Oh. My. God. When I read this, and browsed the website, my face went like this. Do you remember the Amiga? That fun little computer that was miles ahead of its competition, but in recent years has been dragged through the mud by one shady figure after the next? Here’s a new one: Amiga, Inc., the one ‘run’ by Bill McEwen, has partnered with a company called IContain to slap the Amiga logo on a bunch of low-end, incredibly sad products. Whether this is another shady deal I don’t know, but worthy of the Amiga? I don’t think so. I’m not putting this in the Amiga category, by the way. I refuse to. Forget it. It’s going into our generic category. Fitting. Update: As was pointed out over at AmigaWorld.net, not only are these nothing more than brandless OEM products with Photoshopped logos, the website itself is just a standard, unmodified WordPress theme. Oi. Doesn’t instil a lot of confidence, now, does it?
It’s supposedly a bunch of products directed at something called the ‘rent-to-own’ market, which, in my book, sounds like something the Beeper King would come up with. The website is at least functional – unlike some of the other truly shady Amiga businesses out there – but the products…
They’re generic, brandless OEM boxes with ‘Amiga’ and the boing ball logo Photoshopped all over them. Android tablets and phones, a bunch of all-in-one computers, and even televisions. The laptops section is empty. But wait! We have quotes!
“From NASA to Disney, everyone loved Amiga in the past for its innovation,” says IContain CEO Todd Kleperis, “It only makes sense that they would lead the charge with a revolutionary new way to enhance personal connectivity. We are extremely happy to have a partner in bringing the next line of connected devices to market and helping the RTO world.”
“Amiga has continued to work on bringing new products with new partners, and we are pleased to be working with IContain providing new hardware and software solutions that will benefit everyone,” adds Amiga CEO Bill McEwen.
Once, there was this girl. She was beautiful. Smart. Rich. Had everything going for her. Then, she started sleeping around. Got herself involved with the wrong people. She disappeared for a few years. Didn’t hear from her. Now, she’s a crack whore selling herself on the side of the roads near Prague. She’ll give it away for just a spoonful.
It seems that at this point, you’re best off just sticking to the two companies who have been able to deliver: Hyperion and ACube. They’re real. They have products you can buy and run today that are actually really Amiga, not a Linux distribution with a skin or a generic box with a Photoshopped boing ball. The X1000 should’ve been here by now, but it isn’t, and these silly IContain products sure aren’t going to make any Amigans’ hearts boing any faster.
At least we have AROS.
Speaking of dilution of the Amiga brand, in Austria Amiga is the name of a service lets you make cheap international phone calls from a mobile.
Here in Sweden I saw fans in a store labeled Amiga.
Amiga is dead. The last promising “shipping” product was Amithlon. Now the brand is being tossed around between shady companies like Hyperion Ent and all the others.
BTW still no AmigaOne X1000 yet. It was due last summer. ROFL
If the Amiga is dead, does that mean the revival is a Zombie Crack Whore?
Too lazy to link, and the lyrical content probably breaks a rule or six here, anyway, but look on Youtube for Zombie Prostitute, by Voltaire.
Frankenhooker!
Time to get over the Amiga folks.
Indeed, the article author is guilty of romanticizing a brand. It is not the “Amiga” brand that the author misses. It is the old company, that existed in the 90s, a special group of people capable of bringing us the iconic Amiga computers of that era. They have long since departed, the company long since devolved, and the brand has been subsequently abused for years to line the pockets of a few individuals fortunate enough to possess the rights to it.
I’m wondering if there’s a reason for using the Amiga branding for this.
I’m of the generation that grew up with the Acorn BBC B, Spectrum, Atari 800, Amiga, Atari ST, Archimedes. These names mean something to me. When I see what this project is using the Amiga name for, I see and feel no connection. It doesn’t pull at any strings of nostalgia, it doesn’t represent the sort of innovation and cleverness I associate the Amiga name with – it simply has no appeal. I doubt I’m alone. I just can’t see these products appealing to Amiga afficionados.
However, I genuinely want to know what the Amiga name means to younger generations. Does the Amiga brand carry enough weight these days to sell a low-end Android phone?
“Mi amiga” translates as “my friend” in Spanish.
That is plausible – marketable – branding in the states and perhaps partcularly useful for something as widely and deeply mistrusted as “Rent-To-Own.”
I know what “amiga” means (I live in Spain), but what you’re talking about is a catchy and marketable name (cf. the Austrian international calling service mentioned in the first comment). This use of it is beyond that – it’s clearly playing on the legacy of the name (otherwise, what has the red & white ball logo got to do with friendship?)
From their website: “In 1985 the iconic Amiga 1000 revolutionized personal computing ^aEUR” Today IContain^aEURTMs technologies usher Amiga into the future of innovation. Meet the Amiga family of products protected by IContain.”
For me, “Amiga” sounds like “Apple” and more recently “Nokia” : a brand which made some interesting products in the past, then failed because good engineers and good executives are rarely found together, then embraced the dark side in order to survive.
Edited 2011-02-25 07:27 UTC
The darkside? Really? Oh, and Amiga didn’t survive.
Yup
You know, trying – generally successfully – to make money in an ugly way instead of losing money in a cool way.
The Amiga brand did, but it would have been best if it had just died. Look, you can now get an Amiga plasma TV from a shady website =p
Edited 2011-02-25 21:17 UTC
How does Nokia or Apple make money in an ugly way? The iStuff and Windows 7 Phone are pretty good, I don’t get what you are insinuating(well I do, it just is such a vague, sad insinuation these days)
This is the real world not STARWARS … There is no Evil Dark Overlord and his sidekick.
I ain’t the greatest fan of Apple, but the iPod is the best Music player on the market … the iPad is the best Tablet on the market, and the MacBook air is the best ultraportable on the market (if I could afford one I would).
