Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#21

Post by bitwize »

melling wrote: post #5

It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t port their apps to the Amiga. It probably would be alive today but people bought computers for the apps.

Microsoft used open source to kill the Amiga. They acquihired the developer of Bars & Pipes Professional, convinced him to open source it and had him work on DirectMusic instead. The fact that a leading MIDI tool for the Amiga was now open source basically left the Amiga music software industry a smouldering ruins, where it might have hung on for a few more years, forcing developers to look at Windows instead.

Open source destroys value, and Microsoft used that to their advantage.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#22

Post by bitwize »

pjmlp wrote: post #10
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, MS ported the Mac version of Word to the Atari ST but by the time it got there (late, and buggy, and overpriced) indigenous ST developers had made their own superior products. Interlace video for hi-rez modes on the Amiga also made it non-ideal for office type applications. Maybe if Commodore had bothered to include a scan doubler by default?

Amiga had quite a few cool office type applications like Pagestream. The video wasn't an issue when using Commodore monitors.

Yes it was. I used an Amiga with a Commodore monitor and while it was a lot better than any TV or other composite monitor, the interlacing was still noticeable and people's eyes would go wonky staring at that for eight hours a day.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#23

Post by busterarm »

phire wrote: post #18
pjmlp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amiga died thanks to Commodore mismanagement, Microsoft was still not that strong back then. PCs were still a mix of MS-DOS, Windows 3.x or Novell Netware when the downfall begun around 1994, Windows 95 was still around the corner.

They stopped innovating. The A1000 was released in 1985, the same year as the NES was released in America. It was a huge leap in capabilities over it's contemporaries. But their massive lead was slowly whittled away by technology improvements. In 1992 they released AGA, which was barely twice as good as the original A1000 chip-set, while the IBM PC had innovated all the way from 4 color CGA, though EGA to VGA/SVGA wi…

Doom killed the Amiga kind of like how Quake killed Cyrix x86 clones and to a lesser degree AMD's K5.

It's interesting how John Carmack's technical vision decided the winners in the computer industry at the time.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#24

Post by fractallyte »

bitwize wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #5

It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t port their apps to the Amiga. It probably would be alive today but people bought computers for the apps.

Microsoft used open source to kill the Amiga. They acquihired the developer of Bars & Pipes Professional, convinced him to open source it and had him work on DirectMusic instead. The fact that a leading MIDI tool for the Amiga was now open source basically left the Amiga music software industry a smouldering ruins, where it might have hung on for a few more years, forcing developers to look at Windows instead. Open s…

Actually B&P wasn't open sourced for many years after the Blue Ribbon Soundworks acquisition. During this time, B&P was in limbo: the most powerful MIDI sequencer on the Amiga, locked up by Microsoft. The source code was only released when Microsoft decided it had no value to them.

After this there was a flurry of activity: Alfred Faust took up development, the manuals were scanned, and it all continued from there.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#25

Post by fractallyte »

puzzle wrote: post #16
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amiga had quite a few cool office type applications like Pagestream. The video wasn't an issue when using Commodore monitors.

There was a WordPerfect port, but at least the initial versions were slow and did not feel like they took advantage of the OS. In other words, it was a bit of a rush job.

It was far from perfect, but Amiga WP 4.1 was way better than WP 5.1 for DOS! (I was a heavy user of both at the time.)

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#26

Post by oldcynic »

phire wrote: post #18
pjmlp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amiga died thanks to Commodore mismanagement, Microsoft was still not that strong back then. PCs were still a mix of MS-DOS, Windows 3.x or Novell Netware when the downfall begun around 1994, Windows 95 was still around the corner.

They stopped innovating. The A1000 was released in 1985, the same year as the NES was released in America. It was a huge leap in capabilities over it's contemporaries. But their massive lead was slowly whittled away by technology improvements. In 1992 they released AGA, which was barely twice as good as the original A1000 chip-set, while the IBM PC had innovated all the way from 4 color CGA, though EGA to VGA/SVGA wi…

Management stopped and restarted AAA and 3000+ several times, including replacing a significant chunk of hardware people with PC guys. That ultimately led to the cheap hack of AGA, the cheap and nasty (4000), and the cost saving entry (600) that cost significantly more to produce than the 500.

AAA was started in 88 if I remember right, and abandoned when the rest of the world had pretty much reached it.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#27

Post by Flow »

bitwize wrote: post #22
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amiga had quite a few cool office type applications like Pagestream. The video wasn't an issue when using Commodore monitors.

Yes it was. I used an Amiga with a Commodore monitor and while it was a lot better than any TV or other composite monitor, the interlacing was still noticeable and people's eyes would go wonky staring at that for eight hours a day.

I bought an A2024 monitor and ran all apps at 1024x800 60Hz. It was a glorious time.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#28

Post by antod »

melling wrote: post #5

It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t port their apps to the Amiga. It probably would be alive today but people bought computers for the apps.

The first Microsoft software I ever used was on the Amiga (AmigaBASIC). And while it was kinda cool for a BASIC implementation in those days, it was pretty damn buggy.

Re: 81 Year Old Commodore Amiga Artist – Samia Halaby [video]

#29

Post by Rotareti »

bitwize wrote: post #19

What this woman could achieve if she knew about fragment shaders...

"What Morandi could achieve if he went outside...", "What Yves Klein could achieve if he knew red, yellow and green...", "What Roman Opałka could achieve if he knew about for loops and printers.", I could go on like this for a while.. This is not how art works.
Post reply on HN