Today's computers be they Macs or PCs are able to do video, image and sound editing that one could not even dream about on the Amiga. Operating systems have become more complex because there's more complex activities for them to do.
Amiga boards live in a sort of alternate reality world where Macs, PCs and Linux boxes have not changed in two decades. Where people seem to attach almost magical characteristics to IBM's Power architecture. Where a small cabal of maybe a thousand Amiga Illuminati know more than the billions of other people who use computers, especially than the computer scientists, engineers, academics, et al, who instead of worrying about measuring the bounce of a joystick are wasting their time developing complex solution to world problems. Don't they know that they could just write that app in Amiga Basic?
@persia,
I enjoy good sarcasm as much as almost anybody, and I agree that there are more than a few Amiga zealots around that have totally unrealistic views of current Amiga abilities and chances of a serious comeback, but your apparent point of view that just because a billion people are doing something a particular way, or using a particular OS for most of their important work, doesn't impress me, or automatically make me believe that they are right.
Amiga users better than any other group know that many factors make certain technologies successful, or dominant and being the "BEST" technology is not always the most important determining factor, for if it was, most of the computer users on this planet would now be using AmigaOS12.4, because version 1.3, or 2.1 would have won the OS battle with it's competitors, Windows 3.x and MacOS6.x. (some might even say that Commodore did such a bad job that the Amiga never really even got to compete against Windows or MacOS)
I think that almost every member of this site would agree that the original Amiga hardware and the AmigaOS once it had reached version 1.2 to 1.3.3, was the absolute finest combination for personal computing at that point in time. Commodore is to blame for not capitalizing on what they had and for not showing the whole World the Amiga was the best, and keeping it in a position of leadership, of being the best available combination of hardware and software for personal computing.
As for Mac's and PC's doing video/audio editing that could not be dreamed of on an Amiga, I would say only that the rendering speed, video resolution and audio frequency limits that the Amiga had, have been exceeded on modern Mac's and PC's. Anything else that could be thought of, dreamed of, could be done on the Amiga's audio and video editing hardware and software many years before people could even dream of doing it on a Mac or PC. I know a full time video editor who still prefers to do some edit jobs on his Video Toaster/Flyer system and says that it can still do some things that his PC system cannot. Many have said that their Amiga Toaster/Flyer systems were only limited by the users imagination and I believe them, it is not just a marketing line from a advertising tape.
Of course now everything will be switching to High Definition, so it's usefulness will fade away in time. An OS does not have to be more complex to run complex applications. I prefer simplicity where the OS is concerned, as long as it is able to run the applications I need to use. The OS should be as simple, lightweight and transparent to the user as possible. The power should reside in the applications and hardware to run them. Give the user the option to choose which features they need and want and install them on top of a minimal, lightning fast OS with only the most basic needed functions.
