Re: Commodore Amiga

[selmerthegod]

The best I ever had was Workbench 3.1 and it was way ahead of pretty much anything else out there at the time. Oh how I miss my Amigas. Such a powerful and user friendly beasts. A pox on Commodore and Gateway and.........Oh what's the point. The Amiga is the computer equivalent of the Amur Leopard. Not extinct but fuckin' close :{(

[DST0x0]

AMIGA OS4 Rulez !!!

[davie732]

I was a fan of the AMIGA but sadly mine died in 1996. Looking at this video i cant quite belive how smooth the dragging is. Its much smoother than the PC. I also cant believe at how quickly the windows open (Talk about instant!) I still think its the best!

[68040E]

great GREAT video, we need more videos showing the power of amiga in style

[lissingen]

the best!!!!

[KiiiiingOfPaaain]

A few words: Simply the best os to date, no other os comes close!

[dbalexamiga]

This all seemeed pretty cool a couple of years ago (2006) roll on 2008 and this seems incredibly dated... Is OS4 really able to compete any more? To be honest I'm rapidly losing interest... Expensive hardware + limited supply + expensive OS + legal concerns everwhere = massive fail... Amiga Inc you are draining ever little bit of fun out of the platform that there ever was...

Meh.

[scottishwildcat]

I never really saw the point of sliding screens, they just seemed like crippled virtual workspaces. Really shouldn't be a necessary feature with modern graphics cards.

[stevieu83]

In what way? Any program can run on its own screen, in whatever resolution, accessible at the click of a button (& draggable in any direction). That's extremely handy, to me. Not forgetting AmigaOS did this since its first release. It was nice of the Hyperion development team to get this working on modern gfx cards, when it was said it could never be done.

There could be improvements, but this was a unique feature of AmigaOS - long before 'virtual desktops' came about in any shape or form.

[Hiraghm]

I felt vindicated using Windows at work, because every application window other people used was made full-screen, and it was like using an Amiga's screens.

I wrote an Amiga game that used this feature. Top half of screen was graphics, bottom half was text. Couldn't have done it on a PC.

[Hiraghm]

@scottishwildcat

I once wrote a game that took advantage of this.

Graphics resolution screen above a text resolution screen.

[markoseppanen1975]

Cool video!! I hoping to run OS4 someday...

[jasoninertia]

im a commodore fan , c16 + 4  c64 amiga 500 and 1200 , cdtv the lot , but this is just processors and memory and hard disks , i can run apple mac software on my xp pc if i really want to , it all boils down to hardware , what do we need to run this , and will it play nice with the stuff we are now used to

[mynamesforest]

I've been watching the progress of OS4 for years ready to buy one when it's done. Well it's done...but as they have tied it to the hardware and the hardware isn't available we're all stuffed.

If they released it as a standalone product with a short hardware compatability list they would make an absolute fortune and generate income for further development. But hey, this is the Amiga - Amigans never die....but they also never held their breath.

[beverins]

OS4 would be nice, if it was available as a seperate purchase, and not just for AmigaOne computers, which aren't being made. At least people have REAL Amigas and the UAE emulator to run this on. I dunno a single person with an Amiga One - and no place to buy one.

Way to go on artificially limiting your already small market share, guys.

[monotonehell]

Yes that was silly wasn't it? People who try to over-control a property usually end up losing it.

[madcows10]

Nice music..grand..I love it! Good video as well

[nitewaves77]

I'd hate to see how you folks handle breakups. ;) I love the Amiga. I loved everything Commodore. But holding on to the past drowns you with it. Let go now, chaps. Come on -- I'll buy you all a pint.

[blade004]

I'll think i will need 40 pints :)

[PJAriz]

GREAT!!!

[ikiret]

Yes it is impressive.. i have an AmigaOne G4 1Ghz and OS4 rocks on it.

[AmigaRetro]

It would be cool if I could get it to run on my G5 iMac

[lcaise]

amiga is very good platform, but the question is: why nobody wants to give money to promotion this platform ?

[punchichivo]

impresionante.pero tiene una utilidad verdadera??

[ballebanan]

Is OS4 ever gonna be officially released? Seems like it's been ages since it was announced.

[blade004]

Then again, maybe someone or some people in Commodore were receiving money bribes from Microsoft to keep the Amiga as low key as possible. The best technology always falls into the hands of idiots.

[blade004]

I never thought a technology as amazing as the Amiga & its OS could ever be left behind. If Atari had of bought the Amiga & not Commodore, then i think we would most likely still have the Amiga today!. 

Damn you Commodore, you single handedly destroyed the Amiga.

[COMALiteJ]

Actually, one man destroyed both Commodore and the Amiga. He was the CEO, and IIRC, he refused to fund marketing and R&D at the expense of his personal paycheck and golden parachute, basically bled the company dry, then took all the loot and fled the country.

He handed Bill Gates the desktop computer monopoly on a silver platter.

[blade004]

Ive heard about a guy by the name of Medhi Ali. Is that the guy your refering too?, because if that "is" him, i think he deserves to be hunted down like the greedy little prick he is and given a good beating.

[blade004]

Actually come to think of it, as silly as it might sound, i think im going to always have an immense amount of hatred for the people like this man who brought Commodore down, and it twists around in my gut to know that something as promising and elegant as the Amiga got destroyed.

[COMALiteJ]

There have been similar tales in the computer industry. Read up on MacBASIC sometime (another incident that helped hand Gates the monopoly, though in this case Gates himself did the crime). Microsoft never got a BASIC as cool as MacBASIC for another 1½ decades or more.

Also, what Adobe did to Ares Fontworks and their awesome Chameleon Fonts technology.

