Can someone tell me what makes "real" Amiga so wonderful that it's worth paying $1500 for an objectively outdated computer? What does legit Amiga do that something like, for example, AROS doesn't do?
Even at the height of its technical superiority, it was crippled for serious work. Its pixels weren't square in any graphics mode, and in the highest resolution mode you needed to endure flicker unless you had a special monitor.
I remember when our 512k mac's power supply died and we tried to use our (maxed out) Amiga for word processing we discovered the top-rated word processors became unresponsive with documents over 4-5 pages (WriteNow on the Mac was cheerfully handling hundred page documents with graphics). And its print quality was atrocious even setting aside the whole non square pixel problem.
Back then almost everyone was still designing for print, and the Amiga just wasn't cut out for that. It was a multimedia machine before there was any way to distribute multimedia to anyone else than other Amiga users.
Video production was a niche that was compatible with the Amiga's design, but working with analog video wasn't going to be mainstream ever... and for digital video, the Amiga was fundamentally underpowered.
These are the kinds of arguments against the Amiga that I actually heard: "Who would ever need 4096 colors?" "I don't need to use all those sounds" (coming from IBM PC owners whose computers could only display 16 colors and only produce bleeps and blops for sound).
The Amiga's real forte was games, pure and simple. It was a monster of a gaming rig, for the day, and a ton of gaming innovation happened on the platform. Gaming was a pretty mainstream activity for computer users even then, and Commodore completely flopped by not marketing the Amiga as primarily a gaming machine.
What I don't get: Why don't they use at least a customized case which doesn't look like a typical PC case (such as Apple does with the Mac Pro)?
I write this while sitting in front of a modern machine that has as much appeal as a kitchen appliance, yet I regularly dig out an old computer to revive old interests. It is irrational, since that modern machine can easily be used to explore those old interests. Yet the old computer gives me pleasure while doing so, so that is the route that I have choosen.
I loved my Amiga 500 & 2000 back in the day, and spent more on them than this costs although it was obvious they were never going to be main stream.
I wouldn't do it now, but good luck to those who do.
When it was launched there were PC clones with EGA graphics (16 colours), the Atari ST just launched which was a good computer and we were also outgrowing our 8-bit computers (C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum). Then, the Amiga was gem-like compared to the alternatives and I remember I was so in love reading colorful Amiga ads over and over: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/8a/49/ce8a...
But to be honest, I don't get why people still stick to it nowadays.
I'm absolutely convinced they can't produce anything on their Amiga 500 that can't be made on a $50 sbc just as much as the people I've spoken to are absolutely convinced that I'm wrong and just don't get it.
I think it's more a sign of prestige for them; like trying to argue that the durability and workmanship on the $1,000 designer t-shirt is indistinguishable in quality from the generic $10 one - this is also a losing battle.
It was a fantastic machine at the time. I enjoyed using it. It was a refreshing new take.
Today? Nah. There is no reason to revive almost anything from that era. The only things I have that survive the test of time are my HP-41 calculators and a rugged-as-f--k all metal shop vacuum cleaner that still works as new thirty years after I bought it.
I find it interesting that so many of the people making YT videos and in the current Amiga community don't seem old enough to have been there first time around! So it can't be just nostalgia.
What I really want is someone to reimagine a 3000+ prototype[0] for this decade and a modern Intuition. Then I'd probably impulse spend a lot of $. Of course that would cost someone a lot of R&D spend! It's almost inconceivable anything could recapture the magic though. :)
There's an interview from a couple of years ago with the guy who made the X5000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6nbQSOAA0 and his Amiga addiction.
I started out doing real programming on an Amiga and I took a LONG time to retire it. Wasn't for lack of trying...
For years after if I needed to do something useful I used the Amiga over Win, on my first couple of very expensive PCs, because it was an order of magnitude more productive. It felt faster, with endless virtual screens, despite the ludicrous MHz/graphics gap. It was actually faster at most real world tasks except those needing raw CPU loads. It was far more reliable ripping or writing CDs etc. You generally plugged any Zorro card in and it just worked - none of the faffing with interrupt jumpers and Plug n Pray/BSOD. I used it over Linux/BSD as the sw wasn't there.
It took until the XP era, and much expense, before the Amiga became pointless. I was delighted when the Macbook Pro arrived... I'd sold the 4000 well before then.
I still miss many aspects of it. Not because I am somehow stuck in nostalgia for the 90s, MHz over GHz or scanlines and flicker fixers, but because I feel it was, in many ways a far better starting point for modern computing - mostly Intuition, but also the approach to everything in the hardware design (pre 4000 anyway). If only they had developed over the years since...
I suspect, had Commodore lasted, that they'd have gone an OSX-like route - new processor (this was already planned as there was no future in 68k series) and reimagining of Intuition on top of nix, maybe BSD. It already had a rather nix flavour, ARexx and so on. Hopefully on something more interesting than just PC clone hardware, though I doubt it these days.
[0] Dave Haynie designed a machine that was another leap forward in 90/91 whilst AA was still being worked on (I think): early spec PDF: http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf
Medhi Ali wanted to cut cost above all, and make some crap PCs, so the world got the piece of junk A4000 and AGA instead. Oh, and a cost-cutting A600 that cost more to produce than the A500.