Nokia continue to make solid phones .. I like nokia … I moved to HTC (the desire) because they had an android phone (which I wanted to develop for) and the desire was the best of breed at the time.
I have a 1661 low end phone as a backup if my android phone breaks (^Alb20 jobby) and the phone is bloody well designed even though it is the cheapest phone I could get … everything works well and tbh, the android phone I use regularly, I think isn’t as good as a phone … the design, simplicity and the robustness of the nokia is excellent.
The only reason you are slagging off nokia because you hate the Nokia/Microsoft deal … even though it made perfect business sense.
Edited 2011-02-25 21:46 UTC
Nokia before :
-A wide range of great mid-end hardwware
-Symbian, a true mid-end phone OS. Fast at the core, powerful and empowering, trusts its developers, best suited for adapting itself to the wide range of mid-end phone hardware. Needs a major userspace rewrite though.
-Meego, first true mobile Linux distribution, open-source, probably able to cope with Intel chips so that we can imagine more powerful high-end phones, lots of potential but has to get out of the door.
-Qt, which is at the same time a powerful toolkit, a very nice migration path, and a way to make use of the competence of existing Qt developers around the world.
In short, innovation, but not coordinated enough to reach a good pace.
Nokia after :
-Symbian, meego and Qt go to trash.
-Mid-end phones also go to trash, since WP7 is too bloated to run on them and S40 is not powerful enough to make the phone worth its higher price.
-Nokia becomes yet another sheep touchscreen phone manufacturer, alienates former developers and user with this brutal transition.
-Innovatives OSs are replaced by the “me too” answer of microsoft to other touchscreen based OSs, which is even more closed down than iOS (since it doesn’t even trust native code) and doesn’t offer a satisfactory migration path for existing devs. Nice UI, yes, but that’s it.
In short, Nokia becomes the new LG in the long run : a dull manufacturer making phones like everyone else’s, competing on price but totally unable to compete on innovation, since innovation lies in software and they’ve just become the slave of another company as far as software is concerned.
Well, at least these WP7 phones could be robust, considering Nokia’s past track record in terms of build quality. But considering how heavy those big touchscreen phones generally are, “robust” will probably mean that they can fall with no initial velocity from 2m instead of 1.5m before breaking.
QT and Meego wasn’t “getting there” quick enough for it to be viable … what would you do, keep sticking money in bottomless pit or …. go with something that is already working ???
[sarcasm]
Anyway of course the beauty of the Meego and QT projects are open source, the GNU coder army is just going to take over where nokia left off.
[/sarcasm]
All Nokia were doing was effectively managing software risk … and many on here don’t seem to understand that fact.
Microsoft had Windows Phone 7 already there, there is huge number of developers that already have existing transferrable skillset.
To me it is a no-brainer decision.
Actually _Intel_ is picking up where Nokia left off, so… yeah.
They went with WP7 over Android. An untested, theoretical, ~A 1/4 ber-walled-off OS over the fastest-growing OS in that market.
I’m sure that has _nothing_ to do with their new CEO…
And Intel are well known for their mobile phone handsets … Oh wait.
Whether the new CEO oiled the wheels a bit is irrelevant … Windows Phone 7 is out there and it is working … Meego isn’t.
It is a mutually beneficial arrangement … Microsoft get marketshare … Nokia get an OS that can compete … which like it or not Meego wasn’t ready.
Whether they should of choose Android is another question.
I said to my mate .. “Nokia and Microsoft are teaming up on smartphone” … you know what he said … “Win”.
I said “well, there goes… Finland”.
Nokia’s dead. It’s not going to keep up with HTC, Samsung and Motorola at this point.
Done.
** sigh **
Learn to grow up … you sound like a teenage geek with a chip on his shoulder … maybe you are … I dunno.
I know, there’s a big difference between what’s right and what’s profitable.
That’s why I use the good old “dark side” concept to describe those who choose what’s profitable
It is a business … there is no “dark” or “light” side.
I work in a charity mate … and it is run exactly like a business. Even the guy who organises Volunteers … said that even people who put themselves out there are not doing it for purely altruistic means.
Forget about these romantic notions … because they don’t exist.
If you truly believe that, then you should buy a machine gun, start robbing children and then hang yourself before you get caught.
“People suck, we all just wanna fuck each other over!”
Your cynicism is… self-parody.
Stop twisting my words.
It isn’t cynicism, you guys are using a Starwars mentality when there isn’t really.
The fact is that most relationships that aren’t purely friendly … i.e. Employer / Employee there is agreement. Much like with volunteers … most of our volunteers are gaining experience so they can get a job somewhere else … we get good work for nothing and they get valuable experience.
As far as Apple is concerned…
Yesterday we had the Apple II, the Lisa, and the Newton. Today we have mandatory iTunes, no access to our own files, large iPhones which can’t make calls (“hey, we’ve got an idea which sells well, let’s make milions of copies with different screen sizes and connectivity !”), the App Store system, and the ipadification of OSX (“look, if people are stupid enough to buy a 10.1″ iPod Touch, they’ll love a 26″ one, right ?”). Take your pick.
You can’t compare the computing world of the 70s and 80s to today.
People’s expectations are completely different. The modern computer and phones can do pretty much anything you can think of … Back then … it was impressive to be able to see graphics on the screen.
Whether you like it or not the iPod/iPhone and iPad are good products.
Lets not forget Smart phones were shit before the iPhone came out. I had a nokia smart phone, it was a crap bulky thing, which is why I shunned smart phones until now.
I used the HTC Desire and it is nice to use, and I don’t feel like I was fighting it, why I ended up getting one.
It is only because the iPhone showed people people how to do it properly, that Android is that good. It got everyone arses in gear.
