Amiga - What If It Were Today....

[dwaldrop]

@save2600 - Nice list.  I guess I am an optimist as I think I owned all of the losing technologies EXCEPT HDCD.

I was in Kansas City and I seems to have very little trouble selling the A1000 and A500... unless someone HAD to have some high end business software like PeachTree )I think that was it at the time...)

I am still optimistic.  I think that there is still enough vision left in the computer-related industry.  It will take some risk and some hard work, but there is a lot that can be done.  

I agree that the Mac feels more like my old Amiga than any other current commercial OS.  The community is similar in many respects.  As a programmer, I have encountered a good number of Mac users in my area of expertise that are willing to share experience and knowledge.  

Good points all around and I appreciate your thoughts!
-David

[Pentad]

I agree with save 2600 and while we can't 'see' what the Amiga would be like today, I think we can make some educated guesses by looking at other platforms like Apple.

I think most of you will agree that Commodore had more in common with Apple than Microsoft or the 'PC' world.  Given that, I think we can draw some insight on what Commodore would have done:

-The AmigaOS as you know it now would not exist today.   We know that memory protection and hardware abstraction is a must for any modern OS.  Without these two technologies, your OS is just too vulnerable to outside hackers, virii, and malware.

All anyone has to do is write to memory location $4 and I can bring down your Amiga.  People put up with this in 1990, people would shoot you in 2010 if your OS allowed this.  :-)

Apple realized this problem around System 7 but by then it was too late to move the train.  They were even worse off as System 7 wasn't even a true multitasking OS.  However, like trashing $4 on the Amiga, it was insanely easy to bring down the MacOS in a very similar way.  You can't just 'bolt' on memory protection or a HAL so you must look for a new OS which means your old software is probably not going to work.

Apple did realize something that Commodore would have as well.  Nobody cares about the 'frame' of the OS as long is the GUI and software work like you expect them too.

Apple went looking for a frame to carry their 'Mac Experience' on and thought about NT, Linux, BeOS, and NeXT.  In the end we know they went with NeXT which wasn't horrible but I thought BeOS was quite nice as well.  

They 'emulated' the old OS to keep the software base alive while they (begged) developers to port to their newer OS.  Apple actually had a very difficult time because WinTel was just so powerful that many developers wondered why they should put the effort into a base that had such a small market share.  Adobe, I'm looking in your direction...

Commodore would have had to make a similar decision.  Do you write a new OS or just add Intuition on top of something else?   Do not think for a minute that writing a core OS is something easy.   It is a monumental task so there is much to be said for bolting on the Amiga Experience on top of something else.

Since AMIX was done at Commodore perhaps they would have looked at a Unix solution like Apple?  This would not have been a bad solution, really.

-Hardware:  CPU

The 68k was dead by the early 1990s so Commodore would have had to look toward a new CPU (just like Apple).

In older posts, Haynie mentioned the Alpha chip I think?  I know it was a RISC based CPU so they might have moved to PPC along with Apple.  Anything is possible.

This will really cause people to flame me, but going with Intel would have been very smart.   Intel offers you a great many advantages that no other CPU does:

--Virtualization as opposed to emulation is something that sells computers.  Apple may not trumpet it, but the ability to run Windows in a virtual window or boot into Windows via Boot Camp sold many people on an Apple computer (me included).  

I still do a great deal of work in Windows but I can run Windows on my terms on my Mac.  Its a VMWare window that runs along side my other Mac applications.   Commodore could have offered something similar.

Boot Camp, Virtualization, and WINE really come in handy when you have to run Windows software but wish to do so on your terms.

--Its also much easier to compile for the same architecture than going from Intel to PPC or Intel to Alpha or whatever.  Most of the games on the Mac are just Windows games running on a modified version of WINE.  This allows ports without a great deal of work.  If the Mac was still on PPC, I think the market share would have continued to shrink...

