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Very uninformative. It sounds like UEFI is a BIOS (basic input-output system), only it's mouse/graphics based rather than text based. What am I missing here?

If by "BIOS" you mean "the system which loads the OS" then indeed UEFI is just a BIOS. There are also loads of other such systems, like the OpenFirmware (OFW) which, from playing around on my OLPC XO-1, can do traditionally high-level things such as scanning for Wifi networks, displaying a live Webcam image, interacting with the mouse, etc. There is also CoreBoot (formerly LinuxBIOS) which was designed for boot speed (on supercomputers), and there are probably loads more. In fact, my Amiga 1200 from 1992 had a boot menu which used the same GUI as the OS (like this http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_30_1.gif ), since part of the OS was stored inside onboard chips.

"BIOS" also has another, more formal meaning though, which is the programming calls it implements. Using these calls within a piece of code will work on any system with a BIOS, but not necessarily on any of the alternatives. However, they can be emulated on top of these other systems without anything noticing (like BootCamp does).

So since Windows XP and OS X are more complex than AmigaOS, TOS and DOS were, they're more unstable? I don't think so.

A more complex OS has more avenues for failure, and indeed for glitch free media playback Windows will never be a perfect choice. That does not mean I think Windows - any version - is less stable than Amiga OS, because I don't.

Well I guess we should throw out all our modern OSs today and go back to the robust TOS!

Amiga OS was not created in a day. Along the way developers fixed bugs and improved stability, however Amiga OS was from the get go a more ambitious project than TOS. Historically more complex projects tend to have more issues that need to be resolved. Amiga OS 1.0 came out in 1985, 1.3.2 in 1989 (according to here). In contrast, TOS went from 1.0 to 1.04 in the same period - which was the last ST release.

If supporting multitasking inherently makes an OS less stable - even when an OS is only running one application - let's see your evidence for that?

Amiga OS still multitasks when running one application, TOS don't. That does not automatically mean TOS is more stable, but it is a complexity developers did not have to deal with.

The Amiga is still multitasking when running a single application. That means you can get a context switch just as you are about to write to the MIDI port, causing a slight delay that can blow up a buggy algorithm. That is a real problem even today, but much less so as people have more experience dealing with the issue.

Also, the early versions of Amiga OS were not uber stable. Version 1.3.2 came out in 1989, by which time the ST was dying off (I believe).

These drones will be used to monitor the streets of Los Angeles to gather track citizens and citizen activities at the expense of intruding on people's privacy (not legally defined privacy, but real-life privacy).

Exactly right, this is what the movie Blue Thunder was all about. Except instead of stealth helicopters we're now seeing unmanned drones deployed over population centers. How long until these drones become more "useful" by being armed with crowd-control features such as gas or even lethal force?

I want to see an Airwolf vs. Blue Thunder movie...

Here is a mashup someone made (unfortunately windows media): Airwolf vs. Blue Thunder

Your not going to sucker me into another Airwolf is better than Blue Thunder debate!

The Commodore Amiga had this from atleast the Amiga 500, possibly earlier and that was in 1986.

Check out Workbench Nostalgia for screenshots of all Workbench/AmigaOS versions.

Jolly memories.

Hiya!

Didn't get a chance to see the pictures, server is slashdotted. So I did a quick googling around and found a nice site that shows the history of the AmigaOS. http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/index.html

I had forgot just how nasty Workbench 1.x's colours where. Makes XP look friendly *g*