Amiga guilt and time distortion.

[runequester]

I'd like to discuss a phenomenom that I've observed in the past year or so.

Amiga guilt, and by relation, time distortion.


The subject is plagued by feelings of guilt about having used an amiga. This may come from insecurities of having made a "wrong choice" and a burning need to correct others misconceptions.


Various symptoms may manifest themselves, such as feeling a need to post in as many conversations as possible with any of the following:

How much commodore sucked

How much PPC sucked

How terrible the amiga was compared to the PC

How much every amiga model past the 500/1000/2000 was awful and terrible

How much better Turrican 2 was on the C64

That x86 solves everything

How terrible AGA was

That the X1000 is super expensive, in case you hadn't heard

In doing so, they hope they can somehow dispel the illusion other users had of having an interesting discussion about amiga's, by reminding them of things every person on the planet is already aware of.



This is often accompanied by Time Distortion. In this particular illness, the subject mentally transposes the PC market of today to the 80's and early 90's, imagining a world where PC's are reasonably priced and can run for hours without crashing, compared to an unexpanded 512 kb amiga 500.
All thoughts of 2000 dollar PC's running windows 3.1 while vomiting out PC speaker bleeps are banished, and the world is made of microsoft flowers and intel bunnies dancing in the meadows.



The cure for both illnesses is to go have a wank, and is thus easily accomplished. If you still suffer from either afterwards, you obviously didn't wank it enough.

[runequester]

There's two sides to this coin.  There's realizing that from '85-'90 the Amiga rode tall in the saddle, then there's outright delusion: believing that the Amiga was still a viable platform into the late 90s, that AGA was some kind of awesome panacea of graphical capability (it wasn't; it was a chopped down version of a chipset that was late and throtted back by Commodore management and outdone by SVGA when it was released) and that OS4 was poised to take the world by storm.

THere's a lot of grey scale inbetween. Its okay to think AGA was pretty cool, and the A1200 was a nice machine, without being a zealot. AGA /was/ better than OCS/ECS. Now, in 2011, how it compared to [insert PC here] or how OS 3.1 compared to [insert windows version here] is competely irrelevant.

That's what I saw, that's why I left.  Maybe I'm foolish enough to let myself get trolled by people who rave about the importance of polling a joystick port at 1000hz or whatever, but waving around your AmigaDOS manual telling me I don't know from computing because I don't live inside the Amiga Reality Distortion Field and wear the rose-colored contact lenses doesn't make me want to see your side of the argument!  I used an Amiga.  For years.  I know what it can do.  I know what it can't do.

Lets step back and relax man

Its not binary. Its okay to enjoy what the amiga was, for what it is.
Its 2011 today. Not 1995. There's no point fighting the holy wars of computing anymore.

[runequester]

It depends on how the game was coded. There's amiga games that benefited from a faster CPU, and some expected it (try running AB3D2 on a 68020 without fast RAM if you don't believe me), and there's PC games that became unplayable at faster speeds.

In any event however, its completely irrelevant today. Why bother worrying about it?

Amiga guilt is why.

[runequester]

The Amiga really never had a huge chance. IBM already dominated the business world. A world where the Amiga would never be able to penetrate. I mean look at it this way. The Amiga was in production in various guises for 9 years and in those nine years NOT ONE MAJOR maker of software for business ported their stuff to the Amiga. As much as we all hate to admit it the Amiga was a nitch computer. It could have moved into the area where the Mac went for a number of years and that is Desktop publishing. C= was killed from inside by Medhi Ali before that could happen in any serious way.

From memory wordperfect was ported. And Electronic Arts are chopped liver i guess?

What type of software did the amiga lack that ibm machines had?

[runequester]

microsoft word

Today sure. In a pre internet world i dont know. There were plenty of word processors and dtp stuff on the miggy.

[runequester]

Macs had some of this software available and didnt make much of a splash in the business world either, outside a few niches.

IBM/DOS grabbed the corporate market and that was it.

Commodore didnt need that market to survive and aiming at the consumer is where the focus should have fallen.

[runequester]

My signature states Im a linux fan boy. What makes you think I am putting down PCs.

[runequester]

I wasn't implying that, I was just stating and observation that may have been a little off. The Amiga was played out differently in different parts of the world also making perceptions appear quite different.

ah gotcha

[runequester]

 It is a passive aggressive attempt to push the idea that x86 is inferior.

Let me give you a hint there mate. You know from my signature I use linux.
Let me give you a freebie then: Im not running it on PPC, ARM or 68K.

So what do you suppose I am running it on?

