Harrison 08:47 23rd May 2009
I was just reading a page on wikipedia about preemptive multitasking and came across the following paragraph.
Originally Posted by :
Preemptive multitasking is a rare example of an advanced feature of the Amiga operating system which was not found on other desktops of a similar price range during the heyday of the Amiga and as a consequence supporters of the Amiga system tend to focus an emphasis upon its importance and in doing so tend to overlook deficiencies in the Amiga computer system which led to unresolved doubts surrounding its absolute usefulness as a professional computing platform and ultimately to its downfall.
An interesting point of view by whoever wrote this. But ultimately completely wrong as any deficiencies in the Amiga's architecture or design had nothing to do with the eventual downfall of the Amiga and Commodore.
What do you think?
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woody.cool 10:34 23rd May 2009
In my opinion, the downfall was Commodore's bad marketing!
Oh, and the fact that everyone likes a piece of crap (called a PC) lol
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Graham Humphrey 10:45 23rd May 2009
Certainly whoever wrote that is not familiar with the concept of commas and full stops.
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Bloodwych 08:01 24th May 2009
A load of rubbish - makes us all sound like uninformed fan boys, when we are in fact just fanboys of a fantatsic part of computer history!
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Cortona 10:56 24th May 2009
Yes, what a load of bilge. Doesn't define what is meant by 'professional computer system'. The Amiga was of course used professionally in TV post-production; it wasn't used professionally in offices because Microsoft/PCs had the required 'killer apps' already: spreadsheets and word processors. Well, I'm sure that's part of the story.
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woody.cool 11:43 26th May 2009
Originally Posted by Cortona:
Yes, what a load of bilge. Doesn't define what is meant by 'professional computer system'. The Amiga was of course used professionally in TV post-production; it wasn't used professionally in offices because Microsoft/PCs had the required 'killer apps' already: spreadsheets and word processors. Well, I'm sure that's part of the story.
I agree somewhat, but for the Amiga there was Wordworth and ProCalc, two decent office apps!
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hmmm what these deficiencies may be ? First thing that comes to mind is memory protection, virtual memory and stuff. (maybe a multiuser design ?) But they couldn't have implemented all these with the first workbench. Maybe with 3.1.
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Cortona 19:37 26th May 2009
Originally Posted by woody.cool:
I agree somewhat, but for the Amiga there was Wordworth and ProCalc, two decent office apps!
Yes, I've got Wordworth, did my A level Computing project write-up with it (when I wasn't playing First Samurai - I swear that game was partly responsible for my low grade). You really needed a monitor to get the most out of it, the resolution on a 14" portable TV made it rather grueling compared with using Word on a PC with a monitor.
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Harrison 21:02 26th May 2009
But with a monitor it was just as good at the time. I did all of my college and university (first 2 years) using purely Amiga's and their applications. Only in the final year of my degree did I buy a PC because I had to use PC only applications like Photoshop and Director.
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woody.cool 09:19 27th May 2009
Originally Posted by Cortona:
Yes, I've got Wordworth, did my A level Computing project write-up with it (when I wasn't playing First Samurai - I swear that game was partly responsible for my low grade).
"MY SWORD!"
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