like Mac OS 9, and we never will have anything like Mac OS X.
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I see...
then you should make a thread on "other operating systems" and not compare it with Amiga (any variant) and say "xyz is better". On that people react a little sensible. Better stay here on amiga-related topics. We are aware of the shortcomings and tackling them already. There are a lot of interesting things you can do (even without multi-user support and memory protection).
I'm not saying anything is any better. I have a 3000 coming Tuesday after all - I intend to get it online and working as a hobby desktop. I was merely pointing out why its nothing more than a hobbyist OS currently and why people thinking its anywhere ready for a general use OS are more than a little short-sighted.
If it makes you feel any better, IRIX is in the same boat. The only way that will survive is if SGI/Rackable decide to release the source. And from the looks of it thats at least going to be awhile.
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It's simple.
Too many idiots in Amiga community try to fight with powerpc.
This jihad against powerpc is the main reason why amiga now is where Apple was in 1999.
68k is too slow, x86 is useless because it does not allow for easy integration with the old 68k Software.
Apple succeeded move to x86, because Jobs was smart enough to first make the transition to Unix on powerpc, then transitions to other other processors.
Too many stupid people in the Amiga community wants to skip this necessary step to x86.
Thats why on Amiga after all these years we still have something like Mac OS 9, and we never will have anything like Mac OS X.
What would be different when we would all use PPC? Nothing in my view. Apple would still have dropped PPC. The situation would not be better.
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It's simple.
Too many idiots in Amiga community try to fight with powerpc.
This jihad against powerpc is the main reason why amiga now is where Apple was in 1999.
68k is too slow, x86 is useless because it does not allow for easy integration with the old 68k Software.
Apple succeeded move to x86, because Jobs was smart enough to first make the transition to Unix on powerpc, then transitions to other other processors.
Too many stupid people in the Amiga community wants to skip this necessary step to x86.
Thats why on Amiga after all these years we still have something like Mac OS 9, and we never will have anything like Mac OS X.
Good points. We're about 15-20 years late to the PowerPC train. I think acting like Hachiko for the old hardware is honourable, if more than a bit naiive.
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I'm not saying anything is any better. I have a 3000 coming Tuesday after all - I intend to get it online and working as a hobby desktop. I was merely pointing out why its nothing more than a hobbyist OS currently and why people thinking its anywhere ready for a general use OS are more than a little short-sighted.
If it makes you feel any better, IRIX is in the same boat. The only way that will survive is if SGI/Rackable decide to release the source. And from the looks of it thats at least going to be awhile.
Some dream of using MorphOS or AmigaOS (or AROS) for everyday use and perhaps (to a certain degree) it is possible. It depends where and for what you use it. None of the variants is ready to be used as desktop at work (and I do not think that there are chances to change this). Aeros is combing Aros and Linux apps to add missing software. Generally it is a hobby OS (the same for all).
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I use the OS I think is fun! Why the hell do I need to justify this?
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When BeOS personnal edition was put online it got half million download.
it was free it was x86.
http://boards.fool.com/half-million-downloads-12343950.aspx
The day Be wanted to make an internet appliance out of BeOS they killed it.
Kamelito
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A unified API? I believe not. For that the systems are already too different. And all camps have too big EGOs. And all platforms have developed in different directions.
I hope you are not talking about AROS. AROS is open source and free for everybody to use wherever he wants including on MOS or AmigaOS4.
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I hope you are not talking about AROS. AROS is open source and free for everybody to use wherever he wants including on MOS or AmigaOS4.
What AROS devs drop something they have invented in favor of a unified API? That is what I mean
I had an argument with one of the AROS devs because I said Wanderer is not important anymore because a more modern Desktop (Magellan) is there. I was told I would threaten AROS because I use it as "container for Amiga software".
Or others who wanted to take part told me that to all their ideas answer was "No". Stubborness is common for all camps today. Personally I do the best from the situation right now and found my niche.
