Deep philosophical question: What makes an Amiga an Amiga?

[takemehomegrandma]

@orb85750

Philosophical Perspective (what you asked for):
The API is what defines something Amiga, because everything else (the entire "environment", all the underlying OS code (all the libraries, devices, etc)) derives from that, as well as all third party applications that makes use of it. The API is the core, it's what sets the rules, the possibilities, the limitations, and everything else comes from this. Hence, anything that can put up a proper Amiga API is Amiga, including (in order of appearance) Amiga OS 1-3, AROS, MorphOS and OS4.

Rhetorical Perspective (is there *really* any doubt that the Amiga was a series of computers made by Commodore that died in 1995?):
The Commodore Amiga 1000-4000 (and anything in between) HW, coupled with Amiga OS 1.0-3.1.

Trade-Mark Perspective (what unfortunately seems to be the most important thing to way too many people around here):
Anything that has a valid Amiga trade mark, properly licensed (or kind of "robbed" like in Hyperion's case) from the legit Amiga IP Holder, including products from Hyperion, Commodore-USA,  IContain, etc...

[takemehomegrandma]

Simply put. It's a computer that runs AmigaOS natively.

Without the Amiga operating system there would be no Amiga computer :-)

I agree with Fishy_Fiz and Drummerboy above, and would like to add on top of their comments: Back in the days, when the A500 was at its peak and was mostly used for gaming by the broad groups of users, the OS was at best very far, far in the background. The OS never had a focus or a priority in development back then, not even from Commodore. Often you used kickstart to physically bring up the computer and loading a game, that then took over and had its own ways of utilizing the Amiga HW directly. No sight of what you would call "AmigaOS" today, and by your definition, an Amiga 500 playing a game won't be an Amiga!

I have full respect for people thinking Amiga is all about the Amiga hardware. Because they are right; traditionally, Amiga was always about the hardware, and the OS was secondary and nothing that was really developed and evolved in a way even close to the HW evolution.

I think what you *really* want to say, however, was something along the lines of "It's all about the API" that I wrote in my comment above. I think this is what you really wanted to say, -Can it run an OS that behaves the Amiga way, has the Amiga strengths and weaknesses, the Amiga ways of doing things, runs the Amiga appliactions, etc, then it's an Amiga. But then you realized that this would also include AROS and MorphOS in the philosophical definition of what Amiga is, and because of that, you also choose to combine it with the Trade Mark definition, in order to exclude the others. "Only AmigaOS(TM) is Amiga". I'm not surprised with that, coming from you, but it's sad to this kind of apartheid mentality everytime it shows...