Will there every be another computer like the amiga?

[Amiga_Nut]

If you look at what the Amiga was, idealistically speaking, at the time of the A1000's launch compared to IBM XT or AT PCs and apply that situation today you would need to produce a machine that was 5x more powerful but for the same price  via clever custom hardware.

This is doubtful, although there is room for improvement because if you built a PC with the same raw CPU power as an Xbox 360 and identical graphics chip from ATI your PC's games would look nothing like as good as the DX10 games of a 360 but that's because it is running a bloated OS on a diverse open platform and the 360is not. You're not going to create a superior GPU in your garage compared to ATI/Nvidia and certainly not for less too so 'custom chips' as seen in the mid 80s are a difficult request as a technological price/performance solution.

Some of it IS down to OS and the fact you can't optimise PC games (running on win or linux) to the same level as a fixed hardware platform as a console like the 360, some down to just how sophisticated current hardware is.

So not really is the answer although if you wrote OS4 for the PS3 it would give high end PCs running any OS a good run for their money I suspect.

Early consoles at the time of the Amiga were quite sophisticated though too, Sega Genesis and NEC Turbo Grafix/PC Engine were quite adept at arcade ports, and usually superior to the Amiga port.

Look at it this way...you could produce a superior successor to a 60s Dodge Charger  for less quite easily...but could you improve on a 2000s BMW M3 for less? Nope. The bar has been raised to high and the problem with PCs is not the hardware, simply the nature of the beast of an open diverse platform and the sorry state of a 'modern' OS written in some crap high level language taking up far too much RAM to replace the simple beauty of when Amiga Wb 1.2/1.3 was around in the Days of DOS/Windows or OS/2 etc.

[Amiga_Nut]

Nope. As I have written many many times now, my 1.33Gz G4 iBook (yes, the very same G4 that is described as old pensioner in this thread) runs in circles around the PS3, both running the same OS (linux) and doing the same tasks.

Pfft that machine would not be able to even display 1% of the visual output that the PS3 produces when playing Killzone 2 sorry.

As an OS engine the CELL is not ideal but as a package the PS3 is seriously powerful, just to display one gorgeous frame requires 8 overlaid renders to be combined in realtime @ 60FPS.

A new 'Amiga' would have to cost maybe $100-200 more than a PS3 but be able to do everything a medium range PC does and play games as shiny as Killzone 2

[Amiga_Nut]

The Amiga obviously wasn't about ground breaking CPU power anyway.

In some ways it was, although the Mac and ST had faster CPUs it was still much better than an NEC V30 or 8086 in the PC XT. But yes it was a complete package, a colour multi-tasking GUI'd OS with some very nice custom hardware for the traditional 2D games all the same. For creative people it was a dream come true. So the CPU alone was not the whole story, without the blitter and stereo DACs and a multitasking OS it wouldn't have been quite the machine it could have. Digi-view was the first non gaming expense I ever made (Dpaint was free!) and  that says a lot....never bought anything like that for my 8bit computers and the Mac/ST/PC had nothing quite as sexy as Digi-view in my book so kerching *sold*  

[Amiga_Nut]

And what does that have to do with running OS4 on a PS3? Nothing.

 Well, that's not just due to the CPU, and as you know, Sony does not allow anyone else to fully play with the rest of the hardware. Making good use of the SPUs is not easily done either.

Your G3 is just a box that runs applications, if you just want a general purpose machine even a P3 1.2ghz is enough. The point was the Amiga 1000 was light years ahead of the competition in every way including fast moving arcade quality graphics. Ditto for PS3/360 and therefore a new 'Amiga' would have to be a computer that for $100 more could replicate those quality graphics AND be superior at general computing tasks like rendering 3D graphics or transcoding Blurays to MKV etc etc.

To get similar graphics in a PC (or Mac) requires a $200 graphics card alone...now you see the point about your G3 being irrelevant to the discussion?

[Amiga_Nut]

Netbooks are also tablet PCs e.g. ASUS EeePC T91.