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I'm not saying anything is any better. I have a 3000 coming Tuesday after all - I intend to get it online and working as a hobby desktop. I was merely pointing out why its nothing more than a hobbyist OS currently and why people thinking its anywhere ready for a general use OS are more than a little short-sighted.
I don't think there are many people left expecting one more utility to turn AmigaOS/MorphOS/AROS into the next big desktop OS. Most people are happy with what they have, and welcome improvements to that.
However, I would ask you to consider as an example the OS included with the PS3 - is that ready for general use?
It has no multitasking, supports fewer filesystems, less hardware, fewer media containers/codecs, has crappier networking, no CLI at all, and can barely be customised to the user's taste.
Of course no-one would consider using it as a desktop OS, and most people use it as a way to choose what media to consume (Game, local media, streamed media), but it is in 'general use' nevertheless.
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I had an argument with one of the AROS devs because I said Wanderer is not important anymore because a more modern Desktop (Magellan) is there. I was told I would threaten AROS because I use it as "container for Amiga software".
Being open means understanding that other people may have other ideas/whishes. Why not let Wanderer there for people who like it and Magellan for other ones ? Everyone who claims X in not needed because Y exist is being elitist IMO.
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@fats, olaf
please dont quarrel at least on aros. the situation came up since wanderer isnt very usable in a current state for just a few reasons, in particular it slowness, decoration issues, truncating names by default, broken snapshotting icons and messed up listing by names. scalos and magellan would be a good interim solution. for me the best would be to have option for updated wanderer as soon as kalamatee is done with it, magellan and scalos. neither should the native solution be given up nor the alternatives refused.
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@A6000
You are either deliberately 'setting the cat amongst the pidgins', or you are truly that oblivious as to the monumental differences between the two stories.
If Apple went bankrupt in the mid '90s, as they were going to, today's Apple community would be in no better situation as Power Computing, Motorola, DayStar, UMAX, and others squabbled over the Apple 'corpse'. They would not come together in an unified way and each would have their own strategy for business growth in what would have been a declining Mac user base. They would each have a different interpretation of what Apple is and what a Macintosh is.
And it's one thing if you were genuinely asking to find out what the difference is, but you post here "dumbfounded" as to why hasn't the Amiga stayed unified this whole time?
There are plenty of Wikipedia pages that explain both stories in detail. I suggest you start there.
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On PC you have windows dominating the market
I'm not sure this has any relevance at all - should Apple have adopted the same logic?
Post Commodore, Amigas did not embrace PPC to "take on Apple". Apple made a decision to move to a platform that performs better all-round (x86/x64), not to "take on Windows" (if they had made the decision for that reason, it would be regarded as a failure as their desktop/laptop market share is still something like <10%).
As I understand it (but I can't find a corroborating source for this), the only reason that Apple didn't make that decision sooner was that Steve Jobs fell out with Intel because they wouldn't give him the good deal he was looking for.
If Commodore had survived and made the move to PPC (or whichever hardware platform), the majority of the community would have gone along with it as long as the OS was basically still there. Those who didn't want to go along with it would have found another platform (or perhaps there would have been an effort to create something 'Amiga-like' while trying to avoid the wrath of Commodore). Considering I still have a soft spot for my Amiga-using roots, I'm pretty sure that if Commodore was still around today and had produced something with an Amiga-ish that wasn't a complete joke, it would very likely be sitting alongside my PC right now.
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I'm not sure this has any relevance at all - should Apple have adopted the same logic?
Post Commodore, Amigas did not embrace PPC to "take on Apple". Apple made a decision to move to a platform that performs better all-round (x86/x64), not to "take on Windows" (if they had made the decision for that reason, it would be regarded as a failure as their desktop/laptop market share is still something like <10%).
As I understand it (but I can't find a corroborating source for this), the only reason that Apple didn't make that decision sooner was that Steve Jobs fell out with Intel because they wouldn't give him the good deal he was looking for.
