What still makes Amiga superior today?

[Roj]

What happens if I wipe out P96 drivers? Can you still use the graphics device?

Well, the FF/SD would be able to function without drivers. It wouldn't be completely dead in the water without drivers if that counts. But, admittedly, that's due to the video slot, rather than having anything to do with Autoconfig.

I'd think a better example would be a SCSI controller, like the A4091. Full SCSI access with no drivers. Haven't tried SCSI on a PC yet, but the IDE cards I've connected require some form of driver to be installed. Sometimes Windows could find the drivers on its own, sometimes it needed a little help. But it did need them before the cards would function.

[Fats]

spirantho wrote:
Tiny point about multitasking:

Windows got multitasking of a kind with '95 but it wasn't pre-emptive. Before that it was just task swapping. NT was pre-emptive I think.

I thought Win'95 also had pre-emptive multi-tasking, e.g. the programs did not have to use special statements to allow task switching. But the drivers and the shell could lock up the machine quite often as they were not clearly divided from the user (as is actually the case on Amiga). This improved much in NT, mostly by forcing the use of updated drivers.
Also a lot of games on amiga just disabled the multi-tasking but this does not mean the OS did not support pre-emptive multitasking.

greets,
Staf.

JKD wrote:
Finder is beautiful in it's simplicity...I just switched back to Windows for my main work machine and I loathe it...miss all the little shortcuts and the simple things the MacUI does that you take for granted :-/

Bah. That's like saying a Ford is a good car because it's not a Yugo. The transmissions still fail regularly.

...and I'm sorry but System 7 was horrible...it might have been a huge step forward for the Mac but ugh!

Well, the _stock_ system 7 was no good, I'll agree with you there. But if you had the time to take it apart with macsbug and resedit, and then put it back together, it was actually decent.

First iMacs were fun to service....an hours worth of assembly and disassembly to do virtually anything...our techs had a nightmare but Apple paid well$$$

Indeed. Apple equipment is just not designed for service. (Ever open up a laserwriter? the original one I mean! YUCK!)

[AeroMan]

I just remind something nice:

Locale !

It might sound silly, but a friend of mine bought a HP notebook for his wife in Italy and wanted to change Vista to Portuguese, because she doesn´t speak Italian.

Guess what? It is impossible !! He can either buy a new Portuguese license or upgrade to Ultimate and download a LIP to half translate the system. Quite modern...

[Speelgoedmannetje]

spirantho wrote:
Tiny point about multitasking:

Windows got multitasking of a kind with '95 but it wasn't pre-emptive. Before that it was just task swapping. NT was pre-emptive I think.

It could do preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't good at it, because of backwards compatibility (and bad programming).
Windows 3.1 was 'task-switching', which is called 'cooperative multitasking' (or abusively shortened to 'multitasking').

[Matt_H]

I'd think a better example would be a SCSI controller, like the A4091. Full SCSI access with no drivers. Haven't tried SCSI on a PC yet, but the IDE cards I've connected require some form of driver to be installed. Sometimes Windows could find the drivers on its own, sometimes it needed a little help. But it did need them before the cards would function.

Exactly. Good ol' Amiga ROM tags. A hypothetical graphics card could store an RTG system in Flash and be ready for use at power-on (you'd just need something in Devs:Monitors, same as you do for the full NTSC or PAL screenmode database). If I'm not mistaken, P96 and CGX in their current forms aren't ROMable because they rely on some functions only available from disk, but OS4 is moving in the direction of making it possible by converting P96 components into Kickstart modules.

[taunusand]

persia wrote:
Cars don't need automatic transmission, air conditioning or heat, power steering, disk brakes, etc.

Agree :-D
My cars does have disk brakes and heat though..
automatic transmission, air conditioning and power steering are for rich people  :lol:

[amigaksi]

>by Tenacious on 2008/5/18 21:38:08
>I especially appreciate how the Amiga is not "modern". Some >(in previous forums) have argued that Amiga is outdated >because it lacks this or that feature of modern OSes. In my >mind, Amiga is the sole occupant of it's own branch of the >evolutionary tree. That branch is not outdated because much >of it was never improved upon, nor are the concepts inferior >simply because most of the world was sold a different choice.

I would agree with that.  Amiga is a different species.  It was targetted for games, real-time audio/video effects (which arcade-type games require), fast game port interface, etc.  PCs gaming is like a delayed (after-thought) superficial imposition on the computer-- slower game port, effects have to be done through slower APIs rather than hardware standard (and not all hardware supports all API calls), lack of display memory pointers, lack of real-time multi-channel sound, etc.  These features made it better at doing them in a pre-emptive multitasking fashion and for NTSC/PAL video stuff.  Plus the OS is simple to use or bypass to make time critical stuff easier to do and analyze.  I mean how many machines are there where you can compute the exact color clock where the register will be modified to a defined value (only Atari 800 maybe).  

[amigaksi]

>It could do preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't good at it, because of backwards compatibility (and bad programming).

I don't think Windows 3.x, '95/'98/'98SE/ME do pre-emptive multitasking.  Only NT and Windows 2000/XP which are based on NT do the pre-emptive multitasking.  You could manually set it up via the WM_TIMER message on the older windows but they are mostly DOS TSR-type tasks.  [TSR = terminate and stay resident programs used in DOS.]  Just click on the DRAG bar of a Window in the older windows and see all the tasks freeze-- bad programming by Microsoft if they are pre-emptive OSes.  

And if you are going to set up the pre-emption manually with the WM_TIMER message, you mine as well declare all other computers that have timer-based events to be pre-emptive multitaskers.  I think if IBM had it's way and the PC world stuck to hardware based standards, the PCs and OSes would be much more efficient.
 

[DonnyEMU]

The Amiga does have a lot of features that made it ahead of it's time..  I did Amiga development with graphics video etc on classic Amigas..

However, even comparing the AmigaOne to the stuff I show off as demos at www.donburnett.com or half the stuff I can do in XAML with a fully 3d UI today (mapping 2D controls onto 3d surfaces, etc..) Then I'll start taking notice of the Amiga..

Now with shaders built into the latest .NET Service Pack 3.5 sp1 (WPF 3.5.x)the nail is in the coffin there...

XAML rules and it's portable to the web and mobile devices and non-windows platforms (like nokia phones) via Silverlight..

If Amiga could do half of what I did this with this page (in real-time) I'd be incredibly happy..

http://www.donburnett.com/WpfSamples/WPF/WPF3dSample.xbap

I like the Amiga, but superiority is difficult, as most people even Apple folks feel they have past it's capabilities by long ago.. Pre-emptive multitasking wasn't useful with an Desktop that working inside of one task or thread. It wasn't till Windows NT that a pre-emptive scheduler was even present or exploited..

I just installed the Visual Studio 2008 CTP for supporting parallel processing with multi-core systems. This improves performance for programs compiled to support it.

Adding parallelism also is something Amiga would have to do for the future as well..

The reality is we have a lot of old school pc developers here and people who really don't develop for current and new platforms and don't have a clue.. If they did they'd see how slick things like XAML, for WPF and Silverlight are and see all the things that they could do in 15 minutes that would still take years of C or C++ code to do..

Posting incorrect information that is technically not feasible and based on marketing or opinion that is not fact doesn't do the Amiga's case any good with people that are in the know.. We need to be more factual with our posts that way they will garner more respect for the community.

[A6000]

I am sure that you are a highly skilled and talented programmer and the PC world is very lucky to have you, but the die-hard amiga user asks, "how will a 3d GUI improve the core functionality of a program", it won't, it just looks pretty and wastes processor and GPU time.
The Amiga should give users what they need, rather than gimmicks to sell "improved" versions of software they may already have.
You have painted yourself into a corner here as I tried to look at your samples, but Firefox would not display it, obviously I don't have some vital plug-in, relying on microsoft products may result in lack of choice of third party products, but I don't want to worry about that I want an operating system that just does what I want without quibble, maybe that's not AmigaOS now, but it could be, in the future, if skilled and talented programmers were to donate some of their spare time to it.

[Sig999]

I'm with Don on this pretty much.

