Note: this thread is not intended to offend anyone, just for talk

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retired

@AmigaBlitter

Two things.

The OS is missing basic things that users are now accustomed too: memory protection and SMP being the main ones.

Secondly, there are no distinguishing aspects. Only a name which lost relevance for 99% of the IT world in 1995 ish.

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Blog

@Aslak3

"memory protection and SMP"

Yes, i agree. These are today must have features

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@AmigaBlitter

What Aslak3 said. For Amiga to succeed "big" it would have to be noticeably better than Windows, macOS, and Linux. The chances of that happening are nearly zero.

For it to succeed at a much less ambitious level, it would have to be usable as a daily system, which means at the very least it would have to have a modern web browser, which means it would have to have memory protection to make it a safe to use a web browser. This also seems to be nearly impossible to achieve on the existing architecture.

There's not much room for growth as a "classic" system either, since those of us who are interested in that are already well served by existing (and furture) hardware upgrades and emulation options.

Sorry to sound so grim, but that's how I see it. The only option that seems viable is something Amiga-like running on Linux.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@AmigaBlitter

I disagree with the premise.

The Amiga did take off 33 years ago. It was a smashing success. Everyone knew what it was and no one doubted that it was pretty much the most technically brilliant home computer you could buy at the time -- and more than a home computer, NASA used a bunch of them, for a while they were a big deal in broadcasting and film, etc.

The problem is that it isn't enough to take off; you have to stay in flight. And in that sense it was unfortunate that Amiga was in the clutches of Commodore because their management had no idea what they were doing. Sort of like Tandy Computer: they had brilliant products, but neglected them in order to develop IBM PC compatibles.

To be fair, part of the problem is that the home computer market cratered: the cost of "work" computers, mainly the PC's, came down and given a choice people opted for something where they could work at home. Apple had introduced the IIgs shortly after the A1000 but they gave up on that pretty quickly; I knew an owner who was pretty disappointed. But there was also no new Amiga technology for about 5 years, as ECS came out only in 1990. Commodore basically sat on their rears.

Meanwhile the PC/Mac/Linux world was catching up, at least with technical ability (EGA/VGA/etc, SoundBlaster, OS/2 and the beginnings of Linux) while Commodore mysteriously hired IBM's least incompetent managers, so by the time AGA finally came around they couldn't even make a clean switch, offering instead the "Amiga jr." -- er, A300 -- er, A600.

In the end, Commodore went bankrupt and the Amiga technology went into the hands of a sequence of owners who were unable (Escom, Amiga Inc) or unwilling (Gateway) to do anything with it. So now there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that makes Amiga compelling to anyone who wasn't highly invested back in the 80s or 90s -- and for most of us, we have day jobs & families that take most of our attention.

So it's not that it didn't take off: it's that it crashed and burned and most people have better things to do than pick up the pieces and try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

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I've decided to follow an awful lot of people I respect and leave AmigaWorld. If for some reason you want to talk to me, it shouldn't take much effort to find me.

@AmigaBlitter

Main Problems:

There is no 'Amiga' just a bunch of companies selling something labelled AmigaOne or AmigaOS.

The 'Amiga Users' are interested in retro soft- and hardware, you could hardly sell them something else.

The Amiga programmers are only supporting outdated or emulated hardware.

---

The problems you mentioned are restricted to users of a rather obscure Amiga inspired system, that was driven into a swamp of legal, economic and technical problems where it will drown or rot forever.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 06-Apr-2018 at 02:46 PM.

@simplex

"I disagree with the premise.

The Amiga did take off 33 years ago. It was a smashing success."


Fair enough.

Maybe i should have added "Take Off Again"

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@AmigaBlitter

There's a reason that isn't on the list. It's the sheep factor. People all want the same thing. They don't want to be different. That was the original cause of the decline of Amiga. People went with PC's because that just what you do. There was a lack of advertising and really pushing the product. If Commodore had bombarded the market place with ads with happy office workers using Amigas it would have made a big difference.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

It's a long list...

