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Advances for its time is an understatement. In marketing, people are trying to sell you an experience, i.e. iOS is the experience of power and simplicity, Toyota is the experience of affordable reliability, etc. Well Amiga had almost no marketing, but anyone who used one seriously still have a fresh memory of that powerful experience of being in the future, making graphics only accessible (at the time) using 6 digits computer equipment, audio sampling and playback so easy a 12 year old could compose his own tunes, watching babylon 5 and trying to recreate space scenes in lightwave or other 3d software using only a few megs (few MB, as under 10!). Emulating a Quadra in software, faster than the actual Quadra using the same 68040 cpu, playing back video in real time when PCs were starting displaying colors, etc. For some others, the demo scene, copy parties, gaming, BBSes, first coding, electronics projects, name it. For me it was all of it, so yeah, powerful experiences that I don’t think I will ever see or live again because of the nature of where and how technology is heading. Last time I got excited with something with the same experience potential was when Oculus launched their kickstarter, received my DK1. Wow. New paradigm shift… but Facebook bought them and that was it for me after the CV1. So we’re going back to our first love, nostalgic, stable environment and comforting :) It doesn’t do stuff better than today’s machine, but the fact that its still usable in 2021 and that there’s still a lot of development being done to keep it fast and geeky shows you how powerful the experience was for all of us. I’m happy I was alive and a kid at that specific timeframe, because being a kid today I would probably not have 80% of the tech skills I got now if it wasn’t for the Amiga, forcing me (as in fun) to understand everything low level and make me a better problem solver and expand from graphics, coding, electronics and creativity to cross-link disciplines. Now the only last thing exciting I can see before dying is going to space, when prices are down by a notch. Kids today won’t live an Amiga experience, but will probably be able to go to Mars. I’m glad I won’t be nostalgic over angry bird, an xbox or an iphone! Now I feel the urge to play that video toaster vhs demo…again. lol. |