Except that Mac's are made by Apple, and were always made by Apple. If they want to release two different machines and call them both "Mac" - that's their choice.
Same company or different company, Amiga Inc own the "Amiga" trademark. If they want to release a new machine and call it "Amiga" - that's their choice. And if you're saying that a different company makes all the difference, I could argue that different *people* probably worked on the Mac at Apple at different times.
Add to that the (limited) binary compatibility and you have a family of machines, even though the hardware has changed.
This (limited) compatibility will be true of AmigaOS 4.
You might as well put an Amiga sticker on your mac or PC...
What Mac? The Mac that doesn't have anything in common with the original Mac - a different CPU, different OS, uses standard hardware, no Nubus (or whatever they were called) slots..?
I guess people consider current Macs as Macs because either that's the brandname, or because they run a great deal of older Mac software ("transparently", rather than manually running a separate emulator). Yet both of these will apply to the Amiga.
I can't tell you how many Amiga Basic programs I lost, or PenPal (worst word processor ever!) documents I lost to guru meditation errors.
I'm sure plenty of people have similar stories when Windows crashed;) (and indeed, when it comes to the hard disk crashing, I've had far more disasterous experiences with Windows than Amiga..)
Not only were they flaky, they were gut-wrenchingly ugly and unintuitive. I really can't fathom why people like this machine so much. It seems more like a fancy game console than a real computer. Especially when the Workbench was such a complete POS (and I've used 500s, 2000s, a 1000, and more than one 1200.)
A1200s shipped with OS3.0, which is ten years old (or you might have seen one with 3.1 which was a minor update in 1994 IIRC). This would be like posting to Windows articles and making judgements about XP based on one's experience with DOS or Windows 3.11! Applications from this era such as PenPal may have been buggy, ugly, and unintuitive, but no worse than Macs or PCs of the time.
The Amiga may not have had a great deal of OS or application development in the last ten years, but it's still had more than enough that such comparisons are vastly out of date.
When the GUI allows to replace ugly shades of green with ugly shades of pink, you guys freak out like it's a work of art... The article talked bout kewl gui, and I'd like to correct that. AmigaOS GUI is birdypoop IMHO
There's more to a GUI than simply how it looks. Interfaces aren't intended to be hung up on your wall and looked at, they're there to be used.
Of course I don't know what the article was referring to when it talked of a "kewl GUI", but there are some little (but important) things that I like about AmigaOS (compared with Windows, at least).
For example, menus at the top of the screen rather than attached to each window (which is important because it means you can access them quickly just by shooting the mouse to the top of the screen, rather than having to click in a small area).
Additionally, thanks to toolkits such as MUI and Reaction, there seems to be a lot more Amiga programs whose interfaces are automatically resizeable; you resize the window, and everything inside automatically resizes in a sensible manner. Of course other platforms can do this too, though my experience with Windows[1] is that it is less common. I feel like screaming everytime I see a window that has some too small GUI item like a text box, and then find it won't let me resize the window.. I suspect that a lot of the reason for this is that it's easier for the programmer to create fixed interfaces, especially with "Visual" languages; the aforementioned Amiga GUI toolkits otoh are designed so that the windows will always be resizeable, unless you explicitly forbid it.
[1] Windows is now my main OS, before anyone suggests I have little experience of it;)
They should try Amiga users, they're several times worse Mac users. Really.
Well, claming that something about one platform is several times worse than another without evidence is just the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from a "zealot"..
I would say all platforms have their fanatics - and that includes Windows, it's just that they're drowned out by the majority of Windows users who aren't fanatical at all about the platform. I've met quite a few people convinced that Windows and Microsoft products in general are the best out there and behave in a similar manner to fanatics of less popular platforms.
If they want to write their book in hieroglyphics they may do so and no one may translate the material and distribute these translations.
No one may translate *and* distribute perhaps, but surely it is legal to translate for one's own personal purposes? Also, tools such as dictionaries and translation programs are legal.
The issue isn't about decoding and reselling DVDs; it's about simply decoding DVDs, and the tool which allows that.
This is very much like me.. when I leave my flat I always turn off my computer, including at the mains, and have to check this about five times. The fear of fire plagues me whenever I'm out.