-All "NG" operating systems are outdated and lacking on the technical side as has been mentioned. Right now there is security through obscurity, but if Amiga somehow managed to attain some popularity, security experts around the world would cry out about the lack of proper process isolation etc. The lack of SMP also hinders performance for more advanced users, and as 32-bit machines, memory is limited (no matter how efficient the OS, everyone always needs more RAM).

-No USP (Unique Selling Point) - Why should I (as a regular user just looking to buy a new computer) buy an Amiga and not a Mac or PC? What are the advantages? What can I do with the Amiga that I can't do on those machines?

-Lack of software - No Microsoft Office, or even Libre Office, not to mention specialized applications. Also, the web browser is lacking and updates are too infrequent

-Lack of compatibility - I can't just buy any printer, scanner, webcam, audio interface, Wi-Fi dongle etc. and expect it to work. Only a handful of peripherals are compatible.

-No presence. Walk into any computer store. How many Macs do you see? How many PC's? How many Amigas?

-Price - This was already becoming an issue in the 1990's. Everything Amiga related is very expensive relative to what you can get with commodity PC hardware. A $500 PC laptop gives you equivalent performance to the €2000+ X5000. The $35 Raspberry Pi 3 probably isn't that far from the €400+ A1222.

@thinkchip

"There was a lack of advertising and really pushing the product"

Sorry, but the list of poll options was limited

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@AmigaBlitter

Be honest. This is just part VIII with a new name. heh.

It's time to join the forces
It's time to join the forces - Part II
It's time to join the forces - Part III
It's time to join the forces part IV
It's time to join the forces, part V: "The consortium"
It's time to join the forces, part VI: "the consortium part II"
It's time to join the forces - Part IV

Note: You lost track of your numbering system. Last one should be retitled Part VII, right?

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@number6

Lol!

Thank you.

I admit that I remembered that there were more parts; and I have also looked for them without success.

Thanks for the find

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@number6

It's incredible that this threads are 7 years old and we still at the same point...

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 06-Apr-2018 at 03:25 PM.

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@AmigaBlitter

Quote:

It's incredible that this threads are 7 years old and we still at the same point.

Your first post in the first thread was 2006, so...more like 12 years.

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@AmigaBlitter

It's almost as if endless talking about something won't make it reality

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This is just like television, only you can see much further.

@BSzili

yes, i start thinking the same.

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@BSzili

Quote:

almost as if

good one.

One thing is for sure though. None of the lawyers reading Amigaworld will register a vote in the first category (legal actions), as they would find it virtually impossible to "admit" they are the problem and always have been.

Note: no "heh" above ^

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@Aslak3

All due respect but I totally disagree. I don't think any general IT user fires up a system and questions memory protection or SMP.

Certainly the current young generation doesn't, in fact most of them wouldn't know what these were. We all just want things to work at a reasonable speed.

We also want to be able to use current technologies in terms of software, browsers, email, chat, video-chat etc.

That doesn't necessarily mean multiple cores or whatever, agreed we don't want things to crash either but to be fair my AOS4 and MOS systems crash much less (rarely) than when I used to use AOS3.5 and 3.9.

I can't really describe why I have stuck with AOS type systems, maybe it is a disease. There is just a feeling that I am in control and in harmony with my IT rather than battling it. When I do battle I am doing so to squeeze more from less and knowing I have less in hardware and coding. On my Windows machine I am careless, on Linux I am wary, on Mac I am annoyed, on Amiga-systems (all) I expect and demand more beyond all reason but somehow I live in hope and yet I am more comfortable.

Maybe the thing holding us back is not hardware or software but the experience and exhilaration from the early days that only a relatively few people (Amigans past and present) have had the privilege to to experience. I don't expect we will ever get to reverse this. The secret to survival will be forgiveness, respect and moving on together.

ace

@AmigaBlitter

the thread reminds me of the movie "Groundhog Day"

just that it repeats yearly ;)

I make one prediction... if you talk about 4.X in 7 years not much will have changed

@acefnq

Quote:

I don't think any general IT user fires up a system and questions memory protection or SMP.

They would find this important after the fact if someone stole personal data off their hard drive.

Memory protection is not just a check-list feature; it's a requirement for securely using a computer connected to a network.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner