Third party Amiga development continues as lawsuits drag on

We pretty much assumed we'd never actually see the "better than OS X" Amiga OS 5 as the suit between Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion (developers of OS 4) drags on , but our curmudgeonly hearts were stirred just a little by reports that third-party Amiga development soldiers on. Spurred by the twice-as-high-as-expected sales of "OS 4 for Classic Amigas with PowerPC Accelerator Boards" (say that three times fast), and the development of an open source Amiga OS replacement called AROS, it seems like enough people are still interested in the platform to potentially keep it alive while Hyperion and Amiga battle it out. There's even recently-released commercial software available -- something we'd have never thought possible. Just goes to show that you can't keep a good (or kinda neat) OS down, eh?

[pixelboy @ Dec 5th 2007 2:38PM]

the guru is meditating ;-)

//kicking it old school

[MEAT! @ Dec 5th 2007 2:43PM]

Whatever advantages the Amigas had are long since gone: graphics capabilities, multi-tasking, audio, gaming, video editing...all of these things have been adopted and polished by other systems.

So if it's an open source, cross platform (or Intel-based) OS that they're developing, what reasons are there to use it other than for nostalgias sake? It's hard enough to get compatible software on Linux; who would make software for AmigaOS?

If it is to make all you unbearably old people feel better, they should just theme a version of Linux or MacOS to look like an Amiga. If it's to make a great operating system, why not modify the already open sourced Linux?

[zoara @ Dec 5th 2007 7:03PM]

Wow, people who used the original Amigas are considered "unbearably old" these days?

I agree with the rest of your points, but you've managed to make me feel unbearably old...

[MEAT! @ Dec 5th 2007 7:08PM]

Heh, I was being facetious. I might have been using Amiga if I wasn't raised on DOS, and, still being in college, I don't consider myself unbearably old yet.

[qrius @ Dec 5th 2007 2:49PM]

the screenshot looks so outdated... almost like mac os 9.

[Dei76 @ Dec 5th 2007 3:43PM]

Well, it's not the latest version (pic of 0S 4), so I guess it is out dated.

[ark_v2 @ Dec 5th 2007 3:33PM]

You know, a cheap-ass-poorly-made-ubuntu-derived distro looks better than that.

[Brian McBride @ Dec 5th 2007 3:55PM]

I am going to have to wait for OS5.1 Or OS 5 sp1, whatever they want to call it. You know how it goes.

[zebcarlson2007 @ Dec 5th 2007 4:05PM]

Who uses this? Honestly?

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Dec 7th 2007 7:32PM]

pie > amiga

[Clinton @ Dec 5th 2007 4:10PM]

I wax nostalgic for my Amiga 1000, 2000 and 4000. But I moved on, years ago, when Commodore imploded.

[Bill @ Dec 5th 2007 4:16PM]

Back around 1990 I owned an Atari ST computer (one of the first home computers with a mouse-based OS), and hung onto that thing way too long, while I watched PC's take over the marketplace. But I had a huge library of copied programs for it, and there were a couple of enthusiast Atari stores in the area that I frequented, so I had fun with it for a while. But when I finally ditched the thing and went with a PC, it was the best move I ever made.

The first Amiga's came out about that time too. I just can't believe there's still an active movement for these things, given how widespread PC's and Macs are these days. Why go live in a cave when you can come out into the sun with the rest of us?

[Ian @ Dec 5th 2007 4:50PM]

Amiga folks tend to be developers and hobbyists. It is a fun platform to code for. It is one of the last systems with active OS development where you can still have a chance of really understanding every nuance of the system. That's just not possible with today's gigantic, bloated OS solutions. Just look at the proliferation of "magic" black boxes/VMs like .net where a developer has no visibility into this thing that when it falls over has no other recourse than to fiddle about to get things to work.

IMHO AmigaOS is the last of the elegant OSes IMHO. BeOS tried, they had something there. Linux, nice but designed by committee and feels like it came from the 70s.