I am pretty much an OpenBSD and Microsoft Fanboy … but I give praise where it is due.
What was good about Amiga, c64 and probably many arcade machines, was that they were programmed in assembly and pushed to the limits. There was little or no os overhead, as the hardware was accessed directly. This again turned out smooth images, without “hiccups”, so commonly known in todays operating systems. However as os-jitter, the cause of these stalls, are lowered in modern operating systems, the feel and smoothness of these old systems are recovered, with full modern capability. I don’t think one should look to Amiga for that. Rather pushing the performance of os’s in that direction, seems to happen quite a bit on Linux. I’ve also heard people speak positively of the possible perfomance of more obscure projects, like TRON.
Look at RIMMs Playbook videos.
Amiga OS was written in C. not assembly.
Sure you could program in assembly, but that was not the common practice.
There was not ‘one’ thing that was good about it. It was a well thought out machine with both custom hardware that was ahead of it’s time and it’s own OS that was ahead of it’s time also.
Edited 2011-02-25 08:49 UTC
Actually, most of the original AmigaOS (the Kickstart and AmigaDOS) was written in BCPL, a programming language from the mid 60s (7 years older than C) that nobody except AmigaOS developers used anymore. It was not until 4.0 that they had completely rewritten everything in C.
exec.library (the (micro)kernel) at least was written in assembly. The source code for version 3.1 had been leaked a few years back.
As a former long-time Amiga-user I am not sure if I should laugh or cry about this news. Bill McEwen is spitting on everything the Amiga stood for.
Given their past financial history, this is the perfect partner for them.
We like to anamorphize technology. Almost everyone does these days. So it can hurt when a platform is destroyed or dies a slow death.
When that happens, it really gives you an opportunity to take a step back and put things into perspective. Things don’t matter. Brands put on things matter even less. People matter.
Take time to strengthen your human relationships with other people.
Maybe people who also are hurt by the techno-diss. As long as you keep in mind that it s the people not the things that matter.
Be inspired to make that same leap of creativity as the platform creators. Find wildly creative and driven people and do crazy things to make better products for people to live better lives.
Wow, so another hopeless attempt to capitalise on the Amiga name. Is the “Amiga” jinxed or what?
I have such fond memories of the Amiga. I learnt programming on it, from BASIC to 68k assembler. Did a fair bit of hardware “banging” myself (AsmOne/Trash’em One was my home.) The demo scene, BBS’s, games, OS … it was all Awesome.
One of the comments above drew reference to the smoothness of Amiga graphics.
I had a little giggle about this very topic the other day when I was watching GT5 load a circuit on my PS3.
On the load screen, there is scrolling text (listing the competitor names) which was stuttering very badly, resembling the scrolling abilities of a ZX Spectrum. It looked hopelessly amateurish. Eight cell processors guys! Eight! I know the programmer’s priorities lie elsewhere, but still…
Anyway, back to the topic on hand. I wish they’d just give up. The fondness I have for the Amiga lives on via emulators and magazine scans.
As far as an Amiga branded Android pad is concerned, I suspect most enthusiasts of the original could care less – unless it were something really spectacular. What are the chances of that? Terrific business plan guys. “Good luck” milking it for all it’s worth…
I think the main problem with GT5 and other console games with bad performance is that some devs can’t admit that the “next-gen” consoles are starting to get old, and that they can’t sell games based on “improved graphics” anymore because they have simply reached the limits of what they can do with this hardware.
If they would just focus on things like gameplay and scenario to the point where the user concentrates on these instead of graphics (like they do, say, on the DS, where the original DS can still run great games like Phoenix Wright and Ghost Trick), consoles would never display poor performance for their entire lifetime.
Edited 2011-02-25 07:28 UTC
What you have highlighted is what most console gamers have known since eternity … Console is on par with PC with power until PC catches up and is loads better near the end of the console’s lifetime.
At that point dev’s try to push it to the limit. For example Ridge Racer 4, Gran Turismo 2 and Metal Gear solid on the original playstation … don’t look that bad today considering their age (1999) and the power of the PS1.
I play Playstation games because I like the games on the platform and the platform.
Aren’t you the guy who made an intro called “D.O.C demo” back in the days? I had it on a compilation of old amiga intros, I liked it a lot back then.
Anyway, regarding the amiga, it was amazing back then. I learnt assembly and C programming on it, etc.
But frankly, the amiga brand has been turned into a joke only a few years after commodore’s demise, not just today.
It never really evolved after that, and neither did the people remaining in the amiga community (which included me for some years back then). Nowadays every single thing that was cool about the amiga has been done or superseded by something even cooler elsewhere.
Be wary of nostalgia and its ability to distort past things into looking better than they actually were.
Edited 2011-02-25 09:09 UTC
I wish I could say it was me – but sadly, no it wasn’t. I only ever coded some lame 10kb BBS intros and some half-finished raytracer experiments (chunky2copper technique.) All good fun though.
The demo you have in mind is called “Demons are forever.” It was producted by a German demo group called Dr.Mabuse’s Orgasm Crackings (D.O.C.) It’s still an enjoyable view today IMHO. You have a good memory BTW.
(Sidenote: Dr.Mabuse is a character from a couple of Fritz Lang movies.)
Good laugh for a day
I stopped reading Amiga web sites and moved on when BeOS R4 came out – it was everything I wanted the next AmigaOS to be.
Well, BeOS ist history now too, but by leaving the Amiga scene in time (still got a decent chunk of money for my A4000) and ignoring the disaster that happened since, the Amiga still lives in good memory.
Let’s be honest: it died with C=. All the companies since have just been smoke and mirror announcements with next to nothing delivered.
