Amiga has the X factor?

[bloodline]

Caius wrote:
Although a definition of X factor is, by its nature, both ironic and even impossible, here's what Urban Dictionary has to say on the matter:

Urban Dictionary wrote:

X Factor

Noun.

A) A quality that makes people in possession of it the epitome of cool. When trying to explain why this person is so cool you come up blank. Everyone knows this person and people like being around them.

B) Used to describe someone whos not necessarily hot but you are strangely attracted to.

"Hey do you know Jim?"
"Oh yeah, who doesn't. You know what's weird?"
"What?"
"Despite his shortness and slight chubbiness, I kinda want him..."
"That's cause he's got X factor..duh."

So what is the opposite of X Factor, then? Whatever it is I've got loads ;-)

[bloodline]

ChuckT wrote:
If you buy a PC today, it doesn't come with Basic, Pascal, or C.  Why?  

I don't know, but every Mac comes with a full gcc based Integrated Development Environment... I've used it a few times to compile UAE and play around with SDL. It's quite good.

If you bought a Pet, Vic-20 or Commodore 64, you looked at the keyboard and there were all sorts of lines and symbols on the keys.  Why?  If you didn't know how to program, you could easily put the symbols or the lines in a print statement and put your own creativity on the screen and it didn't matter if you couldn't draw because the computer helped you do it.  

If you just want to do simple programming, then I think the Shell of all curently availabe OSs will allow you to script something together... if you want a bit more power, then all modern browsers support ECMA Script... learn your DOM and you can write some pretty cool stuff!

I use to download off of bulletin boards and they were run by Cnet software or Image software and the users use to draw and upload their pictures onto bulletin boards.  I use to download programs that fellow users wrote and run them.  Instead of seeing the creativity of your neighbor you have to settle for the time and creativity of a select few who sell programs for $$$$ and they aren't that great because Microsoft products don't get me excited.

If you are getting excited by M$, then something is wrong anyway! :-)

Describe the Mac or the IBM as a computer for the hobbyist and see what you get and then describe the Amiga for the hobbyist and see what you get.

I think the iLife suite on the Mac and the massive Developers support tools provided with OSX make it ideal for Hobbiests...

[freqmax]

Seems what the Amiga/C64 etc.. got for it is inviting to creativity with a low entry barrier. Also there's a strong dedicated community.

I think what commodore did was to take the most advanced technology available, stretch it to the limit. And then sell it for an affordable price.

What would that mean today?, well proberbly something that is possible right now. But our vanilla circuit designers completly lack the drive to go for.

[ChuckT]

It would be hard to beat AMD and INTEL because if you read their history (try Wikipedia), they have a lot of government backing.

Commodore's products were sold in Kmart, Toys R Us, Sears, Bdalton bookstores and Clover.  There were some mom and pop stores that sold Commodore computers and you could get them from mail order but a lot of parents didn't trust mail order.

I don't remember if Comp USA sold the Amiga but I don't think they did and I think they were mostly IBM stuff.

It would be hard for a computer company to make the impression that this is a technological computer and to still sell in those markets but to be fair, there are PC manufacturers selling in Wallmart, Sam's Club and a few other places.

You need to get the chip speed up so it could compete with IBM and Mac.  I suppose a 900 MHZ chip can do it as long as you have graphics chips running everything else but I don't know you will convince a lot of people to buy it without it having an artistic, programmable and hobbyist edge so that the masses can enjoy being in control.  You also have to think about the future as people have six megapixel cameras (and above) and people are buying Terabyte hard drives.

[ChuckT]

One of the other things Commodore had a hard time to address was the Nintendo factor.  I know that Commodore was rumored to have an LCD but who did they sell it to to stay afloat?  I know that the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Gameboy have nice color screens.

The Commodore 64 and Amiga have been criticized by the public and other manufacturers as being a game machine but when kids find it easier to plop in a disk than to hit run, you have competition from the likes of Sony and Nintendo who basically stole the market and their joystick is much more playable than the old Atari joystick.

[persia]

Also you have to realise that the the computer owning public has changed.  The people who in my quaint 20th century terminology, had flashing 12:00 on their VCRs (I can hear my kid now: daddy, what's a vcr?).  These folks, the flashing twelvers, own computers now.  They can barely use a Mac or PC, they would be totally lost on an Amiga.

It isn't that you are dealing with less creative people, it's that computers are like automobiles or refrigerators, everyone has them.  Amiga users were a preselected crowd in a pre-selected number of computer owners.  The same percentage of human beings are creative, the distinction is no long what computer they own or if they own a computer but what they use their computer for.

[Fester]

My Amiga 2000 was the only computer I purchased big enough for me to drill a large hole in the case and plant a patch of hydroponic tomatoes and ... broccoli.

Thus, it's the only computer I know of that can reduce the chance of prostate cancer by up to 50%.

Fester

(I'm kidding. I never abused my Amigas this way. But I do like fried tomatoes and am quite nostalgic about old computers such as the Amiga. As for broccoli, well, that's just vaporware. :-))

[persia]

Yeah, the 2000s the only computer I know of that would make a decent payload for a Trebuchet.

:python:

[Nostalgiac]

X factor == have fun :-)

me :-)

ta
Tom UK

[monami]

"If you bought a Pet, Vic-20 or Commodore 64, you looked at the keyboard and there were all sorts of lines and symbols on the keys."

some kind of voodoo?

[Hammer]

If you buy a PC today, it doesn't come with Basic, Pascal, or C. Why?

It(Windows XP and Vista) comes with "notepad.exe", Jscript and VBScript.

VBScript is installed as default in every desktop release of the Windows Operating System (OS) since Windows 98.

[Hammer]

It would be hard to beat AMD and INTEL because if you read their history (try Wikipedia), they have a lot of government backing.

Clone PC distribution model was considered to be superior compared non-Clone PC distribution model.

The X86 PC world is unified under a single standard against the fragmented 68K PC world.

[SamuraiCrow]

Hammer wrote:

It would be hard to beat AMD and INTEL because if you read their history (try Wikipedia), they have a lot of government backing.

Clone PC distribution model was considered to be superior compared non-Clone PC distribution model.

The X86 PC world is unified under a single standard against the fragmented 68K PC world.

It's a good thing we voted those bums out of office.  It's a pity we couldn't get them out a little sooner.

[klx300r]

i still got a magical feeling when I use my 64/128/500/1200 & it always takes me down nostalgia avenue :-D  for me buying stuff now that I could only dream of getting back in ' the day'  gives me a fuzzy feeling inside and I love playing with my 'always on' soldering iron so that ties into modding my beloved machines too :-P

[freqmax]

So what's missing in the current breed of computing is a setup that is edge technology and is inviting to create things that exploit the technology to the limit ..?

A computer will CELL cpu, DDR3 mem, FPGA graphics would be cool

@SamuraiCrow:
Vote out what/whom?

[bloodline]

freqmax wrote:
So what's missing in the current breed of computing is a setup that is edge technology and is inviting to create things that exploit the technology to the limit ..?

A computer will CELL cpu, DDR3 mem, FPGA graphics would be cool

I can't see what is exciting about the Cell... also FPGA gfx would be horribly slow...