When I'm away for a couple of days or more, I make sure (repeatedly) that everything except the fridge/freezer is turned off:)
I'm not diagnosed with anything.. though I do seem to have minor symptoms of OCD.
So should the web return to the days of pure ASCII?
Typically webpages have fairly complex formatting: multiple columns, or side bars for example. I have no problem if someone wants to use HTML on email/usenet where complex formatting is required - but most ppl just write in paragraphs no different to as if it were plain text.
Should Slashdot disallow any HTML postings? HTML is useful. Look at how it used on Slashdot -- italics, boldface, links, etc.
I personally don't see any great advantage in HTML posting - the main advantage is it's easier to mark quoted text as italics, but that's irrelevant on usenet where the newsreader will prefix quoted text with '>' automatically. And the main disadvantage of taking up more space is irrelevant, if the webpage as a whole is an HTML document anyway. Most news clients automatically provide links if you put a http:// in.
Not to mention that proportional fonts are infinitely easier to read.
What's hard to read are messages in some awkward font or colour. It's especially hard on the eyes when I'm reading a series of HTML messages, all in a different font, size and colour; it makes me think of one of those badly done newsletters where every article is in a different font..
How can you possible be in favor of HTML on the web, yet not in favor of HTML in Usenet? Put it this way: If Usenet were invented today and they included HTML, could you honestly say it would occur to you to say, "you know what would make this better? ASCII only!"
Well there are plenty of ppl who do think that hardcoded fonts/colours specified in HTML is a bad thing so there need not be any inconsistency at all here. HTML should be more for layout, which as I say, is rarely needed on usenet.
And yes, if usenet were invented today, I'd soon be asking for a way to get rid of the sender-specified fonts and colours, and whilst I realise sensible newsreaders will strip them out, I'd be wondering why not just send plain text in the first place.
Not to mention that proportional fonts are infinitely easier to read.
How is this relevant? text/plain posts show up in a nice easy-to-read proportional font on my news client. What's more, it's *my* choice of font, as opposed to what the sender thinks I should use..
Is there anything that Amiga now offers that Be didn't or MacOS X doesn't? Something that Wintel in it's messy but with 90% of the market way can't cough up some half-assed version of? The Linux/BSD/etc. can't reproduce?
I don't think there's any unique "killer" feature - but these days, it's not like any OS has any great features that isn't in anything else. To put it another way, what does MacOS have to offer me that I can't do on other platforms? Not everyone uses a platform because of a unique feature, I'd suspect more people use it because they feel something's done better, not because it's unique.
What, exactly, does Amiga offer other then seeing an old friend again?
It isn't just nostalgia value - since I know my way around AmigaOS both as a user and a programmer, I don't have to spend vast amounts of time learning about it as I would if I decided to switch to BeOS or Linux or MacOS (I'm currently using Windows). In general, it's a case that not everyone is the same, not everyone has the same preferences. AmigaOS has a few things I like about it that don't appear to be available in quite the same way on another platform (eg, datatypes, assigns, a shared library system that doesn't leave you in DLLHell, being able to boot into a GUI environment even if your hard disk is trashed). I also enjoy programming it (I can also enjoy programming for Windows, thanks to Borland, but more variety makes life more interesting:) There are also some programs I enjoy more than any equivalents I've found on other platforms (eg, YAM for email).
Quite probably, Amiga has nothing to offer you, just as Be/Mac/Linux/etc have nothing to offer me, but hopefully I've explained why some are interested.
I think the more important question is how much would it cost (in money terms) for that single Zorro slot?
What sort of card are you thinking of in particular? Cards like graphics, sound and network have dirt cheap PCI equivalents - it would not surprise me if one could buy a PCI replacement for less than the cost of implementing Zorro on the motherboard (plus you now have the comparatively expensive Zorro card to sell off second hand).
Also remember that not all "real" Amigas had Zorro slots (indeed, only a small fraction in terms of numbers produced).
for a time powermacs had nubus
And PPC Amigas can have Zorro slots - an A3000/4000 with an appropriate PPC card. Perhaps you will say this doesn't count since it's an upgrade, but I believe you can buy A1200s/A4000s with PPC/Zorro already fitted if you really must. As with Macs, it's a choice of sticking with older machines if you want to have complete backwards compatibility, or lose some compatibility if you want the latest machines.
