[gaius]

your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985

Haha in 1985 Amiga had a multitasking GUI desktop in 512k and 7Mhz. Now we have millions of times more computational power and struggle to deliver an experience as crisp and satisfying.

I wish people still made software like it was 1985, that actually used the full power of the hardware for something useful...

[spamizbad]

Yeah but Exec/Kickstart/Workbench was missing some basic niceties that are table stakes today:

- No process or kernel security (processes could rewrite kernel code)

- Processes could effectively disable the scheduler

- Supported only a single, fixed address space: both a massive limitation and a performance hack that made the system bearable to use

- Single-user

- No security model

There are embedded applications these days where not having these features are deak-breakers. Let me assure you: if you re-implemented the original Amiga OS feature set it too will be screaming fast. The tricky part is keeping it fast once you start adding protection and additional functionality on top of it.

And largely what happened when you tried to implement more complicated applications on top of these primitive systems is that they would crash the entire system, constantly.

[makapuf]

That and the fact that amiga was clean room design. IBM Pc was already old and even x86-64 won over itanium. Backwards compatibility has a cost but also gains. Amiga wasn't even compatible with c64.

[gaius]

That and the fact that amiga was clean room design. IBM Pc was already

Well the PC wasn’t backward compatible with CP/M so that’s an odd critique to level at the Amiga.

[makapuf]

Sure but "pc" at the time of amiga was already pc compatibles and at backward compatible with xt and IBM PC. Besides amiga was very optimized for 2D graphics. 3D story has been less rosey. But I would seriously welcome a new amiga. That wouldn't mean a specced up amigaos running pc. That would mean a radical new mobile architecture. Or Vr machine. Some fresh air On a radical, alien architecture. Belt CPU ? Gpu/CPU à la xeon phy ? Ram only? Dunno. Something crazy.

[pjmlp]

Itaninum only lost because Intel did the mistake to allow AMD to design x86 chips.

[makapuf]

That would mean itanium could have won only by a monopoly and that with open competition, backwards compatibility won.

[pjmlp]

Itaninum also had an emulation mode, while not perfect, they could eventually improved it.

Backwards compatible didn't matter in the mobile world, or for those screaming for ARM laptops.

Sometimes we can't just have nice things.

[gaius]

more complicated applications on top of these primitive systems is that they would crash the entire system, constantly

That’s chicken-and-egg. Why do modern apps with actually quite simple functionality need all this vast power, the GHz and Gb? Because it’s there. Why does software crash? Because the OS let’s it with nothing more than inconvenience to the user.

Amigas were actually quite usable, they were stable enough for complex software to be developed and real work done. Same for ST’s.