Who cares what Amiga Inc does? Not me, when I want a AMIGA joint, I smoke AROS
AROS is open for anyone with genuine interest in AMIGA-like OS’es, it’s open source and has come a long way the last 2 years. AROS is for people who want to make a difference themselves not just follow brands.
“That fun little computer that was miles ahead of its competition”
Sorry.. I call foul on this statement.. The Atari ST, STE, Mega2/4, TT, and Falcon… all spanked the Amiga in Graphical and musical. Atari poorly marketed it’s computers thus lost. Remember the Checkered bouncing ball demo of Amiga? the one that they claimed no other home computer can do. Funny… Atari ST was able to do it and more… they did the same with a bouncing Atari A that rotated and had a Scrolling rainbow pattern on one side and a checked pattern on the other… that was something that amiga at that time couldn’t do with it’s graphics chip.
Amiga compared to the PCs, C64, 8-bit Atari computers, and TRS-80.. yes.. no competition, but do not discount the ST and above….
Later ST’s were undoubtably more powerful, but by then the PC was already king.
When the Amiga 500/1000/2000 were in their prime, the ST didn’t stand a chance.
(Okay, I’m trolling, but I couldn’t resist)
You are joking, right?
I miss those playground Amiga vs. ST arguments (we had an Amiga but I was an Archimedes fan…)
Being an Atari Mega STe owner back in the day, I can totally disagree with this.
The Amiga 500 had far better graphics capabilities than the Atari ST. The only ones that could beat it were the TT030 and Falcon (and it was more of a tie on the TT030)
The Amiga has all sorts of custom resolutions, HAM8 mode, etc. The only thing cool the original Atari STs had were built-in MIDI. They could do a static 512 color picture, but the HAM8 would go up to 4096. The STe was basically an upgrade to try to compete with the Amiga better, with a 4096 color pallete and Stereo sound, but it still had the normal ST resolutions of 320x200x16, 640x200x4 and with a ‘high’ res monitor you could do 640x400x2.
One thing the Atari ST had over the Amiga was simplicity. Even a moron would have trouble not knowing how to load up software on it. Then again that also kind of what sucked about it, if you wanted to do things like multitask, you had to buy extra software, something the Amiga did out of the box.
But sadly, at the time of their release, they both kicked the crap out of Mac and PC, yet here we are, Mac and IBM PC prevailed. I’ve always had this theory that the crappiest technology always survives longer than the better one. Betamax vs. VHS. Amiga+ST vs. Mac/IBM PCs, Hair Metal vs. Grunge (though with music it really all depends on which group of suckers the RIAA can swindle), HD vs. Bluray (well, I guess that is differing opinions, I didn’t care either way, but would have rather not had one that Microsoft favored anyhow).
A lot of this is due to the USA. It seems to me the Europeans are just far more intelligent, or maybe just don’t bow down to name brands like we do. The Amiga and Atari computers were always far more popular over in Europe than in the US, which is odd, considering they were made from American companies.
You have to look at the system as a whole:
Beta in the U.S. was introduced when most TVs had only an antenna input – and no such thing as a digital comb filter.
The VHS cassette could record an entire movie or football game. Extended play matters when the cassette itself is a significant expense.
The Whiz-Bang features of the Amiga don’t matter in a market that is looking for a rugged and reliable office machine. The IBM keyboard.
They don’t matter to a developer who is porting his small business accounting system from CP/M to MS-DOS.
The MS-DOS PC was commercially viable alternative before the cloning of the IBM PC BIOS.
The OS was cheap and the wide-open competition in the hardware market would drive the platform forward relentlessly.
Yeah, it’s really frustrating that ‘cool’ technology isn’t often what the ‘cool’ kids want -_-
Meh. Maybe someday that’ll change. I hope nerds don’t go soft like the gearheads of yesteryear did.
“Yeah, I used to spend months carefully tuning every aspect of my car just how I wanted, but I decided to just buy some overbuilt muscle car on a 10 year loan. Sure, I couldn’t tune anything myself if I tried, and I’ll never use any of the power it has, but at least it gets terrible gas mileage”.
Sorry, went pretty far in that aside. I _am_ seeing that with the Apple people, though.
“Yeah, you have to sell them your soul to write programs for it, but the interface is really nice!”
No, it’s shiny. Shiny != nice.
The 68k line was cooler than the 286, but then the 386 brought more capabilities, if in a bit clunkier package.
The RISC CPUs were generally pretty cool, but it’s hard to out-pace Intel’s R&D.
I’m sorry, folks. The ‘invisible hand of the market’ is attached to a visible hand: money. Stick enough money behind something, and it wins, even if it’s made of fail.
Intel’s been too large for a long time. Same with MS. Between fear of change and lots of graft, the government has ignored, weakened, and ignored the now weaker anti-trust laws.
There’s basically no way to use proprietary software without feeding the machine that’s eating the tech world… So I don’t.
Man, I digressed, there. Should have saved some of that for my vlog…
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/7701/natamimx.jpg
Amiga’s OS was single user, that’s enough to dismiss any OS, including my once beloved RiscOS. Least it was preemptive, RiscOS wasn’t even that. Also, unless everything is brought under one simple abstraction, like “everything is a file”, again I dismiss the OS. Seems to me OS where really defined in the 60s, the whole “desktops are a new thing that require new OSs” was always rubbish. A OS always needed to do the same thing. Windowing is just something put on top. Over the decades all the desktop OSs are either gone or effectively gone, or been rewritten. They now all do what a proper OS should be able to do. The “limited hardware at the time” excuse doesn’t really wash because the first proper OSs ran on lower spec hardware then the first desktops. Now can we all have simplicity and feature parity with Plan9, the ultimate refinement of Multix. Lets forget the toy OSs of our childhood.