It bares as little resemblance to the real Amiga as possible. No binary compatibility
AmigaOS 4.0 will run 68k software via emulation (as stated in the article). I fail to see the problem with this when it's likely to be cheaper and faster than having a real 68k CPU in there; one could just as well complain that PowerMacs aren't "real Macs".
no legacy hardware support
If you want things like AGA chips and Zorro slots, then I believe these will still be useable under AmigaOS 4 if you run it on a current Amiga. Any new machines won't have them (and a generally good thing too, considering UAE will do for running old AGA games, and PCI cards tend to be much cheaper than Zorro equivalents).
nothing that would ever lead you to think they were related
Many PC motherboards don't come with ISA slots these days. Windows 2000/XP is I believe a very different OS to Windows 9x underneath, but maintains compatibility, and similarity in usage. Macs now have PCI slots, and I believe there was some slot they used to have that they no longer do (Nubus?); they also went from a 68k CPU to PPC. MacOS X is at least as different an OS to previous versions, as AmigaOS 4.0 is to 3.9 by the looks of things. If AmigaOS 4.0 and any new machines ever appear, they will have evolved from the originals, just as much as Macs and PCs have.
Not so at all; AmigaOS 4 won't be using any other OS as its kernel.
As for AmigaXL, it consists of two products: Amithlon and (confusingly) AmigaXL for QNX. The latter is basically a modified version of UAE running on QNX which is perhaps what you're thinking of.
It's also not clear that this is a dual-platform approach. Amithlon (and AmigaXL for QNX, and UAE) will only emulate 68k (albeit, extremely quickly) so won't in their current incarnation be able to run AmigaOS 4. But still, it may help the Amiga gain ground as you say (especially all the while AmigaOS 4 is nowhere to be seen).
http://www.builtwithamiga.org/ was also reregistered as a porn site - and it turns out to point to exactly the same site as http://kdhxfm88.org/ . Certainly nothing about a certain computer system there..
Slashdot Mirror
Except that Mac's are made by Apple, and were always made by Apple. If they want to release two different machines and call them both "Mac" - that's their choice.
Same company or different company, Amiga Inc own the "Amiga" trademark. If they want to release a new machine and call it "Amiga" - that's their choice. And if you're saying that a different company makes all the difference, I could argue that different *people* probably worked on the Mac at Apple at different times.
Add to that the (limited) binary compatibility and you have a family of machines, even though the hardware has changed.
This (limited) compatibility will be true of AmigaOS 4.
You might as well put an Amiga sticker on your mac or PC...
What Mac? The Mac that doesn't have anything in common with the original Mac - a different CPU, different OS, uses standard hardware, no Nubus (or whatever they were called) slots..?
I guess people consider current Macs as Macs because either that's the brandname, or because they run a great deal of older Mac software ("transparently", rather than manually running a separate emulator). Yet both of these will apply to the Amiga.
I can't tell you how many Amiga Basic programs I lost, or PenPal (worst word processor ever!) documents I lost to guru meditation errors.
I'm sure plenty of people have similar stories when Windows crashed;) (and indeed, when it comes to the hard disk crashing, I've had far more disasterous experiences with Windows than Amiga..)
Not only were they flaky, they were gut-wrenchingly ugly and unintuitive. I really can't fathom why people like this machine so much. It seems more like a fancy game console than a real computer. Especially when the Workbench was such a complete POS (and I've used 500s, 2000s, a 1000, and more than one 1200.)
A1200s shipped with OS3.0, which is ten years old (or you might have seen one with 3.1 which was a minor update in 1994 IIRC). This would be like posting to Windows articles and making judgements about XP based on one's experience with DOS or Windows 3.11! Applications from this era such as PenPal may have been buggy, ugly, and unintuitive, but no worse than Macs or PCs of the time.
The Amiga may not have had a great deal of OS or application development in the last ten years, but it's still had more than enough that such comparisons are vastly out of date.