-Hardware: Chipset

It would be interesting to have seen if Commodore could have kept up with companies like nVidia or ATI (AMD) when it came to graphic chips.

AA or whatever was after AGA would have supported RTG -a start for a HAL- as well as a unified driver model for graphics.  Also, the core chipset would have to compete against Intel, VIA, nVidia (well, not after 2010), and others.

-GUI

In the end, I think Commodore would have continued to refine the GUI (what we loved/love about the Amiga) and this would have evolved into something very nice.  Perhaps people would have licensed technology from Commodore for their own OS?

I think if you look at how the MacOS evolved from System 7 to OS X, you can imagine how the AmigaOS would have evolved from 3.x to a modern OS.

Lastly, the AmigaOS was great at fitting a lot of OS into a small footprint so the mobile world could have embraced the AmigaOS on PDAs, phones, tablets, etc...

Commodore had some of the best engineers on the planet and great facilities at their disposal.  MOS was a great asset that could have served them well as they continued to upgrade the hardware.

I think that the Open Source community would have embraced the Amiga and there would be great applications on it in 2010 though I still think Microsoft would dominate.

Too bad we'll never know....

Cheers!
P

[runequester]

The Amiga was introduced at a time when less than 1% of the world's population had use for computers in general. Today, with that percentage much higher and trends taking hold much faster, the Amiga, with technology even marginally comparable to today's standards, would likely flourish.

Think Johnny Depp instead of Andy Warhol and Lady Gaga instead of Debby Harry driving the hype and you might get a feel for what the enthusiasm could be.

I don't think the technology would necessarily have to be better than the competition. New products with a decent introduction tend to do well regardless of real technical merit.

But then again, the geniuses in Commodore's front office would again find a way to squander any success gained, and the Amiga would fizzle after its short rise to fame.

I think the real key is "good enough"

Ipods arent the best MP3 players.. but they were marketed well, and they are good enough for the majority of people.

Itunes isn't the best place to buy music online. But its good enough.

So on and so forth.

A good enough product that people can buy, and have marketed to them will always beat a better product that nobody knows about, or is out of reach

[Franko]

@ tone007

Yeah, but how do you fit a poxy mobile phone into a tower !!! or spend a fortune on ebay trying to buy an 060 board for it, plus when you open them up there's nothing to tinker with...

Nah old miggies & C64s rule the computing world in my universe...

[persia]

@Franko,

Most people I know have printers that connect via wi-fi or ethernet.  It's very easy to print to a printer from an iPhone/iPad, I do it several times a week, always without a problem.

DTP would be a stretch but writing reports, spreadsheets, letters, simple newsletters, etc work fine on an iPad with bluetooth keyboard.  There's some fantastic apps, Distant Suns out looking at the sky for example.  Games are becoming more complex.  In five years tablets will be the predominant form of computer.

[tone007]

Yeah, but how do you fit a poxy mobile phone into a tower !!!

I prefer fitting it in my pocket and bringing it out while sitting at the bar to shop for things on eBay, Craigslist, check out what's going on here on Amiga.org, price compare items between different retail stores, get directions and have them read to me turn by turn over the car's stereo speakers, find a nice restaurant in the middle of nowhere, take before and after pictures of the wild boar ribs I ordered, tether to my laptop/netbook via WiFi to provide internet on the rare occasion I can't get what I need done on the phone itself...

Handy little things.

Wild boar ribs:

[Franko]

@Franko,

Most people I know have printers that connect via wi-fi or ethernet.  It's very easy to print to a printer from an iPhone/iPad, I do it several times a week, always without a problem.

DTP would be a stretch but writing reports, spreadsheets, letters, simple newsletters, etc work fine on an iPad with bluetooth keyboard.  There's some fantastic apps, Distant Suns out looking at the sky for example.  Games are becoming more complex.  In five years tablets will be the predominant form of computer.

Ok so they can do certain things I get that now...

