drwho wrote:
Firstly, the Mac without OSX, is a single-process box (you heard that right, OS9.1 and all previous releases of the Mac OS are NOT multitasking in any way, your Amiga has always been better ... ) :-D
Actually, MacOS pre-X had "cooperative multitasking" (although ISTR something about a library for pre-emptive multitasking in OS9(?)). But yes, in that respect AmigaOS was better, until OSX.
... Enter OSX. I am not sure what people may or may not know about OSX, but, essentially, this is a BSD kernel, with some Mac code and a Window Manager called Aqua slapped on top. Is this a bad thing? Essentially, no.
One could also say "it's bleedin' brilliant!", but I suppose that's down to one's perspective.
But, I would rather save $2000, buy a super fast PC and run the *nix clone of my choice, instead of OSX.
Agreed, as far as my own needs (user niche) goes, anyway.
Second, I always got the impression that the Mac was very poorly supported. The amount of software available for it was pretty pathetic, again, this is an area where the PC really shines. Basically, don't plan on running Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 on your new Mac any time soon, if ever. Your Amiga has more games than the Mac has ever seen, and most of them are free now!
Compared to Windows, sure. But AmigaOS, especially since the death of the Amiga and Commodore? Come on! A devoted gamer should steer clear of Macs, but AmigaOS isn't even visible on the gamer's radar. BTW, Doom 3 is planned for MacOSX, AFAIK.
Third, OS control. One of the reasons that I love the Amiga so much is that I have control over everything. I know where everything is, I know what everything does, there are no surprises like "where did all my HD space go?" that I get from Windows.
Too true. OTOH, to some extent this of course depends on experience and knowledge, as well as the sheer size (and thus number of features) of the system.
The CLI is actually important, and coming from a Unix background, this is important to me. The Mac has no shell or CLI, and on the PC it's essentially meaningless now .
So you don't have MacOSX, then?
The Mac is also a complete whore (can I use the word whore here?) to develop software for. There are ROMs but they are no where nearly as robust as the kickstart ROMs [...]
This part I don't understand...
Personally, as a previous Mac user, for about 2 years, I was very disappointed in the machines. I had respect for Apple back in the 80's, but, they pretty much suck now.
Funny, my thoughts are the complete opposite. Apart from the price the hardware rocks, and the OS has finally stopped sucking so hard.
In my very humble opinion, I would stick with the Amiga, if you like the Amiga.
Sure, they're fun and hopefully the ones we use won't give up their last puff of blue smoke for a few years more, but the Amiga is dead. People who liked Amigas and want to keep using something similar are probably better served by something new, like AOS4/MOS/AROS, or emulation.
OS4 is coming, systems are a little bit pricey, but, they are honestly worth every dime and you still will pay a fraction of what the Mac costs.
"A little bit pricey"? "A fraction of what the Mac costs"? You're not talking about the hardware sold as "AmigaOnes", are you? For the prize of an "officially labelled" Teron PX
motherboard + 800 MHz G4 CPU (with mobo features similar to that of a 1999 PC), you could get a complete Mac
computer with an 1.25 GHz G4, 256 MB PC2700 DDR RAM, 40 GB HDD, Radeon 9200 gfx, CDRW/DVD, 17" screen, mouse/kbd, MacOSX and a software bundle.