When the GUI allows to replace ugly shades of green with ugly shades of pink, you guys freak out like it's a work of art ... The article talked bout kewl gui, and I'd like to correct that. AmigaOS GUI is birdypoop IMHO
There's more to a GUI than simply how it looks. Interfaces aren't intended to be hung up on your wall and looked at, they're there to be used.
Of course I don't know what the article was referring to when it talked of a "kewl GUI", but there are some little (but important) things that I like about AmigaOS (compared with Windows, at least).
For example, menus at the top of the screen rather than attached to each window (which is important because it means you can access them quickly just by shooting the mouse to the top of the screen, rather than having to click in a small area).
Additionally, thanks to toolkits such as MUI and Reaction, there seems to be a lot more Amiga programs whose interfaces are automatically resizeable; you resize the window, and everything inside automatically resizes in a sensible manner. Of course other platforms can do this too, though my experience with Windows[1] is that it is less common. I feel like screaming everytime I see a window that has some too small GUI item like a text box, and then find it won't let me resize the window.. I suspect that a lot of the reason for this is that it's easier for the programmer to create fixed interfaces, especially with "Visual" languages; the aforementioned Amiga GUI toolkits otoh are designed so that the windows will always be resizeable, unless you explicitly forbid it.
[1] Windows is now my main OS, before anyone suggests I have little experience of it;)
They should try Amiga users, they're several times worse Mac users. Really.
Well, claming that something about one platform is several times worse than another without evidence is just the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from a "zealot"..
I would say all platforms have their fanatics - and that includes Windows, it's just that they're drowned out by the majority of Windows users who aren't fanatical at all about the platform. I've met quite a few people convinced that Windows and Microsoft products in general are the best out there and behave in a similar manner to fanatics of less popular platforms.
If they want to write their book in hieroglyphics they may do so and no one may translate the material and distribute these translations.
No one may translate *and* distribute perhaps, but surely it is legal to translate for one's own personal purposes? Also, tools such as dictionaries and translation programs are legal.
The issue isn't about decoding and reselling DVDs; it's about simply decoding DVDs, and the tool which allows that.
This is very much like me.. when I leave my flat I always turn off my computer, including at the mains, and have to check this about five times. The fear of fire plagues me whenever I'm out.
When I'm away for a couple of days or more, I make sure (repeatedly) that everything except the fridge/freezer is turned off:)
I'm not diagnosed with anything.. though I do seem to have minor symptoms of OCD.
So should the web return to the days of pure ASCII?
Typically webpages have fairly complex formatting: multiple columns, or side bars for example. I have no problem if someone wants to use HTML on email/usenet where complex formatting is required - but most ppl just write in paragraphs no different to as if it were plain text.
Should Slashdot disallow any HTML postings? HTML is useful. Look at how it used on Slashdot -- italics, boldface, links, etc.
I personally don't see any great advantage in HTML posting - the main advantage is it's easier to mark quoted text as italics, but that's irrelevant on usenet where the newsreader will prefix quoted text with '>' automatically. And the main disadvantage of taking up more space is irrelevant, if the webpage as a whole is an HTML document anyway. Most news clients automatically provide links if you put a http:// in.
Not to mention that proportional fonts are infinitely easier to read.
What's hard to read are messages in some awkward font or colour. It's especially hard on the eyes when I'm reading a series of HTML messages, all in a different font, size and colour; it makes me think of one of those badly done newsletters where every article is in a different font..
How can you possible be in favor of HTML on the web, yet not in favor of HTML in Usenet? Put it this way: If Usenet were invented today and they included HTML, could you honestly say it would occur to you to say, "you know what would make this better? ASCII only!"
Well there are plenty of ppl who do think that hardcoded fonts/colours specified in HTML is a bad thing so there need not be any inconsistency at all here. HTML should be more for layout, which as I say, is rarely needed on usenet.
And yes, if usenet were invented today, I'd soon be asking for a way to get rid of the sender-specified fonts and colours, and whilst I realise sensible newsreaders will strip them out, I'd be wondering why not just send plain text in the first place.
Not to mention that proportional fonts are infinitely easier to read.
How is this relevant? text/plain posts show up in a nice easy-to-read proportional font on my news client. What's more, it's *my* choice of font, as opposed to what the sender thinks I should use..