If Commodore had survived and made the move to PPC (or whichever hardware platform), the majority of the community would have gone along with it as long as the OS was basically still there. Those who didn't want to go along with it would have found another platform (or perhaps there would have been an effort to create something 'Amiga-like' while trying to avoid the wrath of Commodore). Considering I still have a soft spot for my Amiga-using roots, I'm pretty sure that if Commodore was still around today and had produced something with an Amiga-ish that wasn't a complete joke, it would very likely be sitting alongside my PC right now.
my long post has vanished :(
Short version:
if Commodore would have survived there would be only a split between parts of the 68k community (who would not have followed the route) and one official NG OS based on total different hardware (no custom chips f.e.). Regarding the topic common API, because of different reasons (emotional, technical, decisions that are already done) I do not see any chance now, only "if" one of the camps becomes so successful that others are forced to follow. And successful means winning users outside the community. As long as it stays like right now nothing will change and there is no pressure on the core devs either.
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Is there any chance OS4 could ported back to 68k? I'd like to have it, but not for a PowerPC machine.
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Is there any chance OS4 could ported back to 68k? I'd like to have it, but not for a PowerPC machine.
From my experience, the 68k should be running at higher than 600mhz for AOS4 to be nice to use, there is no such 68k.
(so, running in 68k emulator on x86 would then be only use case for AOS4 on 68k)
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Because Mac users have a superiority complex and are rude as heck on most forums. ...
I recently posted info about PPC desktop continuation via AOS4/MorphOS to some forum discussing about PPC desktops, the whole (weeks earlier started) thread was deleted in matter of minutes. Friendly bunch!
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I recently posted info about PPC desktop continuation via AOS4/MorphOS to some forum discussing about PPC desktops, the whole (weeks earlier started) thread was deleted in matter of minutes. Friendly bunch!
They're terrible to UNIX users too. They're just jealous their POS OS is a clone of UNIX under Mach.
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No, no there's no hypocrites around here.
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As I understand it (but I can't find a corroborating source for this), the only reason that Apple didn't make that decision sooner was that Steve Jobs fell out with Intel because they wouldn't give him the good deal he was looking for.
Steve Jobs was not running Apple when they went PPC.
John Sculley did. And he says it was his biggest mistake.
When Jobs arrived back in Apple in 97', he pretty soon became dissatisfied with Motorola(and Motorola was pissed of when Jobs killed of the clones market) and PPC and started making plans on switching to Intel.
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Apple couldn't get the volume out of PPC that they needed, and when Jobs did come back he killed the clone market and made the Intel push - with a lot of niggling issues the entire way with Intel itself.
Jobs wanted X chips at X price that was far under what any other vendor was given deals wise for that sort of bulk, but they did manage to get to common ground and I suspect Apple and Intel are both glad of that. More inportantly, I think Jobs likely made some threats in a paper tiger form that he'd flip to AMD or another x86 vendor and Intel simply called his bluff knowing Jobs would never have settled for anything but the "Cadillac" of the chip vendors, which was and still is, Intel.
Most of this is well documented in the various books and rags of the era.
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A big part of that mistake was believing Motorola and IBM could be partners. Those two plus Apple getting together...you couldn't find three dissimilar tech companies with entirely different ideas or priorities. They tried, with Somerset, but the writing was on the wall very quickly that things were likely going to go the way they did. Scully had no choice but to go down that path though given the choice made before he was there to hitch Apple's wagon to Motorola in the first place.
Mistake or not the move to PPC was a logical one and the decision by Jobs to stick with it jumping to the G3 was also kind of a no-brainer at the time. There was no other move to make that offered a transition to a real, modern OS. He already had to "cut bait" and cancel the failed internal effort to update OS9 to something worth keeping around, sent the Newton team packing, there was simply no way to move to Intel when he took hold of the company again until some years later when it was the only decision that made any sense at all. Once users were weened off OS9 they had options. Not before.
That took as long as it did largely because big software developers are lazy (ie. Adobe being horribly, horribly lazy).
