mikes - "Like Xenophon and Penguinosto I owned 3 Amigas and still gaze fondly at the Amiga 4000 still sitting under the desk. Amiga users can still chuckle at the stale hype of both PC and Apple, and reminisce about the advanced machine we once had that is still years ahead of the present generation of consumer machines. I reluctantly joined the Mac camp after Amiga's demise and am glad I didn't go the other route. "

I sold Amiga's from their first release, wrote code and developed hardware for the beasts. I loved the Amiga. I still have a few that run (1000's, 500's and a 2000). There is a lot that can be said about the Amiga... but two persistent myths keep cropping up:

That the Amiga ever had a prayer of being mainstream

That the Amiga design was ahead of the current generation machines. hell, the Amiga design fell behind right around the 486 generation of PC systems and it isn't even remotely competitive now. The co-processors were a nice touch - but the modern graphics cards stomp all over the power of the dedicated Amiga chips - the chip ram/fast ram thing was a cute hack but doomed to be obsolete almost instantly and the processor itself was anemic after a year or two.

The Amiga was nice, but it isn't even remotely competitive with the current generation of consumer boxes... or the last generation... or the one before that.

1Freon1 - Hate to sound like a PC zealot, but the latest Mac marketing campaign looks like it was built based on the knowledge that most Mac users are computer ignorant. They may as well replace the commercial with some guy saying: "Spend $1000 more on this slower system, because you are too stupid to use a computer".

Well yeah. But what I find even more interesting is that a lot of these people were paid to switch, and it isn't at all clear they they actually USE the Macs they were given in exchange for their 'testimony". Sounds desperate to me.

Of course, I don't think the point is to sell Mac's to new users. I think the point is to take potshots at the PC crowd to make current Mac users feel all warm and fuzzy while Apple switches the OS :)