Does anyone still use an Amiga?

[shu82]

They aren't far off from macs. 68000, PPC chips and have a great OS. I heard some rumors that they were coming back with new hardware.

I just loved seeing someone actually just pulling the plug on the computer whenever they were done with it. You never had to shut it down.

 

[Queso]

Still fire up UAE occasionally, but after my actual Amiga 500+ died I just bought a MIDI interface and some synth librarian software for my Mac instead, which was all it ever got used for.

 

[mkrishnan]

Someone recently posted in another thread about continuing to use an Amiga...

They're nice computers. All the attempts to resurrect the company, though, haven't been about doing anything really innovative. They could do something like take FreeBSD or Linux and adapt it with carefully chosen hardware and a really unique, polished interface, and that might be interesting... but otherwise, what's the point (coming from an Amiga lover) to Amiga coming back?

It's like the Atari name coming back. If it's just exploiting the brand identity, I don't respect it. If it's reigniting the magic, you have my attention.

 

[Carrot007]

Unfortunatly not, but amiga is as pretty much dead as my old amigas in the loft (a coupl of a1200's and a a500, possibly a few others, the a1200 lack keyboards, but one has an 040 cpu! However I can't bare to get rid of them)

I'd really love an amiga os4 machine to play with butn othing much seems to be happening.

Hey I'd really love a towered up classic amiga, but not for the prices they go for on ebay ;-)

 

[mkrishnan]

There was an OS 4?

 

[speakerwizard]

this site : http://www.osnews.com/ has been documenting the return of amiga OS and its new hardware (powerpc) very well over the last few weeks, i heard they were even toying with the idea of porting firefox across to it

 

[Queso]

There was an OS 4?

Eventually yes.

Wikipedia

 

[shu82]

I knew I heard something about new stuff from them. Great links! I could swear my local nbc station uses an amiga for amber alerts. They drop out of HD and the fonts look familliar.

 

[Mr. Amiga500]

Unfortunately, the "return of Amiga" is a painful joke. This article covers it pretty well. "New Amigas" are basically off-the-shelf obsolete PPC stuff. OS 4.0 has very little software and only runs classic Amiga software through emulation. Amiga Inc. is "Amiga" in name only - a pathetic deceitful company just exploiting a once-great name. It has no connection to the original Amiga. The sad truth is that Amiga died when Commodore died in 1994. There will be no "comeback".

It's amazing how far you can push these old (real) Amigas though. I'm using an Amiga 500 here that cost me $700 brand new in 1989 ($300 for upgrades). I don't know how many other computers from the 80's (especially this cheap) can be made to look like OSX (without a graphics card) or emulate another OS that's 10 years newer.

I just wish Commodore hadn't been run by a bunch of incompetents. They had an amazing cutting-edge computer in 1985 and they sat back and let competitors catch up. Then by the time they finally upgraded the custom chips (8 years later!), it was too late.

 

[Queso]

I just wish Commodore hadn't been run by a bunch of incompetents. They had an amazing cutting-edge computer in 1985 and they sat back and let competitors catch up. Then by the time they finally upgraded the custom chips (8 years later!), it was too late.

I remember the last year. With increasing pressure from the PC market and a clamouring from the userbase for upgrades to the A1200 and A4000 models, Medhi Ali bought himself a company jet

And then when it did go down it took the administrators nearly two years to wade through the way the board had set the company up to best hide the mess. Commodore made mid-90s Apple look slimmed down and focussed.

 

[speakerwizard]

if they had licenced workbench / amiga os back then it would have wiped the floor with windows because everybody knew how to use it and commador would be the big bad microsoft

 

[Mr. Amiga500]

There's an interesting new interview with Carl Sassenrath (creator of Amiga Workbench). He actually worked at Apple in 1986 after leaving Commodore. Some highlights:

"At Apple, it was interesting to see what engineers thought of the Amiga. Most of them thought that the Amiga would totally destroy Apple. Technically, Amiga could have, but they did not know what I knew about Commodore marketing.

My job at Apple ATG was to design the next multitasking OS - to become the successor to the Macintosh. The overall project was quite similar to the Amiga, but with about 10 times more money for development. We were building a quad-core CPU chip that ran nearly the speed of a Cray supercomputer. Like Amiga, the hardware team was great. Unfortunately, at that time Apple was not a good place to get products finished. There were far too many meetings and not enough focus.
...
Six months later, the project was canceled, and the OS team spun off to start a new company called Taligent."

 

[mkrishnan]

Technically, Amiga could have, but they did not know what I knew about Commodore marketing.

With the Amiga (unlike the Commodore 64s, to some extent), Commodore never really courted the non-enthusiast market in the US. Nor, as far as I know, did they do much in developing business or developer relationships. You don't have to do all of those things. MS is, I think, actually very good at paying attention to the needs of businesses and developers, and yet isn't perfect. They are however still in business!

And, ahhh, Taligent. I remember that, when Wall Street started talking about Taligent, I was soooo excited. I was too young to understand the concept of vaporware at that time!

 

[IJ Reilly]

And, ahhh, Taligent. I remember that, when Wall Street started talking about Taligent, I was soooo excited. I was too young to understand the concept of vaporware at that time!

It was a going concern for a few years, but apparently underfunded. If IBM and Apple had pulled off "Pink" it could have made a huge impact on the market.