Motorola was/is an engineering-centric company that doesn't understand software, or anything much beyond the component level use of their tech and whose bread-and-butter was non-PC implementations of their technology. Apple might have been the most high profile public PPC customer but they were just a fraction of the PPC market. They were the tail trying to wag the dog. That and, though they're not unique in this, they (Motorola) were and are a company run by Lumberghs. Freakin' idiots. And so they will continue to spin off parts of their company that have any value until Motorola will simply cease to exist. Because they're idiots.
IBM could also not give a crap about much of anything but embedded applications which is why they didn't care about Altivec regardless of the fact that Apple's products were more than a little dependent here. Embedded applications didn't need that kind of floating point acceleration. The rub was IBM had the better manufacturing technology and could deliver a better version than Motorola, they just didn't care.
The switch to Intel was something he had in his back pocket the entire time because NeXT had already been running on "white hardware" for years and OpenStep was already powering a majority of the behind-the-scenes enterprise level web technology. Apple was coy about this for years for the sake of their tenuous alignment until it was simply idiotic for them to stick with it given how utterly disappointing the G5 was and no indication that they could ever get back to being competitive in markets they had been dominating that were starting to slip.
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simply idiotic for them to stick with it given how utterly disappointing the G5
I hear this a lot but my 2008 Macbook Pro with 2.5GHz Core2 Duo 'Penryn' and 6GB RAM is not half as nippy as my 2005 PowerMac with 2.7GHz G5 and 4GB RAM when it comes to running Logic Pro.
Or are you referring to it's power consumption? There the Core2 wipes the floor with the G5.
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It's simple, there really isn't any hardware/software forward momentum going honestly. Yeah we have peg, morph, amigaone and so on but the cost of new hardware is so high and honestly Amiga is a hobby or passion for most users, and most users (such as myself) cannot afford an Amigaone. Hardware is expensive compared to the PC side (and even Mac side) and there isn't much support compared to other platforms. I agree if Commodore hadn't gone under and where still producing hw, then there is a possibility that we would also have an aPhone and so on. Nice thread tho!
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Some of that could be the coding of Logic Pro. I don't know that app specifically but I know the maker of ProTools was one of the "lazy" application developers I was talking about back in the OS transition periods. Every single Adobe app, when you could dual-boot OS9 and OSX, was faster in OS9 because they hadn't actually written an OSX version, not really.
It's been so long since I cared to keep track of the compatibility layers, it could be a lack of optimization in the app or it could also be a flaw in their earlier Core2 Macbook. 2008 marks a year where there's a performance difference in some applications between similarly spec'd Core2 models due to chipset implementation and memory. I have one of the effected iMacs. Just unlucky I guess. It was what was available when I went to buy in 2008.
Power and heat was a problem though, yeah. It pointed to a cap they were going to hit on the performance they could expect in the future. It didn't inspire confidence in their ability to keep scaling. It had been similarly an issue with the dual-G4 desktops as well. We got lucky when I built our Cinewave and I got the dual 1K G4 that I did and not the next generation. It ran flawlessly for our configuration while folks with newer, slightly faster systems were having more issues and then more issues still with the G5.
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Ahh, revisionist history at its finest.
Y'all are off your rockers, 'crept for @nicholas.
The only thing intel was good at in the late '90s and early 2000s is pumping out low cost 32bit CPUs. The Pentium III and especially the Pentium 4 were relatively poor performers. And it's not so much just about the CPU, the Northbridge and Southbridge architecture from intel wasn't up to scratch either (Nvidia and AMD had better chipsets). They were floundering, AMD beat them to the 1GHz mark, and AMD beat them to the 64bit extensions mark, and AMD beat them to the multi-core mark, and the Opteron multi-pipeline design was mopping the floor with more expensive Xeon counterparts in the physical and virtual server space up until about 2009.
Fact was, the G3 (750), the G4 (74xx), and especially the G5 (970) and their specific Apple integrations outperformed anything intel was selling at the time.