Not really: what matter is having a good security model (which Amiga didn’t have), but remember that many Windows PC are used in ‘single user’ mode, so there’s a big number of users which didn’t care for the ‘multiple user’ feature.
Well, that’s your right but Plan9 failed whereas Unix-like OS are successful so obviously there are not a lot of people who care about the ‘simple abstraction’ feature..
Well modularity has its costs: BeOS’s file system was partially designed so that the file browser could display quickly the thumbnails..
Depends if you consider performance a feature: IMHO all the mainstream desktop OS sucks because their responsiveness is far worse than it should be.
Plus there is the issue of security which is still much worse than it should be (no the screensaver application shouldn’t be able to *own* your PC).
It is a serious down point of Windows to me. Window can do it, but it’s general disabled. It’s a anti-feature to stop one copy of Windows being used by many. RiscOS and Amiga OS couldn’t do it at all. The security models of both lacked and I see as part of this.
Unix-like OSs have this simple abstraction to, it’s just not as cleanly done as Plan9. It’s what makes a Unix-like OS, Unix like. Even if it was from Multix.
Modularity is key. Mean you can use only the parts you need. It also means parts can be swapped, thus the whole Unix-like ecosystem of interchangeable parts.
Performance is important, it was one of the things that pulled me to Linux in the first place, but I’ll take a slow flexible OS over a fast inflexible one. As long as it’s fast enough, flexibility is more important.
Windows? The same thing that means I have to walk over to the machine I’m going to remote into and move the mouse if it’s been unused for a while? Ggggrrrr hate that.
Lolwut?
Just to be clear, I’m talking about people simultaneously logged in. You know, say, at least one other person remoting into the same computer that someone else is already sat at using. Windows apparently could do this, but it’s disable to ensure people buy lots of licences rather than have one big beefy machine running a single copy of Windows for everyone. Yes you can of course run a process as a different user, but that’s not the same. There has been weeks where daily I have had to get people to log off so I can remotely log in. In 2011…..ridiculous. If I could get the company to agree, universally installing cygwin and ssh would solve this for me…..
If you do these kinds of things with computers, then you’re smart enough to enable all this yourself. Normal users need not be bothered by it.
Windows NT is very much multi-user in every sense of the concept, and the fine-grained control it allows – if you take the time to learn it all – is absolutely positively insane.
It’s called Terminal Server and yes, without it only one person can be logged in at a time with RDP.
Well, you could just install an ssh server and log in as much as you like.
With Windows server 3 people can be logged in at once, the console and 2 remote sessions.
It’s a server, and the maximum is 3?
O_O
UH…
wow.
Not only Windows: I remember that there was also a screensaver application for Linux which was made to crack the PC on which it was installed..
I think that was discovered before bad thing happened, but only due to a mistake of the cracker not to any security mechanism of Linux..
Well, you’re lucky: we have dozens of OSs which are modular and not-very responsive (Linux distributions, *BSD, etc), unfortunately we have *no* responsive OS where the pieces (kernel and applications) are optimised together so that the endusers have a great experience.
There used to be BeOS but it’s dead, Haiku may get there in the future, but in the meantime there is none available..
That’s not what “single user mode” means.
Kudos to you.
The party line, but totally not justified. There is no excuse to stagnate the development of next-gen operating systems by assuming multiuser – which adds an absolutely insane amount of complexity – is The One Solution to security issues.
That is not a simple abstraction at all. I’d much rather have an operating system that knows what everything actually is, instead of picking the lowest common denominator (it’s a file) and then add loads and loads of abstraction layers on top to finally tell me ten billion million steps (and loads of memory and processor cycles) later that that file is actually a printer.
Again – don’t stagnate the operating systems world with 40-year old concepts just because you’re used to them. There’s ALWAYS a better solution, and dismissing anything just because you want your security blanket is short-sighted and destructive.
Edited 2011-02-25 10:45 UTC
Wait, weren’t we talking about Amiga OS, which has been stagnating since 1993? I know there have been more recent implementations but they are just newer iterations of the same thing.
There’s a difference between going in a different direction than the mainstream and not going anywhere at all.
Thom wasn’t advocating iterating/evolving operating systems from Amiga OS, he’s saying be opened-minded when exploring new ideas.
Thinking about it, the bit you quoted actually supports your last sentence.
Learning from 50 years of OS design isn’t the same as limiting yourself. Old isn’t automatically bad.
Yeah. I kind of agree with you. A printer isn’t a file.
As nice as it is to be able to just cat file > /dev/printer or cat audio.wav > /dev/audio, this isn’t actually very useful.
But on the other hand, as a way of providing an access handle to a particular bit of hardware, the file isn’t too bad of an idea. It really is just a handle just like in Windows you get access to particular hardware by using CreateFile on a “file” with various strange names.
Word.
I’m not surprised this isn’t highly ranked, but I am saddened.
I had the chance of visiting a nearby fair where they were showing AmigaOS4.1.1 (in september 2009) and was mesmerized to find out it still was 10 times more responsive than MacOS running on HW several times faster (near RTOS I kid you not).
Additionally, there are still several things/modus operandi today that I cannot understand why they weren’t “copied” in Windows/MacOS, so I would still very much like to get a fully boxed Amiga machine (hope the AmigaONE X1000 won’t be delayed further).
The developers have expressed the intention of introducing in AmigaOS what’s missing, while whats still missing in other OSs (several things if your’re in the know) wasn’t introduced in the last 20 years, and will never be.
As for the above icontain c**p…please…
Edited 2011-02-25 10:33 UTC
While still using a system following the idea of Commodore Amiga OS I am always happy that I left that name behind me years ago. I applaude the MorphOS team for their decision to make a clear cut in regard of names and logos.
In the beginning (ten years ago) I may have been a bit fond of the name, but today I think it is a relieve and I actually like the butterfly logo way more than the boing ball.