But I think by now you'll have realised that I'm just a grumpy 40 something old fart who can't stand all these new fangled devices that have taken over the world today from me beloved miggies, and quite possibly going through some sort of mid life crisis...

[Tension]

The Amiga was introduced at a time when less than 1% of the world's population had use for computers in general. Today, with that percentage much higher and trends taking hold much faster, the Amiga, with technology even marginally comparable to today's standards, would likely flourish.

Think Johnny Depp instead of Andy Warhol and Lady Gaga instead of Debby Harry driving the hype and you might get a feel for what the enthusiasm could be.

I don't think the technology would necessarily have to be better than the competition. New products with a decent introduction tend to do well regardless of real technical merit.

But then again, the geniuses in Commodore's front office would again find a way to squander any success gained, and the Amiga would fizzle after its short rise to fame.

But Jonny Depp and Lady Gaga are kittys.

[Franko]

Wild boar ribs:

Urgh... those look like some giant multi legged beetles covered in barbie sauce... are those PPC versions

[tone007]

But I think by now you'll have realised that I'm just a grumpy 40 something old fart who can't stand all these new fangled devices that have taken over the world today from me beloved miggies, and quite possibly going through some sort of mid life crisis...

If anything, the smartphones are taking over the world from the machines that took over the world from the Amigas, those being PCs and Macs.

..not that they're taking over the world.  Nothing beats typing on a full sized keyboard.

[JimS]

I think the main problem here is that the computer market has changed from the 80s... and not just the proccessing power available. When the Amiga first appeared it was a huge jump in capability over the 8-bit machines we were using back then. These days, any improvements are just marginal over an already advanced state of the art. I mean really, my current system is an Athlon XP 2600... hardly state of the art, but fast enough to emulate my Amiga and my original Atari 800 far faster than real hardware. The Terrabyte hard drive holds everything I ever did on those machines plus 10 years of magazines - with room to spare.... And I paid 5 bucks for the computer & 60 to replace the HD & RAM.  

Computers are just a generic product now.

[Franko]

@ JimS

Computers are just a generic product now.

That's one of the things I find sad about todays world of computing, I know it's no ones fault but being in at the start of true home computing way back in 82 with my first Vic20 then the C64 then the Amiga range, reading some of threads here by younger members it seems they take computers for granted as if they have always been around forever.

When I was at school calculators had only just been introduced to the mainstream public and there was not even one computer in my entire school, just as I left school the Z80 and ZX81 had just came out and then the Vic 20 which is where I started it was a whole new world that had suddenly opened up and we basically had to teach ourselves everything we now know about computers.

I genuinely feel sad and sorry that younger folk missed out on this experience and the whole bedroom industry of computer programming from where many of the large software companies sprang from, it really was a special time that sadly no-one will ever experience again...

[tone007]

Technology progresses.  It may not always get more interesting or awe-inspiring since the fundamentals were set years ago, but it's always going to change.

[JimS]

@ JimS
I genuinely feel sad and sorry that younger folk missed out on this experience and the whole bedroom industry of computer programming from where many of the large software companies sprang from, it really was a special time that sadly no-one will ever experience again...

Not just software, but hardware as well... Apple starting from two guys in a garage is legend, but there were a lot of other garage based hardware companies back in the s100 days. Still,  a niche market like Amiga does offer opportunities for folks... like one guy reproducing the entire Amiga inside an FPGA.

[save2600]

@Tone:

Evolution and progression... are you sure you're not confusing the two?  :lol:

From a societal perspective, I'm not seeing a single positive benefit to all of this modern technology at all. And the more portable it is, the more abused it gets. Especially by younger people. All it's doing is making them dumb and dumberer (that's a movie reference, not a grammatical error). Only people this technology is benefiting are big pharma, big government, cell phone providers and China. And worse yet, lets not forget how much of all this "wonderful" crap is going to end up in landfills. Sooner than later. I guarantee that  

[tone007]

I said the technology is progressing, I didn't say anything about the people.