We all know the original Amiga was far ahead of its time, and the Amiga really doesn’t need more retrospectives and glazing. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t want more Amiga retrospectives and glazing.
I’m not sure I even saw an Amiga in person until 1987, but I knew just from reading about it that I wanted one. I wasn’t able to make it happen until 1991, so I was pretty late to the game. But even in 1991, an Amiga felt like living in the future. I could load several programs and switch between them effortlessly, with the only limit being the amount of memory I had. I could connect to a BBS with a terminal program, start a download, then switch it to the background, fire up a word processor, and do my homework while the download was happening. In some cases, I could even fire up a game and play a game while a download happened in the background. I could download stuff while I played Civilization, which was pretty great.
↫ David L. Farquhar
It’s 2026, I have an incredibly powerful Linux gaming computer, but since I grew up on DOS and Windows, to this day, I still feel the need the close every other application before launching a game. I don’t need to – modern operating systems handle such things just fine, mostly – but it’s so ingrained in me it’s hard to drop this habit. I wonder if people who grew up with more capable computers than whatever DOS nonsense I grew up with are less inclined to do things like this? Or did memory constraints act as an equaliser?
Anyway, the linked article doesn’t mention it, but the Amiga is still, somehow, going relatively strong for a platform that’s supposed to be dead. Modern(-ish) hardware is getting a bit harder to come by, but AmigaOS 4 and especially MorphOS are still actively being developed, and even running them in virtual machines on x86 has become about as easy as it could be.
I still have and use my A1200, it’s set up just behind me, It has a few modern bits inside but in all the important ways it’s the same machine. The community for them is very much alive and quite active with new hard and software/games coming out often.
When I got mine I never expected I might still be using it at my age, I might still be using it after I retire at this rate 🙂
A few things I appreciate about it, Mostly consistent UI, Visible buttons, borders, scrollbars etc, Each time I boot it is exactly the same as the time before. And fun, It’s fun to use.
I never thought I would have longed for visible scrollbars, but then I didn’t think of how user-hostile Microsoft could be.
I still force close apps on phones. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Funny enough younger ones do the same.
WorknMan
Yeah no kidding.
I just got a pixel 8 phone to run graphene os and used it for the first time…
I’m finding the lack of navigation buttons extremely problematic. Part of that is habitual, but even now that I’m aware of gestures, I’m consistently triggering them unintentionally because many android applications had already been using the same swipe motions to switch app panes. I guess I have to be a lot more careful not to trigger gestures now but a huge part of the problem is that since these gestures are done in the blind I don’t know what’s going to happen before I do them. Whereas previously I’d instinctively flick the screen to check if there’s “next page”, now on graphene os I’ve already exited so many applications by mistake.
It’s been less than 24 hours, so maybe it’s something I can get used to, but my honest impression so far is that it’s an inherently flawed feature to have the same gesture execute multiple mechanics with no visual indication to tell which mechanic is in effect….grr.
That said, I’m now a pround graphene os user, yay! Or at least I will be once I move everything from my old phone.
I found a setting to change it back, so I don’t have to change my habits 🙂
One of the reasons I wanted graphene was to be able to create a separate environment for play store to stop google from tracking everything. Although I was able to install the google app store and services in a new container, I learned that google absolutely refused to create a virgin account on graphene os. I ended up having to use an account that was already associated with my phone number. When I searched the web I found tons of users encountering the exact same thing, google want your data and will block access to play services in order to get it. Obviously it’s not graphene’s fault, but it does means that even when you create separate isolated containers on graphene, google can track across them using the phone number. So it’s less private than I was hoping. I might try to use graphene without a google account like I did with lineage, but it does mean sacrificing applications that strictly require google play services. At least containers can limit google’s reach.
” … to this day, I still feel the need the close every other application before launching a game. I don’t need to – modern operating systems handle such things just fine,”
Except when they don’t, as per you comments on the obscene resource usage of “modern” applications for modest workflows.
Sory but is not nostalgia when i run BeOS on my quad Xeon 900/2. It is an actual joy to use in Haiku and Linux, But to top it off of course i have a aureal vortex 2 gold sound card and a voodoo5 5500.
It can do almost anything i need, the wattage is insane though,
But the feeling of running a maxed out self built 48 core or as now 196 core system is nice. But i have no sentimental value for those that can not run BeOS., i never got past 16 cores in BeOS, but with a little help with begasus and jessicah i managed to get the 48core 96 threads monster running just fine in haiku. Hugs to you both.