Deficiencies in the Amiga computer system

[Harrison]

I was just reading a page on wikipedia about preemptive multitasking and came across the following paragraph.


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?

[woody.cool]

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

[Graham Humphrey]

Certainly whoever wrote that is not familiar with the concept of commas and full stops.

[Bloodwych]

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! :D

[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.

[woody.cool]

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!

[coze]

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.

[Cortona]

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.

[Harrison]

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.

[woody.cool]

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!" :lol: