Top 3 best ideas in amiga history?

[ElPolloDiabl]

cont:
4. Multitasking... You got that modern OS feeling loong before the competition.
5. 32 bit
6. intuition. A super lean gui.

[kvasir]

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but there's one in particuluar that I find extremely convenient.
The way Amiga mounts devices and filesystems.
I say that, because I recently purchased a netbook pre-installed with windows 7. This wasn't going to fly well with me, though I do need a modern Windows OS to run stuff for school, but I downloaded Ubuntu and installed that instead. Ubuntu instists on EXT filesystems for the root partition (doensn't care what anything else is), as Amiga prefers FFS/SFS/whatever (though I probably could get a os3.1> on a fat32 if I really wanted). This is all fine and good, but I can't access the partition via windows, which insists on ONLY using fat/ntfs stuff. On the Amiga, I had little to no trouble mounting whatever filesystem I wanted with whatever device I wanted it on, because of the mountlist and dosdriver system, which I also find extremely more intuitive than the way Linux does things. (That could just be because I'm not used to it yet)
As for 2 other ideas, I'd have to run with the ability to boot w/o startup-sequence, and the multitasking. (Both mentioned already)

[obscurepanic]

1. Interesting approach to a tight-knit microkernel

2. Very good use of C language

3. Hardware-software harmony

[jutrem]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ilwrath View Post
Two I can't believe aren't mentioned yet;

ReTargettable Graphics/Audio : Sure, in most OS now you can pick a full screen resolution for a game. Of course, the Amiga did it first, and took it further, also allowing you to pick which video card you use, and which rendering mode, and also being able to choose differing sound cards.

These were certainly good but they were basically third party extensions that have come to be a part of most serious user's OS installs. Their very existence, however, exposes a weakness in the OS in that the concept should really have been thought of by the OS designers rather than hardware vendors and the like.

 The basis for ReTargettable graphics was already in Amiga OS 3.0. According to some of the Amiga developer docs from devcon it was going to be fully implemented in later OS versions. Dont' forget that the Amiga 3000UX was already available with a C= Zorro Graphics card so the OS designers did see the need for it. The PCI bus was also going to replace Zorro in newer Commodore amiga hardware (Lou Eg. VP C= speech Toronto 1993) so the OS was going support a lot of new Graphic card options.

  They still were behind the third party Hardware developers because EGS for GVP and other graphics cards was already available then CyberGraphX and Picasso96.

[Hell Labs]

RTG was only neccisary because AGA was so horribly, horribly bad for the time, and doubly bad for an amiga.

[orb85750]

1) Video Toaster/Flyer
2) custom chipset
3) Andy Warhol

[Karlos]

RTG was only neccisary because AGA was so horribly, horribly bad for the time, and doubly bad for an amiga.

Still way ahead of the old mac classic though

[desiv]

Personally, I was a huge fan of "intuition".

It made programming Windows/Screen based apps a breeze compared to Windows stuff of the era (3.1 and before).

desiv

[Ilwrath]

Still way ahead of the old mac classic though

No kidding.  Amiga took it as common sense that a computer released in 1993 would have color.  Mac used it as a marketing item.  Color Classic, anybody?   What a steal at only $1,400 or so!  ROFL!  

Anyhow, back on topic, I'd agree that Intuition was pretty awesome.  I'd go a step further and say that having Intuition in the ROM was a good idea, as well.  That way, as a power user/administrator/poor programmer you'd never have to worry about something you did failing before an Intuition screen would be available to present that information in a standard way.

[Hell Labs]

Still way ahead of the old mac classic though

I suppose for the 1-bit screen models. But the colour machines made more sense for running a gui than the amiga. 640x512 epilepsy mode in super slow 256 colour  (amiga AGA, 1992ish) vs 24 bit colour 640x480 minimum (mac colour quickdraw 1987). The fact of the matter is that commodore were dicks who pretty much ran themselves into the ground out of greed. AGA should have happened in 1990 and roughly had playstation levels of 3D power, just as OCS happened in 1985 and was roughly Megadrive levels of 2D. I feel super bad for commodore's engineers.

Truthfully, AGA was both late, and crap.

EDIT: I just remembered the windows 3.1 RM nimbus' that we had at school. 1024x768, 256 colours. non interlaced.

[tone007]

So your saying the Amiga's technology fell behind while Commodore as a company was failing? Wow, what a revelation!

Seriously, though, it's old news.

[Hell Labs]

So your saying the Amiga's technology fell behind while Commodore as a company was failing? Wow, what a revelation!

Seriously, though, it's old news.

Commodore failed because the amiga's technology fell behind. Amiga technology fell behind because commodore forced it too. I'd guess that it was on purpose, somehow. Let's just say the management didn't get too wet when the ship sank.

[kolla]

* multiselect in menus
* assigns
* no-nonsense requesters
* save, use, cancel

[desiv]

Commodore failed because the amiga's technology fell behind. Amiga technology fell behind because commodore forced it too. I'd guess that it was on purpose, somehow. Let's just say the management didn't get too wet when the ship sank.

Don't agree.  They weren't as aggressive with the chipsets because management was cutting back on R&D.  With the right support, I think they techs could have released AGA sooner, and AAA as well after that.  With management as it was, they were lucky to get AGA out.

So, the technology was lagging behind because management was terrible.

To top that off, we all know that you don't have to have the absolute best technology to win in this game.

They wanted to market the Amiga as they had the C64.  Bad marketing and bad management meant that the only way they would succeed would be technology, and management dropped the ball there as well.

IMHO

desiv

p.s.  multi-select in menus??  I hated that!!  Mostly because I wrote my first program not knowing you could do it and had my selection code all wrong.  So, on testing, you could multi-select, but only the last one worked, even tho the others would have the checkmark...  Ooopps.. :-)  I fixed that eventually..  :-)

[Tension]

One that hasn't been mentioned is teh "Leave out" feature in Workbench.  Really handy.

And creating a "Shortcut" on Windows isn't the same ting.  

[Hell Labs]

Don't agree.  They weren't as aggressive with the chipsets because management was cutting back on R&D.  With the right support, I think they techs could have released AGA sooner, and AAA as well after that.  With management as it was, they were lucky to get AGA out.

So, the technology was lagging behind because management was terrible.

To top that off, we all know that you don't have to have the absolute best technology to win in this game.

They wanted to market the Amiga as they had the C64.  Bad marketing and bad management meant that the only way they would succeed would be technology, and management dropped the ball there as well.

IMHO

desiv

p.s.  multi-select in menus??  I hated that!!  Mostly because I wrote my first program not knowing you could do it and had my selection code all wrong.  So, on testing, you could multi-select, but only the last one worked, even tho the others would have the checkmark...  Ooopps.. :-)  I fixed that eventually..  :-)

You just accidentally agreed with me.