Finally the reason the Amiga soldiers on (at least in spirit) and the AtariST does not: the ST was great hardware with a joke of an OS that was little more than some sort of DOS+Finder Mac wannabe. The Amiga was great hardware (for its time) with a visionary OS. It is the OS that lives on.

[Maestro @ Dec 5th 2007 5:33PM]

Ahh..the Atari store. I remember the Amiga store. I used to go and check out the new games for the Amiga. Towards the end the software section just got smaller and smaller. Finally I think it was just one box they kept swapping out for another.

[dannyCage @ Dec 5th 2007 5:22PM]

@Ian: Well put

[Craig @ Dec 5th 2007 5:23PM]

I'm still waiting for a GUI interface for my TRS-80 Model III. C'mon Tandy, what the hell are you waiting for???!

[EnigmaX @ Dec 6th 2007 7:14AM]

Aaahhh, the trusty "Trash-80" with it's cassette drive. That's where I cut my teeth.

[Eh @ Dec 5th 2007 5:43PM]

Why are Apple and Microsoft the only ones that actually take their GUI seriously?

[kL @ Dec 6th 2007 3:09PM]

AmigaOS has MUI (Magic User Interface) toolkit, which allows you to very very easily customize every detail of UI (something like CSS for UI, but has neat WYSIWYG configurator).

...but they're stuck in 2D era. 3D-accelerated/composited UIs for AmigaOS clones can be seen only on blurry cellphone photos, with aliens reflecting in the screen.

[spaceb @ Dec 5th 2007 7:34PM]

Because they copy from the rest?

[seven20p @ Dec 5th 2007 8:42PM]

Dont trash the amiga community.

Software User Groups were Pirate Swaps. Bring as many blank discs as possible and rip off as much as you can. In the corner was the dude who was doing the latest mix and demo in deluxe paint III or playing with sountracker mods. He mad is own music by cut and pasting a bunch of samples together at 160BPM. Once the thrill was over with the demo it was back to xcopy 3.1...you were so left behing if you were still using xcopy 3.0.....and lets not forget the dude that had a cracker demo that played popeye's theme by grinding your heads of your poor 3.5 drive.

You werent rich enough to have 1MB ram, an a2000 and a second drive :) to speed up your illegal activities.

Dont even get me started on the plethora of C64 wares out there.

Long live Razor, Bit Bros and others.

[seanchk @ Dec 6th 2007 2:36AM]

I loved the Amiga and had all of them from an A500 all the way to an A4000T, with many machines along the way. There are still things I miss about the OS, mostly how much sense it made and how I knew exactly what everything was doing. I like my high end PC's but I don't really know what half of the running programs are actually doing. It bugs me that my PC needs to read/write over 100gigs of data before it finishes starting up. It bugs me that if I put in a faster processor I don't 'see' any noticeable change in speed. PC's are fine but they don't make me feel like I'm running something with soul.

[Broken Haiku @ Dec 6th 2007 3:05AM]

I dearly miss my Amiga OS days, it still multitasks better than Windows. Of course, my memories are based on the computer standard of ~1988. How I want that easy to repair OS with fast response and decent shell back.

[David @ Dec 6th 2007 11:15AM]

I don't honestly believe that the Amiga could be "better" than modern computers any more, but I do know for a fact that the Amiga was the last computer I had fun using. And I mean just using - I could be just setting different things up, moving stuff around, whatever - it was enjoyable. Nowadays computers just feel like work.

[kL @ Dec 6th 2007 3:13PM]

OS X does fill my Amigaish void quite well. It has close buttons and menu where they should be, you can configure it to have Control key like on Amiga keyboard, and if you dig into Quartz and Cocoa, there are plenty of cool things to play with.

[tekdroid @ Dec 6th 2007 2:50PM]

yep, some good comments here on Amiga.

Two words:
Smooth scrolling.

[Kelly Kauffman @ Dec 6th 2007 6:10PM]

Remember the joy of having multiple SCREENs (of varying color depths and resolutions)...and being able to assign programs to different screens.