[blade004]

Another one is the Gary Kildall CPM saga and how gates manipulated him out of what should rightfully been Gary's success.

[COMALiteJ]

MS-DOS 1.0 was nothing more than Q-DOS (Quick & Dirty OS), an OS that Bill bought for $15,000 from Seattle Computer Systems. Q-DOS was an unlicensed CP/M-86 clone. MS-DOS 1.0 was virtually identical to CP/M-86. It wasn't until MS-DOS 2.0 which merged features from XENIX (Microsoft UNIX) that MS-DOS became a unique OS.

[stevieu83]

Well, look at the news again. Amiga, Inc have got a lawsuit with Hyperion (the people that made OS4 a reaity) so yet again, the Amiga is doomed in the near future.

Amiga, Inc in battle with its OS developers - great move. It's all a sad state of affairs when something so great is being trampled over with yet more legal rubbish. Ho hum. The people that buy the Amiga name seem to do everyone possible to kill it.

[MarkusUK]

Sad to see, that AmigaOS is so great, and no company realy help them!

[ShiningF0rce]

Amiga never dies 5/5

Innovators not just immitators

[lomohi]

so cool!

Amiga still developing?

[foreye]

PPC Hardware thats close to a mac but not. Which atm is currently unavailble.

[Dani128]

That's really impressive. What hardware does normally OS4 run on?

[Rapidcore]

nice

[aufsturz]

wouldnt mind trying this out :) I loved my A500 !

[amigaknight]

AMIGA OS 4.0 IS SOOOO HOT!!!! ^_^

CANT WAIT TO SEE 4.1 :P

[artorwar]

The best generation of hardware and software.

[sajko7]

So true.

[RaggedTiger70]

Yeah PCs and Macs still can't do that. Too bad the video doesn't show dragging the desktop from two different monitor resolutions and the monitor *snapping* into place...I think you could even drag the desktop in other directions other than straight up and down. Amigas also had that wonderful feature of the window you clicked on not automatically stealing focus which is so annoying with Macs and PCs...wow I remember what real multitasking and multimedia was....

[stevieu83]

Check out: http://os4.hyperion-entertainm­ent.biz/ for a full list of features. The screen dragging is possible in all directions. I may be a zealot, but no other OS seems to come close to AmigaOS in terms of user-friendliness and it's an OS with a soul...not many people can claim to know what that is. Sadly...

[stevieu83]

Well, they said screen dragging on modern graphics hardware was impossible....again, Amiga programmers proved them wrong :)

[stevieu83]

"One feature of the original custom Amiga graphics chips was that you could "pull" down screens with the mouse to see screens that were behind them. This feature, called "draggable screens," was never duplicated by any graphics card manufacturer since, so sadly it is not available on the AmigaOne." Never say never with AmigaOS =)

[amiga2000]

It has been duplicated through emulators. Here's a handheld running the Amiga OS demonstrating the draggable screens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v­=_FkzUcSsrkw

[nebby6]

However, the output that the PC sees from the emulator is all at one refresh and resolution, so the PC side never actually experiences the simultaneous multiple-resolution phenomenon directly. Pretty cool technique, on the part of the Amiga. That and the Amiga's ability to control the video gun to an extreme.

[COMALiteJ]

Nebby6 speaks truth. The original Amiga video chips had the ability to switch modes instantly, and could set an interrupt to occur just as the monitor was about to scan a given scan line. By changing this value on the fly as the user dragged the mouse, the screens could start at any scan line, with each screen being a completely different video mode of the chipset.

[cpnjack]

That's the killer app? I have bad news...

[] "show window contents while dragging"

[sajko7]

Draggable SCREEN is something different than a DRAGGABLE WINDOW. Try it on Windows :>

[cpnjack]

Vista and XGL seem to have a bunch of fancy 3d screen things. None of it really impresses me. If it doesn't actually make life easier, it's just bloat and eyecandy!

[blade004]

Its not the killer new app, its something the Amiga has done since 1985, and its something that allowed the Amiga to multitask so damn well. Vista is just full of animations and special effects, but its still based on the same crap architecture that Windows has "always" been based upon. Windows is Windows no matter how much paint you throw on it to make it look pretty.

[cpnjack]

Amiga hasn't got memory prote

*guru meditation*

memory protectio

*guru*

[blade004]

So bloody what!, is that all you can find bad about the Amiga?, what do you think the PC had back when the Amiga was kicking its arse?, there was a hell of alot more to complain about on a PC.

[cpnjack]

Time has moved on, dude.

[blade004]

Yeah true, i realise this, but i just dont enjoy using Windows. Its a dead experience, and although i know its only a computer, the Amiga was the best ive come across. Sorry if i sounded a little heated. :)

[blade004]

If Amiga's were still being developed today, a Windows based system wouldnt even be worth pissing on. All computers develop over time along with the software that comes with it, but in comparison, Windows was, is and always will be behind until its completely replaced by something better in the eyes of the mass consumer.

[stevieu83]

OS4 implements memory protection for whatever chooses to use it. And this is an old video. OS4 has gone final now and the speed increase is quite dramatic, if you could believe it could get any quicker. Here's to productivity and fun computing.

[kultstate]

amiga.. sigh :) .. My A1200 HD broke and I lost everything..

[COMALiteJ]

If you haven't done anything with that HD, you may be able to recover the data, even if the physical drive mechanism is broken (no longer spins up, heads frozen, whatever). There are various tricks to get a drive to spin up one more time, long enough to back up the data. Also, there are recovery services that will open the drive in a clean room and remove the platters and get the data off, but they're expen$ive.