Amiga - What If It Were Today....

[r06ue1]

I agree with save 2600 and while we can't 'see' what the Amiga would be like today, I think we can make some educated guesses by looking at other platforms like Apple.
 
I think most of you will agree that Commodore had more in common with Apple than Microsoft or the 'PC' world. Given that, I think we can draw some insight on what Commodore would have done:
 
-The AmigaOS as you know it now would not exist today. We know that memory protection and hardware abstraction is a must for any modern OS. Without these two technologies, your OS is just too vulnerable to outside hackers, virii, and malware.
 
All anyone has to do is write to memory location $4 and I can bring down your Amiga. People put up with this in 1990, people would shoot you in 2010 if your OS allowed this. :-)
 
Apple realized this problem around System 7 but by then it was too late to move the train. They were even worse off as System 7 wasn't even a true multitasking OS. However, like trashing $4 on the Amiga, it was insanely easy to bring down the MacOS in a very similar way. You can't just 'bolt' on memory protection or a HAL so you must look for a new OS which means your old software is probably not going to work.
 
Apple did realize something that Commodore would have as well. Nobody cares about the 'frame' of the OS as long is the GUI and software work like you expect them too.
 
Apple went looking for a frame to carry their 'Mac Experience' on and thought about NT, Linux, BeOS, and NeXT. In the end we know they went with NeXT which wasn't horrible but I thought BeOS was quite nice as well.
 
They 'emulated' the old OS to keep the software base alive while they (begged) developers to port to their newer OS. Apple actually had a very difficult time because WinTel was just so powerful that many developers wondered why they should put the effort into a base that had such a small market share. Adobe, I'm looking in your direction...
 
Commodore would have had to make a similar decision. Do you write a new OS or just add Intuition on top of something else? Do not think for a minute that writing a core OS is something easy. It is a monumental task so there is much to be said for bolting on the Amiga Experience on top of something else.
 
Since AMIX was done at Commodore perhaps they would have looked at a Unix solution like Apple? This would not have been a bad solution, really.
 
-Hardware: CPU
 
The 68k was dead by the early 1990s so Commodore would have had to look toward a new CPU (just like Apple).
 
In older posts, Haynie mentioned the Alpha chip I think? I know it was a RISC based CPU so they might have moved to PPC along with Apple. Anything is possible.
 
This will really cause people to flame me, but going with Intel would have been very smart. Intel offers you a great many advantages that no other CPU does:
 
--Virtualization as opposed to emulation is something that sells computers. Apple may not trumpet it, but the ability to run Windows in a virtual window or boot into Windows via Boot Camp sold many people on an Apple computer (me included).
 
I still do a great deal of work in Windows but I can run Windows on my terms on my Mac. Its a VMWare window that runs along side my other Mac applications. Commodore could have offered something similar.
 
Boot Camp, Virtualization, and WINE really come in handy when you have to run Windows software but wish to do so on your terms.
 
--Its also much easier to compile for the same architecture than going from Intel to PPC or Intel to Alpha or whatever. Most of the games on the Mac are just Windows games running on a modified version of WINE. This allows ports without a great deal of work. If the Mac was still on PPC, I think the market share would have continued to shrink...
 
-Hardware: Chipset
 
It would be interesting to have seen if Commodore could have kept up with companies like nVidia or ATI (AMD) when it came to graphic chips.
 
AA or whatever was after AGA would have supported RTG -a start for a HAL- as well as a unified driver model for graphics. Also, the core chipset would have to compete against Intel, VIA, nVidia (well, not after 2010), and others.
 
-GUI
 
In the end, I think Commodore would have continued to refine the GUI (what we loved/love about the Amiga) and this would have evolved into something very nice. Perhaps people would have licensed technology from Commodore for their own OS?
 
I think if you look at how the MacOS evolved from System 7 to OS X, you can imagine how the AmigaOS would have evolved from 3.x to a modern OS.
 
Lastly, the AmigaOS was great at fitting a lot of OS into a small footprint so the mobile world could have embraced the AmigaOS on PDAs, phones, tablets, etc...
 
Commodore had some of the best engineers on the planet and great facilities at their disposal. MOS was a great asset that could have served them well as they continued to upgrade the hardware.
 
I think that the Open Source community would have embraced the Amiga and there would be great applications on it in 2010 though I still think Microsoft would dominate.
 
Too bad we'll never know....
 
Cheers!
P

 
 
Very good write up and couldn't agree more Pentad.

[JimS]

That's exactly why I consider desktop computing the last place the Amiga souls should try to reincarnate. One thing is AROS, which I consider the only viable 'future' for the old Amiga habits in the PC era, the other is what I imagine about an Amiga platform rebirth: it might be a tablet-like device with unique features smarter people than me should transform from dreams to reality. Something I can wear, for instance, which will augment reality. Think about a pair of special glasses that may integrate a GUI-overlay to the real environment and work with the movement of eyes, but definitely not a old, big, heavy, ugly desktop minitower.

Yeah, everything is a computer these days... phones, mp3 players, pads, even kitchen appliances. There will probably always be a place for the tower in there somewhere... at least as a base port for all those other gizmos.  I wonder though if there's room for another player in the tablet market? I just saw an article today wondering if there weren't already too many OSes in that market.

I like the idea with the glasses... I read something like that in a sci-fi story. The guy had a "laptop", but used glasses that drew out the display with lasers directly on the retina. (ouch!). Sensor gloves on the hands replaced the keyboard & mouse.. the same laser drew a virtual keyboard. With a setup like that, you could bypass the pads, and go with something the size of an old school transistor radio as a portable computer.

As for Amiga... well best to maintain it's niches where it can... retro, emulation, FPGA.. should be enough there.