All in all I always wonder how many ppl are interested in the Amig name. For me it is the name of a computer that once was great, but disappeared when Escom went under. Literally it is a tardeark for failure. It was introduced 26 years ago, but was only the very first years successful (say till 92), most years it failed. I wouldn’t chose a name with such a bad reputation.
Here in Portugal. Supermakets sell skillet pan^A's, branded “Amiga”. even the logo is almost identical.
Dr. Mabuse: Yes, I look at the web these days, and imagine something a whole lot better, when I look at all the choppy animations, and simple layouts. Imagine a demoscene style production, when you entered a website.
Thom: “That file is actually a printer.” It’s all I/O. Having everything as a “file”, makes a lot of sense, with regards to permissions etc.
Btw, unknown/doc is michael kleps/refx these days.
Isn’t the *nix model a stream though, not a file? Even files are treated as streams IIRC. Maybe we’re talking about different things. In any case, I’m not sure it’s correct that any OS views a printer as a “file”; I’m reasonably sure that it would fall under a “device”, with designated addresses for signaling when to read and write, and buffers for memory. The printer driver may look like a stream to an application I guess, but that’s not how the OS sees it.
I’m interested in this; I don’t know the actual answer. Inform me.
Makes sense to who?
In Unix serial ports are files.
Files can be archived and loaded later for reading and writing.
Send me a copy of your serial port so I can archive it and load it later in case I want to write to it.
Yea that makes a lot of sense.
But it DOES make sense.
echo “print some text” > /dev/printer
Would print some text on paper.
So you need to send a string of text through your serial port.
echo “some string of text” > /dev/serial
Really simple and elegant. Or of course you use cat on a text file to output to the printer. Seriously, you can do so many cool things with the way Unix is built.
Sure, it makes sense for a lot of things, even serial ports. under the hood the same is true, in a way, for Windows when you look at the device path. It’s just a lot more obscure there.
It’s interesting to note though that network interfaces are NOT files on *nix. So not everything is a file.
it made sense in the in the context it was created – ie: simple devices, applications exchanging data (often between fork()’s of themselves, not even actual threads) uniformly via pipes and via files, and running in the shell which was the primary execution environment (so to present data to another console process or to present data to the user was the same)
but when a shell is just a frontend that can be either visual or textual, and when devices are not simple read/write ports any more, it actually makes more sense to let kernel and userland communicate via per object/device class differentiated (thus optimized, since the class-file and file-class double conversion is avoided) interfaces – and relegate the uniform treatment to where they really belong (individual shell tools)
windows uses the device path only wrt namespace management, does not apply the file abstraction to actual device handling
just because a different rationale is followed than the unix basing one, api’s are vaster and more varied and device classes are enforced, doesn not inherently mean “a lot more obscure”…
(are they not? i spposed they are open-/close-/write-/read -‘ed like any other file object) on the other hand, linux PROCesses are…
text files exported by the kernel…
I remember Windows device paths to be quite long, thus more obscure than /dev/ttyXX. Obscure does not mean worse, btw.
[/q]are they not? [/q]
No. There are no entries in /dev or at any other place in the filesystem for accessing network interfaces.
There’s this thing at the bottom of a comment that says “reply”…
No one will ever see anything you post as anything but some random comment unless you use it.
jabjoe: Definately not. In those times of limited resources, things were made simple and efficient. No need for obscure layers here and there.
jack_perry: files, streams, ports, whatever.
But why limit ourselves now?
My hardware is 4 years old running 4 database instances, sharepoint instance, 2 version of Visual Studio, Spotify, Skype, Eclipse and the biggest CPU/Memory hog of all Firefox, and Windows 7 is still responsive. Under Windows XP 64bit … it isn’t nearly as fast.
AmigaOS 4.1 – AmigaOne, Pegasos, SAM440, 460 and AmigaOne X1000 (multicore 2 gigahertz industri/military cpu)
Who said the Amiga was dead?????
LONG LIVE THE AMIGA SPIRIT WHICH LIVES ON PERFECTLY IN ALL THE ABOVE THINGS
What I am talking about is this.
http://www.google.no/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=os+jitter&sourcei…
It could be that they have reduced osjitter in win7, compared to XP. I’m on XP though, because software I am using, is not supported on later versions of windows.
Typically, osjitter on windows has known to be quite a bit. That means, if you have a frame every 20ms, and a process in the computer stalls the cpu, for 10ms, an audio/video presentation, such as a website, or an opengl application, will not have the resources to compute it’s frame, in a timely manner. And so, the animation becomes uncontinuous, and simple looking.
If you ever looked at the amiga’s “demoscene”, there were many graphic presentations, that were all smooth, and running at 60/50 fps. Even on a simple 7.14 mhz cpu. Yes, it used dedicated hardware, to help, but still, these things are simple compared to modern computing.
The question is, how is it that Windows can be so poorly designed, that even with a 100 times more powerful cpu, it still struggles to even display the simplest of animation, without incontinuities in the stream.
The cpu power is there, but the design of the OS, does not give continuous amounts of cpu to the app. And I doubt that 10ms stalls are worst case latency.
Look at this website for instance. How much cpu is used to display this? It can’t be much. Yet it is not smooth. !!!
http://www.bodhilinux.com/
I just tried that site from Linux (Lucid Lynx, with zenkernel.) It’s a little bit better. However it is not perfect. So yes, I think that is the big obstacle to overcome for modern OS’s. (Then people will stop moaning about old computers, and modern computing can become what it needs to be.)
o_O
First of all, I just viewed that on a linux machine, and it was very smooth. Latest Conkeror git version with Xulrunner 1.9.2 (same as FF 3.6).
A few little twitches, but it’s all done with standard web development tools.
