English Amiga Board - View Single Post

Matt_H · 21 August 2022, 17:02

Mac user here. I agree with this completely. The iOS-ification of OSX is infuriating to me. There’s nothing interesting about Mac anymore. No new interesting system utilities, nothing really pushing the envelope of what a computer can do from a productivity standpoint. It’s just “apps” and automation and hiding more and more of the underlying system from the user. The ironic part is that iOS was originally pitched as being OSX on a phone with the only difference being a touch UI. Instead it became a dumbed-down toy that somehow still managed to be a resource hog. The worst of iOS took over OSX instead of the best of OSX taking over iOS. Now Apple is even bringing that stupid “notch” to their Mac hardware. Ugh. There’s a decent chance my next computer will not be a Mac, but vendor ecosystem lock-in is a powerful force…

I don’t think the same thing would have happened if the Amiga survived. The biggest macro-level problem we have now is fragmentation of the platform - OS3, OS4, MorphOS, AROS, etc. That wouldn’t have happened if Commodore was still around because CATS was so responsive to developer needs, so we’d have unified APIs that met everyone’s use cases. There probably would have been a split when proper memory protection was added to the OS (like Apple’s OS9 to OSX jump), but other than that I think we’d be happily innovating on our AmiBooks and AmiPhones running full AmigaOS and not “aOS”.

Commodore’s developer guidance stressed the importance of supporting command-line, ARexx, and graphical interfaces to applications. I have every reason to believe they would have added touch at some point and/or APIs to automatically scale/adapt the GUI for touchscreens. One program, one code base, multiple deployment targets. Hypothetical “aOS” paradigms never would have taken over because there’d be no such thing. Amiga desktops, laptops, and mobile stuff all would have been developed in tandem using the same OS from the beginning - and users and developers would know that they could run their program on whichever device suited them with all features present. No Commodore-endorsed crippleware like Apple did with iOS v1 to split the platform.

21 August 2022, 17:02	#2
Matt_H Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 945	Mac user here. I agree with this completely. The iOS-ification of OSX is infuriating to me. There’s nothing interesting about Mac anymore. No new interesting system utilities, nothing really pushing the envelope of what a computer can do from a productivity standpoint. It’s just “apps” and automation and hiding more and more of the underlying system from the user. The ironic part is that iOS was originally pitched as being OSX on a phone with the only difference being a touch UI. Instead it became a dumbed-down toy that somehow still managed to be a resource hog. The worst of iOS took over OSX instead of the best of OSX taking over iOS. Now Apple is even bringing that stupid “notch” to their Mac hardware. Ugh. There’s a decent chance my next computer will not be a Mac, but vendor ecosystem lock-in is a powerful force… I don’t think the same thing would have happened if the Amiga survived. The biggest macro-level problem we have now is fragmentation of the platform - OS3, OS4, MorphOS, AROS, etc. That wouldn’t have happened if Commodore was still around because CATS was so responsive to developer needs, so we’d have unified APIs that met everyone’s use cases. There probably would have been a split when proper memory protection was added to the OS (like Apple’s OS9 to OSX jump), but other than that I think we’d be happily innovating on our AmiBooks and AmiPhones running full AmigaOS and not “aOS”. Commodore’s developer guidance stressed the importance of supporting command-line, ARexx, and graphical interfaces to applications. I have every reason to believe they would have added touch at some point and/or APIs to automatically scale/adapt the GUI for touchscreens. One program, one code base, multiple deployment targets. Hypothetical “aOS” paradigms never would have taken over because there’d be no such thing. Amiga desktops, laptops, and mobile stuff all would have been developed in tandem using the same OS from the beginning - and users and developers would know that they could run their program on whichever device suited them with all features present. No Commodore-endorsed crippleware like Apple did with iOS v1 to split the platform.