Amiga Multitask

[warpdesign]

I think what was impressive is that it was one of the first OS for "family computers" to have such an OS. Most other mainstream OS of the time (DOS/CP&M/TOS/MacOS) only had single task or simple cooperative multitasking. But Unix was already there, and way more sophisticated than AmigaOS, that wasn't what it was supposed to be anyway. Commodore wanted it out too fast. And that's maybe the most impressive: the timeframe used to release a fully GUI-OS...

But by the mid/end of the nineties it already showed its age: no RTG/RTA (yes: Windows 3.11 was more advanced in that regard), no memory protection, no virtual memory, not portable,... And despite mostly a rewrite (OS4/MOS/AROS), this hasn't changed. There is RTG/RTA, but that's it. Most big technical limitations are there...

We all agree it was impressive 27 years ago. But time has changed. Windows isn't based on DOS anymore. MacOS has now its roots in Unix/BSD. And AmigaOS is now the most limited.

[warpdesign]

AmigaOS 4 requires about 40-60mb to run. This is inexcusable: amigaos 1.x would run with 256kb (aie.: 0,25 mb)

[warpdesign]

Since the OS didn't allow to share lots of resources (sound access was exclusive for example), it also limits what can be done using multitasking. No way to run two apps accessing paula for example...

Oh, and btw if one app that was using Paula and/or lots of chip memory crashes, you're good for a reboot... That's where features like resource tracking come handy. Not to mention your memory could be trashed even though everything appears to work perfectly (memory protection, anyone ?).

No one says it wasn't great in 1985. But it's seriously lacking important features today.