Second of all, you can’t benchmark an OS’s performance based on the rendering performance of a browser?
That’s not even close to an accurate measure of anything but the performance of said browser in a that situation.
Hell, Ubuntu has so many services running… yeesh.
How obfuscated can rendering a webpage be? Btw, processes shouldn’t be a problem either. Renice browser to -19 should fix that. And maybe that helps a little, but it’s still skippy. Could be that current webstandards are utter crap aswell. There are probably better examples. The point I am trying to make, is that fine-grained chuncks of processing/multitasking must happen, else smoothness suffers.
Quite a bit, actually.
It’ll depend on the browser, how the browser interfaces with the underlying graphics stack (GL, Xlib, DirectDraw, D3D, Cocoa, whatever), whether or not that (part of the) stack uses the GPU, how well it uses it, if it uses GL, what version of the GL libraries is in use, what version of GL is in use, how _well_ a given browser works with all of this, how well the browser interprets JS, etc.
There are _many_ variables involved!
If you honestly didn’t know all of this you’re pretty amazing in that thinking you knew enough to comment process scheduling.
This is a fairly meaningless and overly-general set of statements that have no technical merit. You’re still only benchmarking a browser, not an OS. Did you think “if I renice it enough, it’ll be like no other processes are running”. That’s nonsense. The window manager still has to manage the windows, the desktop is still there, displaying icons, the panels are still there, there are still applications sending notification messages, and the notification area will still display them. Then there’s the fact that since the window manager that ubuntu ships with uses GL compositing your GPU/driver performance is going to be a _huge_ factor, and that’s just the graphical applications.
ls /etc/init.d
See all those services? Those are all running, too.
Oh, and any number of cron jobs.
Your argument has no merit.
AHAHAH You didn’t even click the right reply button.
Combine that with your spelling errors, and I think it’s safe to assume you’re chemically imbalanced, probably intentionally. Put down the substance before you try to argue. It’s counter-productive.
Edited 2011-02-26 02:19 UTC
Just to clarify, I didn’t notice that you actually said “obfuscated”.
I read it as “abstracted”.
I _hope_ that’s what you meant, because “obfuscated” means absolutely nothing in this context.
Why don’t you retort, and claim it’s “just the browser” BUT it’s all the processes in the background too. Clever
What?
First of all, you’re still not replying to anything in particular, so I have _no_ idea which comment you’re referring to.
Second, from the start I said that it’s a test of a browser in a particular environment, and that Ubuntu has a ton of services running.
Your terrible English cannot be the only reason you’re so far off the mark.
I poked at your one submission, btw.
What it describes is something called “an operating system” with “libraries” and “programs”.
Seriously. Read a few more books on computer science, programming, operating system design, memory structure, etc.
_then_ you can claim you know even close to as much as the Kernel devs.
You don’t even know as much as _I_ do, and I’m no expert.
You’re trying, and that’s good, but to quote Socrates, “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing”.
In other words, show a little humility, and realise you might not know everything.
Why don’t you reply properly in the right thread?
Yes, so you don’t know what this is, and is thus unable to reply. Once you realize how inane you are, you can reply.
I see no coherence in the naysayers remarks, to me, seems like he is taking his arguments from lala land, and all of a sudden. !?
And I am reminded that there are trolls, and even at OSAlert. And here I was thinking that such issues scared trolls away.
That first sentence is so grammatically mangled I’m not going to try to decipher it.
So you don’t understand what I’m saying, thus it must be false.
Wow.
“Naysayers”??? I’m pointing out clearly and precisely why what you’re saying is _false_.
This is _science and math_. There are true/false situations in science and math.
You’re amazing. I’m _genuinely amazed_ by how out-of-touch with reality you are.
You seriously just don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a problem with a solution: learn more.
It’s that simple.
P.S.
You’re the first Norwegian I’ve encountered with English skills this poor. It’s _shocking_.
This explains quite a bit though. To be this poor at English, you’d have to have been very poor at studying, as Norway has good schools, and English is standard study material. I know not every Norwegian speaks English, but quite a few do, and if you want to work in/study tech, you’d have to be a fool to skip it.
Edited 2011-02-26 05:05 UTC
What I discussed was osjitter. Just to make an example, not for this guy, but for others who are interested:
Recently there was a new development in the linux kernel, that slowed down midi interaction.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/2/22/59
It’s these kinds of developments, that needs to be reduced to a minimum. And I gave links to osjitter research earlier. And yeah, getting a little bit back on topic, it was the lack of jitter in the direct hardware/asm approach of amigaprogramming, that makes many think of it fondly even still today. And hope for a “new amiga” and get abused, because there will be no new amiga. Nobody does asm programming anymore. Nobody would use copper or blitter or whatever it was the amiga had again. It is simple technology now.
However if C is done right, it can produce smooth imagery too, however it seems to be a bit difficult, however many are pushing linux in that direction now. So the new amiga, is linux if anything. And for hackers, the GPL is a very interesting aspect of it aswell. As a former Amiga user, I can’t really say, that I’ve seen the hacking spirit preserved, better anywhere else, than with Linux.
EOF.
The browser is not the OS.
so calling it ‘osjitter’ is ludicrous. You have _no idea_ what the cause of that framerate drop is.
Actually, since scheduling is the cause of ‘os jitter’ multiple processes _do_ need to be taken into account (no, nice doesn’t have anything to do with this!!!)
You didn’t post a link to any research. It’s A GOOGLE SEARCH!!!
This is one of the THOUSANDS of results:
http://www.crmav.com/video/46/cycling_74_jitter_for_macintosh_os_x_…
I know that’s not what you meant for, but you didn’t say what _was_ relevant, either. You’re out of your gourd.
“The amiga did some demo programs at good framerates, but this website doesn’t look good on my new computer, so amigas did things better” is utter nonsense.
