Deep philosophical question: What makes an Amiga an Amiga?

[desiv]

A computer originally designed by Jay and co., distributed by Commodore (and briefly at the end by Escom) in the 80's and 90's, running on 68k processors.

Seriously...

Now, there is also the "something that was, at least initially, ahead of it's time and significantly better (at least for me) than anything else that was out there...
(That doesn't mean other tech wasn't doing parts of it.  There were other multitasking OSes, and other machines with great sound and/or graphics..  It was the whole enchilada for me...)
And the right technology at the right time....

But that fits lots of technologies, and those aren't "Amiga" to me...

One could pretty easily argue that the iPhone did that..  I'm not a fan per se, but I don't deny what Apple did and the result..
But it's in no way "Amiga" just because it did things (new or just better) in a way that was just right at the right time...

Then again, I don't consider PPC or Intel boxes run something called Mac something OS Macs...
To me, Macs are 68k machines..  
PPC machines running MacOS are PPC Macs, and Intel machines running MacOS are OSX machines..

That's not to take away anything from any PPC or Intel (AROS or emulated) machines that have Amiga connections..
I think some of those are incredible!!!!!

They just aren't Amiga to me...
Amiga-inspired.  Amiga-like.  Amiga-licensed..
But not Amiga..

desiv

[desiv]

Quite a good point.

As long as your talking applications and not software that hit the hardware directly..

For many of us, it's the look and feel provided by the APIs, but it's also the tricks and flashes that were provided hitting the hardware directly..

Which is why, for me, it's original and it's actual hardware..

desiv