Existentialist question

[davide405]

Y'all (note second person plural) are probably sick and tired of self-important n00bs coming along every few months asking the same old tired questions...

Nevertheless:

In light of recent developements with Apple/Macintosh, specifically Steve Job's declaration that the OS is the soul of Apple:

What made Amiga "Amiga?" Was it hardware, software, OS, or something entirely different?

Now that Apple has gone over to Intel, quashing any hope of further development of the PPC line for desktop computers, what is the point of hoping for further development of "Amiga" hardware?  Or is "Amiga" hardware not even relevant to this question.

If Amiga is just another competing OS, what the H*ll is the holdup?

Again, with utmost humility, I recognize these questions have probably been asked before.  Please point me to the forum/thread where it was all hashed out.

Thank you (in advance) for gentleness in your replies.

[glitch]

Wait... I had my copy of "Existentialism for Dummies" around here somewhere.

I think it what made the Amiga an Amiga was/were the qualities and uniqueness of both it's hardware and software.  No machine is perfect, but the fact that it was so awe inspiring when it first came out caused alot of us to stop and ponder and be a lot more creative than we might have been otherwise.

The new Amigas aren't "real Amigas" per se (flamebait) but a "re-telling" of the Amiga's design goals on radically different hardware and software.

My two cents...

-G

[leirbag28]

 I agree totally............An Amiga is definitely the hardware and the software that acted as ONE..............This will never happen again. The AmigaONE is NOT an Amiga.............its more of a Virtual Amiga..nevertheless, OS4 is very very Amiga...........................and I will tell you what...........if Amiga OS was ported to Intel chips.............it would still be ten times better than Windows on intel chips....and I dont mean featurewise..............I mean the way it works and its beautiful integration................if it had to be ported to x86.....I would highly prefer it would be done on AMD processors and NOT intel.

Anyway...........I hope they keep it on PPC or port it to Cell or even better...to Million dollar Super Computer chips.......and do what Sony did.......lose money on the hardware.and recieve the money back through software (and please no stupid comments on how this could never be...cuz it definitely can in the right hands and proper marketing)

[Eco]

Glitch nails it.

Additionally, I think that the secret ingredient in the impact of the classic Amiga was the accessibility (price point) of the hardware. The "re-telling" is missing this chapter, but perhaps it has to at this point.

[boing]

The Mac gradually stopped being a Mac.  It started to
stop being a Mac when Apple changed from their own Apple chips to using off the shelf stuff created by others.

Jobs' adoption of BSD unix as Mach as NeXT as Mac OSX (why not just call it Mach OS?) was a silent admission that the Mac OS was fundamentally so flawed that Apple simply didn't have the resources to try to correct it's design flaws while retaining some level of compatibility that wouldn't drag it down to being an even slower OS.  You can only have so many workarounds before things slow down.  And the Mac's so-called OS was heavy on the cute, while being weak on substance.


So what is The Amiga?

The Amiga is a specific set of unique hardware features accessed by specific adddresses, supported by an OS that was specifically written to exploit the novel Amiga hardware so as to reduce the amount of cycles and code required.

Some of those features include real hardware sprites whose resolution was independent of the sreen bitmap resolution.  They also include dual playfields, genlocking, and PAL/NTSC compatibility.

There is a tape of Jeff Schindler admitting that the whole myth of "the Amiga needs to stop being proprietary and use generic chipsets" was a cover story to mask the fact that during the many years of legal wrangling and sales, that the Amiga's custom chip schemas were lost.  Someday, when the legal risks fade, that tape will be made public to the Amiga community.  

Few people this side of Jeri Ellsworth have the gravitas to reverse engineer the Amiga chipset so as to both extend the capabilities while retaining compatibility (it really only needs a custom MMU to redirect old address accesses to new audio/videographic hardware- something Bill Buck was quietly considering in the VIScorp days.

There's a middle road where basic Amiga features could be implemented in hardware designed to merge with existing AGP and PCI cards.  Not that it would be trivially easy-- since AGP and PCI et al haven't got a clue about Amiga design or timings.

Collision detection (video) would be difficult to implement, but they are very handy.  We would both have access to certain newer video cards while retaining the features that make the Amiga different from other computers.

[boing]

>The new Amigas aren't "real Amigas" per se

Glitch is correct.


And now with this devastating news from Apple, we have an opportunity to rethink the path we've been taking for some years.

Has it gotten us anywhere?

Do we have new Amigas that we can use?

Are they devastatingly advanced?  Or even just clever?

Are they impressing people enough to make them consider switching?

Are they even on par with the so-called Macs out there?


Nope.  We need to suck up to people like Richard Branson, to get a lot of cash and hire people like Jeri Ellsworth, Joe Torre, Dale Luck, Dave Needle, etc.

[glitch]

Oh, and I forgot one thing... the "New Amiga Smell®".
 :lol:

[amigadave]

Amiga is the experience and the genius that created that experience for each of us.  I doubt that any of us will experience anything similar again from a computer or an OS, because nothing will compare to our first encounters with the Amiga and nothing will come along that is such a quantum leap above what we already have like the Amiga was compared to the PC and even the Apple at the time it came out.

I think that computer hardware has far outpaced the software development at this point in time.  We need better software that makes our lives easier and more enjoyable, not faster hardware to run what has already been written a little quicker.  I would be perfectly happy with an Amiga OS 5 written to a ROM which could be installed in an existing Power Mac Dual 2.7 G5 that had a program available that could control my house appliances, lights, security and other electronics with voice recognition and of course do all the other expected computer tasks.

What I wish would return is all the creative people and energy that was inspired by the Amiga during the first 10 years.

[Tahoe]

To me the most important thing about the Amiga is it's community, ie the users.

I have never met a nicer bunch of people than Amiga (or former Amiga) users. I still have very close personal friends from my Amiga days whom I met through running my BBS.

Also the feeling that you had the best machine, no matter what others said, the miggy could do it too and always even better. And I always won the argument! I could drag windows smoothly, I could have high colour pictures, I could play animations etc. etc.

[guest3110]

Email me and I'll send you something that explains exactly what Amiga is and is about.  :-)

[X-ray]

You could just post it here...

[Framiga]

naaaa . . . he can't.

Otherwise he would kill all us then. Naaaa . . . i prefer to live ;-)

[glitch]

It's either Doomy or someone trying to sell you viagra!  Wait, is there such thing as military spec viagra?  HELLO!!

 :lol:

[X-ray]

Ja, it sounds like someone playing funny buggers

[Karlos]

glitch wrote:
Wait, is there such thing as military spec viagra?  HELLO!!

Of course. It gives you a ceramic-hard purple top...