I’m not speaking against Amigas, asm or good programming practices. I’m saying your _example_ was utter nonsense, and you don’t actually _understand_ what you’re arguing for/against.
I’m starting to think you need medication.
Edited 2011-02-26 05:24 UTC
Wow you just contradicted yourself so many times. It’s not the OS, it is the OS. It is a process running, it is not a process running.
If you can’t see this, I guess you are just really really fragmented in your thinking.
I did also say that the website might not be the best example, but it illustrates the problem. And it is indeed perplexing to think that a computer with a 100times better cpu, and probably even more with regards to graphics h/w, can’t render this better. I mean, if we added the overhead of a compiler to it, say the compiler was quite bad, and was ten times slower than asm. So we should have comparable performance to an amiga at 70mhz. But no, we don’t even have that at 700mhz. (or 2.5ghz*2) I mean, even websites made in c64 basic should be running smoothly on modern computers.
I think actually I’d prefer that.
I can only guess that you’re having the same problem with English that you have with computers: you think you understand more than you do.
You claimed that the problems you’re experiencing with your web browser are the result of something that affects computer clusters.
I said that “you can’t claim this is due to anything happening at the Operating System level. There are many factors involved, including number of processes, library versions/capabilities, various programs, and number of processes running”, in various ways, numerous times.
That’s all this is.
You keep making more and more erroneous claims that have no basis in reality, and replying to things without paying any attention to thread structure, nor actually understanding the content of any given post.
For example, you’re jumping to the conclusion that the _compiler_ is the problem? Seriously, you have no idea what’s involved in something as complex, codebase-wise, as a cross-platform web browser, and once again, that one program is not the only issue, and you can nice it as much as you want, other processes will still run. OS Jitter affects performance of highly-complex, multiprocessor systems in cluster environments. Any affect on your desktop will be minimal at best, and only affect something with say, 8 cores. It’s what can cause an OS to not scale linearly as you add processors. FreeBSD used to scrore much better benchmarks on systems with 8+ cores than Linux. That’s not true any more, because much work has been done in recent years. Even then, that only comes into play when running flat-out on all cores.
I didn’t contradict myself once. You’ve not said anything that makes sense. Who’s the troll?
Also, WHAT?????:
Edited 2011-02-26 06:17 UTC
I’ll leave you to your world where OS-jitter is not an issue. It was not an issue before and is not an issue now. It has never been an issue for microsoft, and all the amiga users who talk about responsiveness and smooth animation are all mad.
Go make a buck on peoples ignorance.
Who said anything about money?
You’re _incorrect_ (or mad… or both).
Whatever might be causing websites to render more slowly than demos for the Amiga (yeah, Apples taste better than a space shuttle flies! Dogs are faster than aliens are intelligent, and birds fly higher than fish swim backwards), “OS Jitter” is not it.
If you’re running a browser on a cluster, you should be fired.
If you’re not, then your point is moot.
Read the research you “link” to, then have someone who actually speaks English read it, and tell you why you misunderstood it. Then you can get pissy with _them_.
Oh, since you cannot be expected to understand anything:
The parentesised statement, made up of nonsensical comparisons, is hyperbole. I’m saying you’re comparing two things that have no business being compared. Much like the proverbial “apples to oranges” comparison, you ninny.
Edited 2011-02-26 07:04 UTC
I just came to think about my c64, running at 1mzh. EVEN THAT could do smooth movement of sprites. IN BASIC. An interpreted language at 1mhz.
I think most people must have understood my points about osjitter now. So, go away, TheGZeus.
…
Apples and oranges.
Nonsense.
You are right that modern OS’ performance is terrible, but TheGZeus is right that your examples are incredibly poor.
If you said, as an example, that on some past OSs it was actually possible to experience smooth audio (not even video) playback and a perfectly responsive desktop while CPU- and HDD- intensive tasks are running, without hours of manual tuning, you’d have much more of a point.
In the same way as one might say that it’s ridiculous that Windows 7 64 takes up 1.5GB of RAM while Windows XP 32 takes up 256MB to do pretty much the same things : doubling the side of pointers alone cannot justify this.
Edited 2011-02-26 07:50 UTC
Amiga and C64 were not multitasking and the one process running had available the machine’s full capabilities. Add to this that perhaps the hardware was able to send interrupt instead to poll on a 18.2 tick/s software polling. Also you had not hundreds of brain dead process running in the background that consumed 200 MB of your computer memory just after boot time.
I understand what you mean in the sense that I used to work on Atari 32 bit computers like the Falcon030, a typical paint program weighted around 2 MB on the hard disk, so it was loaded in a matter of ms. PSP X2 weight something like 420 MB, so it’s normal it takes a load more seconds to start.
If you want to compare things, compare the whole ecosystem and not just random bits. Have you tried to run a demo on a PC ? theprodukkt (64 KB demo) runs just smooth on a low end atom processor, so I don’t really understand your naive benchmarking results.
Kochise
I don’t think he understands his naive benchmark results.
I think he came to a conclusion, saw some words somewhere that looked right, blamed that, then decided that everything he disliked was a good example of what he was blaming.
Basically, he’s completely mad.
I can understand he went mad on the news, “Protected by IContains” but protected from what ? The user base ? There is a company that promote, emphasis on the protection of a product that is not even available, sure that could run mad anyone. So please don’t use fool words, he has his problems, OSAlert readers were kind enough to offer him some help.
Kochise
I’m not sure where the joke ends and who it’s on so… yeaaaaaaah…
I remember reading an article in a magazine back in the early 90’s that claimed the Amiga was going to replace PCs and we’d all be using an Amigas in the office instead of PCs. I am still waiting to this very day – pmsl.
Yeah… No.
This story has run its course.