Is there anything that Amiga now offers that Be didn't or MacOS X doesn't? Something that Wintel in it's messy but with 90% of the market way can't cough up some half-assed version of? The Linux/BSD/etc. can't reproduce?
I don't think there's any unique "killer" feature - but these days, it's not like any OS has any great features that isn't in anything else. To put it another way, what does MacOS have to offer me that I can't do on other platforms? Not everyone uses a platform because of a unique feature, I'd suspect more people use it because they feel something's done better, not because it's unique.
What, exactly, does Amiga offer other then seeing an old friend again?
It isn't just nostalgia value - since I know my way around AmigaOS both as a user and a programmer, I don't have to spend vast amounts of time learning about it as I would if I decided to switch to BeOS or Linux or MacOS (I'm currently using Windows). In general, it's a case that not everyone is the same, not everyone has the same preferences. AmigaOS has a few things I like about it that don't appear to be available in quite the same way on another platform (eg, datatypes, assigns, a shared library system that doesn't leave you in DLLHell, being able to boot into a GUI environment even if your hard disk is trashed). I also enjoy programming it (I can also enjoy programming for Windows, thanks to Borland, but more variety makes life more interesting:) There are also some programs I enjoy more than any equivalents I've found on other platforms (eg, YAM for email).
Quite probably, Amiga has nothing to offer you, just as Be/Mac/Linux/etc have nothing to offer me, but hopefully I've explained why some are interested.
I think the more important question is how much would it cost (in money terms) for that single Zorro slot?
What sort of card are you thinking of in particular? Cards like graphics, sound and network have dirt cheap PCI equivalents - it would not surprise me if one could buy a PCI replacement for less than the cost of implementing Zorro on the motherboard (plus you now have the comparatively expensive Zorro card to sell off second hand).
Also remember that not all "real" Amigas had Zorro slots (indeed, only a small fraction in terms of numbers produced).
for a time powermacs had nubus
And PPC Amigas can have Zorro slots - an A3000/4000 with an appropriate PPC card. Perhaps you will say this doesn't count since it's an upgrade, but I believe you can buy A1200s/A4000s with PPC/Zorro already fitted if you really must. As with Macs, it's a choice of sticking with older machines if you want to have complete backwards compatibility, or lose some compatibility if you want the latest machines.
It bares as little resemblance to the real Amiga as possible. No binary compatibility
AmigaOS 4.0 will run 68k software via emulation (as stated in the article). I fail to see the problem with this when it's likely to be cheaper and faster than having a real 68k CPU in there; one could just as well complain that PowerMacs aren't "real Macs".
no legacy hardware support
If you want things like AGA chips and Zorro slots, then I believe these will still be useable under AmigaOS 4 if you run it on a current Amiga. Any new machines won't have them (and a generally good thing too, considering UAE will do for running old AGA games, and PCI cards tend to be much cheaper than Zorro equivalents).
nothing that would ever lead you to think they were related
Many PC motherboards don't come with ISA slots these days. Windows 2000/XP is I believe a very different OS to Windows 9x underneath, but maintains compatibility, and similarity in usage. Macs now have PCI slots, and I believe there was some slot they used to have that they no longer do (Nubus?); they also went from a 68k CPU to PPC. MacOS X is at least as different an OS to previous versions, as AmigaOS 4.0 is to 3.9 by the looks of things. If AmigaOS 4.0 and any new machines ever appear, they will have evolved from the originals, just as much as Macs and PCs have.
"Unfortunately they chose QNX as their kernel"
Not so at all; AmigaOS 4 won't be using any other OS as its kernel.
As for AmigaXL, it consists of two products: Amithlon and (confusingly) AmigaXL for QNX. The latter is basically a modified version of UAE running on QNX which is perhaps what you're thinking of.
It's also not clear that this is a dual-platform approach. Amithlon (and AmigaXL for QNX, and UAE) will only emulate 68k (albeit, extremely quickly) so won't in their current incarnation be able to run AmigaOS 4. But still, it may help the Amiga gain ground as you say (especially all the while AmigaOS 4 is nowhere to be seen).
http://www.builtwithamiga.org/ was also reregistered as a porn site - and it turns out to point to exactly the same site as http://kdhxfm88.org/ . Certainly nothing about a certain computer system there..