I've been thinking on the topic all day... had It been asked 5 years ago I might have thought of something that was still there - something substantial and useful that hadn't been adopted in some way or another, and I can't think of one.

It was cutting edge in it's day - but that day has passed and the sun has set.

I have a very good friend who's huge into flying planes - real planes.  He ran into some very good fortune and was able to realize a lifelong dream of owning his own - he chose to buy and restore an Tiger Moth.
I scratched my head over it - told him he could buy 3 conventional small aircraft for the cost of having parts machined, built, restored, and of course having it pass as airworthy... and he just laughed and said 'I know'

His plane isn't as good, efficient, cost effective, powerful, fast, or even SAFE as a modern plane... but I know for a fact you won't get that feeling you get when you fly in if you were putting safely in a piper cub.

That's how I feel about my machine...

All that being said - I find if funny that the staunch followers of what was a groundbreaking home computer are now luddites.

*shrug*

Don't get that at all.

[EDanaII]

Remember, the point of this post was to _identify those things that are still superior today._ To identify those things that the industry _should have adopted._ It is not to say that the Amiga, as a whole, is superior.

Wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if Windows had something as modest as an assign command? How much simpler would it be to move software then? How much easier would it be to move partitions, if they'd adopted an RDB?

This little things are still superior to their corresponding functions on many modern OSes.

Ed.

[A6000]

If the Amiga had a fast CPU, a graphics card and a (slightly) updated operating sytem with a browser, we would all be prepared to ignore any additional speed a multicore PC may have.
In practice the PC user will still have to wait longer to start using his PC than the Amiga user would, and if the Amiga feels faster, then for all intents and purposes, it is faster.

[amigadave]

What an entertaining thread this has become.  Don't be so harsh with Don, much of what he wrote, I agree with, but he is afflicted with the disease of having to work on and with Windows and/or Microsoft products because they are all that is available right now to do what he needs to do.  Amiga is not superior hardware or software anymore.  That is why I wrote it is the people that decide to still use them that are what is superior, the devotion and continued dedication to improving something long after it has been surpassed elsewhere.

I have the luxury of enjoying the use of the Amiga and can still make money with it (I am getting to that point anyway with the creation of my video studio), but that is not its primary purpose.  I could spend money for better video hardware (if I had any money), but choose to use what I enjoy and get the best from it, even if its best results are not considered close to what the best available can provide.  It can still do amazing things in the right hands and I plan on those hands being mine some day.

I enjoy that the Amiga community and few developers is still alive and fairly well considering what we have all gone through.  What other computers have new hardware being released 15 years after the parent company has gone bankrupt?  What other computer has so many users still waiting and hoping for a new OS for their antique machines after years of development?  

I like that there are still improvements being made to the 3.1-3.9 versions of the OS, the classic Amigas still keep on, keeping on, some people have created AROS, OS4 and MorphOS in the spirit of the classic Amiga OSes, inventive people create projects like the MiniMig, NatAmi and Clone-A, that make us wonder just what may come next along those directions.

The Amiga is a fantastic experience that we have been privileged to be part of.  I for one have been very enriched in the process and I am grateful.  I only wish that something as inspiring would come along again.  Something completely new and revolutionary that would wipe all the Windows, Linux, MacOS and the rest away.  A fresh start that is not crippled by the past and can take full advantage of the incredible power that is available today, but in a way that leads to future development like nothing that has ever been before.  In other words, something worth getting all excited about, something that will make me sit back and say "maybe this is the way things might have been if the Amiga had won the battle and Windows had died at version 3.1".

Until that day comes, I will use my MacBook for most things, including running WindowsXP only when necessary, emulating an Amiga to escape and save my sanity, and enjoying my collection of Classic Amiga computers every chance I get.

[persia]

Yeah, I can drag an app out of the Applications Folder on a Mac and put it in say iTunes music folder and it will work, but why in the name of the bugbladder beast of trall would I?

My Mac happily users all eight of it's processors (2 quadcore xeons)  and will happily use my wife and son's processors as well.

The Amiga takes me back to my youth, that's all it does that my Mac doesn't.  Really unless you've taken up residence in 1989 that's about the only thing that you can say.