Remember being able to slide them up and down and have varying resolutions be able to merrily co-exist with one another...or send them front/back so easily?

Show me any modern ATI or NVidia card that can still pull of that trick as elegantly as Agnes did back in 1984!

[Geoff @ Dec 6th 2007 6:23PM]

I hear they still can't decide whether to try this case in small claims court or in front of Judge Judy...

[skhawaja @ Dec 7th 2007 6:46AM]

I miss my AMIGA 500 :]

We had tv walls running DEMO's in clubs on those things - and the sound systems to boot :]

I can't believe the power of those coders with just a floppy disk!

And running a BBS - picking up newly coded demos from usenet - CD arrays!

To this day I still goto scene.org Razor1911 is to blame for it - I used to dub tapes from the demos and play them non-stop - now I use CD's

I still have VHS tapes of the AmigaDEMO's I recorded :] both NTSC and PAL versions :]

And the coders would make two different versions for NTSC and PAL sync rates!

I am still to this day amazed by what these guys were doing with the copper and blitter chips back then.

A salute to everyone that was ever part or is a part right now of the demo scene :]

thanks!

[ZXoney @ Dec 8th 2007 9:36AM]

I started my Computer History with a TI99/4A. After learning basic and Machine Lang, I was exposed to a C64 and never looked back. Five 64s' and two c128s' later I got my first Amiga1000. I ran a BBS ZXone ]I[ for years on the c64/128 with ColorBBS (AWESOME BBS Software) and Later on moved the BBS over to a Amiga3000. I still have some of my old LogOn, LogOff and Menu Screens I drew with PetASCI! PC BBS's used the UGLY ANSI!
Todays PC have much better CPUs, Memory, Graphics, and Audio. And much better expansion; USB, SATA, PCIE etc. But WINDOWS just plain SUCKS, and IS real work to keep it going. AmiDOS/OS is simple and SMART! I know were everything is! My drivers are in the DEVs folder Libs in the Libs foler! Has anyone ever maped out the WINDOWS folder or wanted to?
Linux was a good idea, I have Gentoo on my main PC right now with Beryl 3D Desktop. And its cool eye candy but the system is cryptic as all get out! Its as bad as Windows, craps spread out all over the place!
And the lovely MAC(Vomit), How long did it take to get that second mouse button? Sure the Desktop looks good and yes your files are stored nice and neat, but you have NO REAL control of you System. Not to say anything about limits in expansion or PRICE! At less with the Amiga you did get what you paid for!
I now have a AMD 5200 Dual Core with NVidia8800GT 2.5gig RAM, 21" DCDi Monitor, 19" ViewSonic, Four 250gig IDE drives, Two 300gig SATA drives, TWO LiteOn DVD burners. I have WindowsXP pro installed twice and Gentoo. Why have Windows installed twice you might ask? Well the first Install is a striped down version with AmiKit installed! Yes AmiKit, if you don't know what it is google it.
Yes AmigaOS/4 looks old and I fore one have never used it (Never Had a AONE or MicoAONE) nor like the Granny Look of the ICONS. AmiKit changed all that! I have OS3.9 installed on my PC and use DUAL PNP 32bit ICONS. AmiKit is what OS/4 or OS/5 SHOULD look like. If I could use AmiKit without Windows installed I would. I have tons of awesome software and now it runs many many times faster!
It is near impossible for anyone not to use Windows now days due to software. If I had ACDSeePro, PhotoShop, FireFox Mozilla, ThunderBird and all my games like JointOps running under AmigaOS I would have no reason to keep Windows period. I for one Will aways Love the AmigaOS, Its SMALL, Smart, and best of All just plain FUN. What other platform has inspired so many spin offs? lets see how many did we get, MorphOS, AROS, Amithalon just to name a few. And oh yea were in the world did Multi Tasking come from hummm..
!Long Live Amiga!

-=ZXoney=-

[Jack @ Jan 10th 2008 5:10AM]

Still have my A600, works perfectly, all I did was play games on it though :D