2000 - My PowerBook G3 @ 333Mhz ran Adobe Premiere smoother than a dual PIII 733MHz.
2003 - I did a comparison in ripping a CD to mp3 between my PowerBook G4 @ 800MHz and a Toshiba Portege with Pentium M @ 1.6 GHz and the PowerBook beat it by a few seconds.
2003 - When the PowerMac G5 and later the Xserve G5 were released they were the foundation of several of the Top 10 supercomputing clusters of that time.
It wasn't until only a couple of years ago that a 4-core intel CPU outperformed my PowerMac G5 Quad @ 2.5GHz in converting video. And the PowerMac G5 Quad was released in late 2005.
But yes, as @nicholas stated, in terms of TDU, performance per watt, and small dies suited to mobile computing, intel's Core architecture is pretty impressive. But it still isn't the undisputed king, AMD is better at integrating GPU cores on the same die, ARM is better at sub-10w computing, and Nvidia is doing things with Tesla that intel is only dreaming about with the Xeon Phi. Cadillac my ass
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Perhaps it would not have worked out, but if Apple had let PA Semi continue PPC, we might have had very cool 16core desktops now...
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You're not above revisionism either it seems, agami. Adobe Premiere, in the G3 era, wasn't even frame accurate. It ran very poorly, even though DV wasn't a terribly taxing format and even the slowest G3 offered realtime playback of the media. In 2001 I co-authored one of the first 24P HD narrative features and we did the roughcut with DV proxy material in Premiere on my G3 while raising money to eventually build our dual-G4 Cinewave for online HD editing not quite a year later and switched to FCP because of how not up to the task Premiere was at the time(*).
Part of that was very niggling issues with Quicktime during the 1999-2003 period and a lot of third party vendors having issues but Premiere for Mac had languished at Adobe. Rather than answer the assault from Final Cut Pro they killed the app for a number of years and I held my breath waiting for them to do the same with After Effects because not only did it work better under OS9 than OSX but the Windows version on Intel and AMD hardware killed After Effects performance on the fastest dual-G4 you could get at the time. Photoshop users were likewise jumping to ship in droves and not because all of a sudden folks just up and decided to give Windows a try. The hardware was much faster and a helluva lot cheaper, with AMD offering slightly better floating point performance per dollar.
This is why longtime Mac fanatics like Stu Maschwitz grudgingly switched The Orphanage over to NT because After Effects was their bread and butter and it was just too slow on the best Mac hardware available at the time (compared to what was available to run it under Windows). I stuck with Mac as my main interactive machine but built a couple dual-AMD boxes to offload rendering to because they were so much faster. I didn't have clients sitting on my shoulder so I just continued using it in the environment I preferred until it more or less caught up again and Adobe re-invested in making their apps on the platform.
I was really happy when they re-introduced Premiere to Mac because I've always preferred Premiere to FCP.
(*) to put Premiere's poor performance on the G3 into perspective, it actually worked better and smoother a couple years prior on my DEC Alpha through FX32, which allowed the DEC RISC chip to run Intel Windows software through continuously optimizing and re-optimizing emulation, controlling a DPS Perception Video. So that box was running Premiere through emulation talking to specialized hardware doing realtime A/V (AVI based) and it worked quite well and never introduced trimming errors like were rampant on the G3 + Premiere combo (Quicktime based).
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@Sean Cunningham
I don't doubt or negate anything you say. My example for the PowerBook G3 was subjective; My brother had the dual PIII Windows 2000 workstation on which he was doing various 2D/3D multimedia work. I come home one day and curiously find him using my PowerBook G3 and he says that the video stutters in Premiere on his dual CPU Windows box.
More raw CPU power? Definitely.
Let down by Windows et al? Perhaps.
Smooth end-to-end video editing experience? Nope.
Just sayin' is all.
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Comparing Apples with Amigas?
Come on guys, the only reason Jobs, Wozniac and Wayne chose the brand name Apple is because they knew you can only compare Apples with Apples. ;)