Netbooks  are technically crap yes, the Intel Atom is nothing more than a mobile P3 core with minor improvements, iPad is even worse...just a yuppie toy without a full blown OS and tied to the stupid apps store *kerching*

[Amiga_Nut]

Second about C.S.

And THAT is the question...

To be honest, I don't know...
I've had (and have) lots of computers.  Some I really like.  Some the perform incredibly (much better than my Amigas).  Some that were cutting edge.  Some that are.. er. .just bizarre...  I like almost all tech..

But the Amiga was about tech AND much more.
It was that feeling that we were part of something that was ahead of its time.  Not a few months or years even..

It was the elegance of the design...

When someone (on this or another board) asked about the best part of the Amiga, I answered "intuition", because I was able to write fully Windowed programs in C and actually understand what it was doing and why.

I can do that in other languages, but parts I understand and parts I don't.

I would describe the Amiga - hardware, software, interface, et al as elegant...  

I don't see that anymore...

I see bloated, incredibly badly designed devices that are only "incredible" because they have so much memory and CPU that it forces it's way past.

If you're a network person, you can kind of compare it to the Ethernet/Token Ring comparison.  Ethernet won.  It was so fast and cheap, it was inevitable..

But you look at what you have to do to get it where it is, switching to the port, and you still have collisions on the switch backplanes...

Then you look at Token-Ring..  Packets on the wire...  Upstream and Downsteam neighbors...  It was an elegant protocol...

Now, it's not the same extreme.  I don't run Token Ring at home still, and I do still use my Amigas. :-)

But I think that the combination of the incredible technology and the elegance of the design is what the Amiga is about to me...

Other machines have some great designs..  But I don't see what I see in the Amiga.  And now, there is so much power and RAM, there is no reason to be elegant...  It's just sad...  IMHO..

I don't see how there will ever be another computer like the Amiga..

But maybe..

desiv

Like I already said, a modern day Amiga would have to..........

Be as powerful or more powerful than anything the competition was selling (previously via the use of the non-standard 680000 instead of PC Intel rubbish AND custom chips to delivery amazing multimedia facilities of PCM 4 channel sound, up to 4096 colours on static screens @ half broadcast quality and lightning fast graphic data transfer and multiple effects on screen via blitter and copper custom hardware in the A1000 in 85/86). So they must produce a machine that can run CPU intensive tasks faster than a PC costing 300% more AND play technically better games than any console that is for sale at any price today.

Supply a cutting edge responsive OS with features not present on current desktop machines (which in the Amiga's case in 1985 was fully integrated and standardised mutlimedia functions and multi-tasking. Something neither the ST the Mac or the PC had in any way shape or form...and yet now we wonder how it was possible to have such a pathetic OS as pre-Amiga A1000)

So in essence a new Amiga would cost the same as a PS3, provide the best OS for today's requirements (security, bandwidth control, crash prevention,an element of artificial intelligence so it would automate mundane tasks after noticing a pattern of recognition etc etc) and at the same time be more powerful than a Quad Core Extreme/i7 and yet play games superior in quality (technically speaking) to either a £1000 PC or a PS3/Xbox360.

And like I said, a single machine solution to do this isn't going to happen, Amiga has become a distant dream now...we were lucky to have enjoyed it when it was king of the computer world in the mid 80s.

Love your Mac or Wintel as much as you want but neither Apple or MS have done crap all worth mentioning in the last two decades compared to what Commodore did in the 3 years from C64 to Amiga 1000 launches. Sorry those ARE the facts, if you don't like them then take your bias to MS/Apple dedicated forums. Show me a tight responsive OS today that doesn't require more processing power than necessary just to move a pointer on the screen and launch some programs...and I will show you OS4 Multi-tasking GUI based multimedia rich OS running on amazingly future proofed hardware that lasted over half a decade safely is a testament to the A1000 and just how advance and revolutionary a product it was.

(and yes I know the Amiga's greatest advantage was ultimately its downfall, the fact it was a closed specification platform with only one manufacturer....it gave all the advantages of a console for programming but was in a revolutionary computer with an elegant and efficient OS...but Commodore left it too late with AGA and it was too little with the same 8bit sound in 1993!!)