Little Things That Made Amiga Great
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Little Things That Made Amiga Great
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Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#2As expected, most of the features were rare on home computers at the time, but have become ubiquitous (or unnecessary) on modern computers. HOWEVER, the `Datatypes` feature is really cool and would actually be a nice feature that still doesn't exist in Windows, macOS, or Linux.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#3I got really into computers in the mid-late 90s by which point we were mostly down to Wintel and Apple hanging on by a thread.
What I remember from that era is that nothing was compatible with anything else. It took a lot of work to interoperate between two PCs, let alone cross the gap between OSes. So for a long time, I have kind of taken the current world of few OSes that are highly interoperable as being a great thing: you can build your own Linux machine and still do real work with people on Windows and Mac, etc.
But the more I learn about computing in the 80s and early 90s, the more I’m impressed by the variety and diversity of ideas that came out of that era. I see now that today’s standardization has a real cost, which is that we don’t really see new ideas or new paradigms.
For the HN crowd, especially those who are older than me and can remember the earlier era of computing, what do you think about that trade off and where we’ve ended up today?
Are we better off living in a world where all computers can work together with minimal fuss? Or would it be better if we still had a wide range of vendors taking significantly different approaches and innovating at a much faster pace - albeit in incompatible ways?
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#4I got really into computers in the mid-late 90s by which point we were mostly down to Wintel and Apple hanging on by a thread. What I remember from that era is that nothing was compatible with anything else. It took a lot of work to interoperate between two PCs, let alone cross the gap between OSes. So for a long time, I have kind of taken the current world of few OSes that are highly interoperable as being a great t…
What I'm personally bit horrified with is that "Unix" is the end all of OS design and so on. With some fundamental designs going back to 70s... Like everything being text. Which seems quite a mess in current world with multimedia and increased networking. Yes we have spend decades hacking to get it to work... But maybe more options and different designs would enrich us lot better.
And really we do have layer that can connect all of the different systems together. Namely IP. So even if we had fundamentally different systems, there is no reason why intercommunication wouldn't be possible at this point.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#5As expected, most of the features were rare on home computers at the time, but have become ubiquitous (or unnecessary) on modern computers. HOWEVER, the `Datatypes` feature is really cool and would actually be a nice feature that still doesn't exist in Windows, macOS, or Linux. https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/Datatypes_Library
It does exist in Windows,
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wic/-wic-lh
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions//dd443207...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/customi...
and in macOS,
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Gr...
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Mu...
Although, yes I do concede it is more complex to implement, the way to do it depends on what kind of data type we are talking about, and it only works properly if the applications actually make use of the OS frameworks instead of doing their own thing.
And as expected with the GNU/Linux "desktop", nothing does exist that comes close to it.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#6I very badly wanted an Amiga as a kid, primarily for the Video Toaster which included Lightwave. It was out of reach financially, but also on its way out with the Commodore corporate problems. My parents drove me to B&H Photo in Manhattan to take a look at one, but they were pretty honest about it being near the end of the line for Amiga, sadly.
The closest I got was a subscription to Amiga World and a NewTek magazine if I recall correctly. I must have read and re-read the same articles on the visual effects for Babylon 5 about a thousand times.
Despite the cost, the Toaster plus Amiga was insanely inexpensive compared to the alternatives of the time.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#7I got really into computers in the mid-late 90s by which point we were mostly down to Wintel and Apple hanging on by a thread. What I remember from that era is that nothing was compatible with anything else. It took a lot of work to interoperate between two PCs, let alone cross the gap between OSes. So for a long time, I have kind of taken the current world of few OSes that are highly interoperable as being a great t…
Whatever got us the Internet was worth it. To generalize, it's fine to have a variety of components, as long as the interface between them is roughly standardized, and the innovation can come in the components. That we can have a Playstation and an iPhone use the same network is a good thing, and they can do whatever they want with the rest of the stack.
A computer pre-internet felt a lot more like an island. I had an Amiga, but I wasn't aware of 90% of the stuff that was out there, and could barely afford to buy a compiler.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#8As expected, most of the features were rare on home computers at the time, but have become ubiquitous (or unnecessary) on modern computers. HOWEVER, the `Datatypes` feature is really cool and would actually be a nice feature that still doesn't exist in Windows, macOS, or Linux. https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/Datatypes_Library
I'd always hoped that extended attributes (xattr) would be used for something like that. Nobody seems to use them, though, since they are optional and no standard naming scheme exists.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#9I got really into computers in the mid-late 90s by which point we were mostly down to Wintel and Apple hanging on by a thread. What I remember from that era is that nothing was compatible with anything else. It took a lot of work to interoperate between two PCs, let alone cross the gap between OSes. So for a long time, I have kind of taken the current world of few OSes that are highly interoperable as being a great t…
What I'm personally bit horrified with is that "Unix" is the end all of OS design and so on. With some fundamental designs going back to 70s... Like everything being text. Which seems quite a mess in current world with multimedia and increased networking. Yes we have spend decades hacking to get it to work... But maybe more options and different designs would enrich us lot better. And really we do have layer that can…
IMO Unix hasn't taken over as much as people think it has. If you look at an OS more closely they typically have a POSIX API layer on top of whatever unique ideas they have. Even Linux does quite a lot of its own thing.
Re: Little Things That Made Amiga Great
#10I started programming in the 70s, on Z80s and a PDP-11. Then I moved to the Apple IIe. Also got a bit of early exposure to MS-DOS in the early 80s. When I first was able to get my hands on an Amiga 1000 (my friend got one as a graduation present), it completely blew my mind. The Amiga is still my favorite, and I have several that still boot up and work fine, even though they are quite a bit older than my kids, who do not always boot up and work. :) There are a bunch of things I still miss when working with Windows (for "work"), even though it is well documented that Microsoft ripped off a bunch of ideas and features from the Amiga (and early Macs). There are, of course, some things I've gotten used to in the intervening years, like increased CPU speeds, but the UI of my old Amigas is actually sometimes more performant than a brand new machine running a modern OS with thousands (or millions) of times the available resources. Go figure.