[runequester]

z80?

now /that/ would be badass

[runequester]

You throw that out there like it proves something.  It doesn't.  It just explains why you feel guilty.  Your like the guy that is worried that the two different girls he is dating might meet.  Me, I'll introduce them and all play together.

You really have a complex about this whole thing huh.

Find a single post from me on this forum where I've professed to either
A: Hating x86 processors
B: Being a 68K processor fanboy.


Im happy playing your villain that you seem to need, but let's make with some actual proof instead.

[runequester]

How about the first post in this thread.  You don't say "I hate x86" or "I am a 68K fanboy".  What you do is chime in over and over with passive aggressive comments about how x86 makes no sense.  How a company that has announced Amiga compatible computers branded as Amiga have no connection to Amiga because they are on x86 processors.

You fail reading comprehension. If you want to dredge up the CUSA crap again, my question at that point was what a PC in a C64 case has to do with amiga.

The answer at the time was that at some unspecified future point, they'll sell a computer titled an amiga, which will run some sort of OS that is going to be amiga-like. As I said /repeatedly/ in that thread, once they sell an amiga product, I think they should have a section on amiga.org, just like AROS, Morph OS etc.

It has fuck all to do with the processor type.

Playing innocent because you use passive aggressive language doesn't mean you are not saying it.  If I were to continually post "I don't understand why runequester thinks his opinion matters in any way", I would still be making a statement about you.  That is how being passive aggressive works.

So you have nothing, other than whining?
Given that you seem to follow me around now, it seems you think quite a lot of my opinion. I suppose that's flattering.

Heck, even in the above post, you play passive aggressive.  You pretend to be a victim by claiming to be depicted unfairly as a villain in a thread that was passive aggressively complaining about x86, and peoples comments that Amiga wasn't perfect.

My post had exactly nothing negative about x86 in it, and you know it.

Lets examine what I posted.

The only thing that is remotely negative is that yes, in the 80's PCs were wicked expensive, they generally ran windows 3.1, and PC speaker sucked.

Care to refute these points? Or have you dug yourself so far into fantasy land that you can't distinguish between facts and imaginary attacks ?


Since you claim you know exactly what I mean, you know damn well what I intended. As I have posted /in this very thread/ this isn't about amiga being superior. It's about being able to have a conversation without the same "commodore failed because of XXX" "amiga sucked because of XXX" crap that comes up every single time.

Yes, we all know that AGA was slow, and that commodore had bad marketing and that the 1200 wasnt powerfull enough and that windows 95 sold monstrously well.
It all doesn't matter anymore. It's 2011. Everyone else moved on.
Why keep dredging up the same crap over and over and over and over again?

[runequester]

Are you trying to claim that

"That x86 solves everything"

was said in all honesty?  That you really believe that it solves everything?  I read that as sarcasm and a passive aggressive jab at systems running x86.

So, just to be clear... Are you now truly claiming without any sarcasm "That x86 solves everything"?

You read the post right?

So let me quote myself.

Ahem

The subject is plagued by feelings of guilt about having used an amiga. This may come from insecurities of having made a "wrong choice" and a burning need to correct others misconceptions.


Various symptoms may manifest themselves, such as feeling a need to post in as many conversations as possible with any of the following:

How much commodore sucked

How much PPC sucked

How terrible the amiga was compared to the PC

How much every amiga model past the 500/1000/2000 was awful and terrible

How much better Turrican 2 was on the C64

That x86 solves everything

How terrible AGA was

That the X1000 is super expensive, in case you hadn't heard

In doing so, they hope they can somehow dispel the illusion other users had of having an interesting discussion about amiga's, by reminding them of things every person on the planet is already aware of.

Relevant parts in bold.

So tell me please, how do you go from A (my post) to B (your post) ?


You already know what I meant, so why this whole shell game of pretending I posted something else?

It seems everyone else got it just fine.

[runequester]

So, can you point to a single post that says "x86 solves everything"?  What you did was a classic strawman argument combined with passive aggressive complaining.

So you did understand what I posted. Why did you pretend otherwise then?


As for a post saying exactly those 3 words? Probably not. History showed thats how it actually worked out though.

The sentiment? Its common enough that the poster immediately above me is familiar. As are others that have posted in the thread.
Again, you know damn well what I am talking about. Playing this little "I'll keep moving goal posts until I seem to win something" game is tedious in the slightest.


If you are still sore about the CUSA thing.. let it go. If you think my posting is somehow disruptive to the site, report me to the mod's.

[runequester]

when I said I enjoyed many new users comments lately, RuneQuester was at the top of my list. I don't always agree with his stance (in this thread for one), but his threads always provoke the most interesting conversations.

I appreciate it mate And better luck on the next thread.