spankibalt

Damn, quite some brutal matchups! My eternal champion spits fire, runner-up is the Mini. :)

Speaking of documentaries, there's also Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters (2011) [1], which deals with the Classic Tetris World Championship.

1. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1836974/]

> I don't know if the dominance of the PC was a foregone conclusion by 1985.

I firmly believe it was, as it's the philosophy (i. e. the open architecture) that gave it such a headstart that the competition couldn't have catched up. Keep in mind what an open architecture really means in the world, i. e. not just the West.

> Failing the growth of that market in this counterfactual world arguably the A2000 and a bridge board was probably the first Amiga that could have seriously taken-on the IBM PC.

Pitting an already well-established and rapidly expanding open architecture and Commodore's first foray into an open architecture against each other wouldn't have, and indeed didn't, play(ed) out in the latter's favor.

The A2000, a workstation-class machine, arrived in March '87. Too late. Around that time Compaq had already sold around 25,000 of their first Deskpro 386 machines, which hit the streets half a year earlier. According to Michael Geran of E. F. Hutton & Co., Compaq sold 90,000 Deskpro 386 computers in the second quarter of '87 alone.

The bridgeboard was an option for cost-conscious operators, especially those with small businesses. They were well-received especially in West Germany where the A2000 sold well. Their limiting nature and performance wouldn't have made them relevant.

> I think a stronger Amiga marketing presence could have killed Macintosh.

That is an intriguing possibility!

> Their combined influence might have actually given the IBM PC and Macintosh a run for their money.

Not a chance, I think. Combine both and you still would not have beaten the sound philosophy, openness, speed, and flexibility of the IBM PC & compatibles. Ironically, to increase your chances massively, you'd needed to have enhittification (with its preference for locked-down rubbish antithetical to general-purpose computing) already dominating the market. Even as Amigas and Ataris were much more open than their cousin's terrible grandchild of today: Apple. A platform which many Amigatari nerdlingers of yesteryear gravitated to...

Gud lorde, don't be daft. PPW matters until it hits a point where any optimizations above that line are of much less importance to some people (e. g. me) than other specs. Not to speak of necessary attributes completely absent from your PPW dream machine, which indeed negates PPW considerations on a per device/device-class basis. Which excludes optimizations for microprocessor series. It ain't rocket science.

Well, since an adequate cooling solution is a part of a machine's feature set for me, my point still stands.

Let me appropriate and rephrase a sentence from earlier in the thread: "performance per watt doesn't matter at all if the combination of the machine's feature set, both in hardware and software, as well as form factor, is essentially useless to you".

> The ghosting on the original Game Boy did not blend pixel boundaries and did not affect static images.

It still gives you, especially when factoring in the condition of the STN screen, a "fuzzy" picture and with its own lo-fi glow, analogous to a CRT setup. Which was the point. I owned a brick, from 1992 onwards.

> It looks nothing [...] like a zoetrope (which has sharp images and reasonably low sample-and-hold blur because of the strobing).

"Sharp images" is certainly not the experience I had when looking through 'em at country fairs back in East Germany in the mid-to-late 80s.

And not just that; invoking the Game Boy here is not the closer many people think it is, given that its STN LCD screen was fuzzy (e. g. ghosting) yet also had this distinct, subdued lo-fi glow, almost like looking through a zoetrope. Somewhat analog to lo-fi CRT setups.

> All of them will. [...] It’s already being used everywhere without “the wider public” even noticing.

Doesn't your lot ever get tired of the intellectually lazy, rubbish absolutisms you peddle? Same goes for the projections; just because you slop it, doesn't mean everyone will.

East German here. I have never met East Germans who called their home country Ostdeutschland before the Wende; that was very much a West German thing, and even then not as widespread as one might think (i. e. "DDR" was the much more common name amongst them). After the Wende it became (more of) a thing for Easterners as well, especially in context with the identity: Ostdeutsche(r).

Nice strategically-placed pussy.

The keyboard layout is terrible on account of its misplaced trackball. There's a special hell reserved for people who design keyboards with trackballs below the numpad; that shit needs to be situated either in the middle of the typewriter keys, or directly below the space key(s), in line with the golden ratio and with some space to rest one's wrists.

> The opposite of ordinary is, of course, extraordinary.

Not just that: The ordinary is also the trivial, while the extraordinary is the relevant. In other words a dichotomy of who does not matter... and who does. And in the words of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".

It doesn't get much clearer than that.

No need to go to Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, once required reading in many a school where I'm from; the logical conclusion and application of polysemy [1], amongst other things, should get the ball rolling just as well.

1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy]

> Programming can be art.

On that at least we agree (ignoring the rubbish about "AI", unless it describes an artificial intelligence with at least peer-level (i. e. human-level) agency, and not a language model). The same goes for the ridiculous, but for chatbot lovers certainly convenient, notion that art stops being art because money (or some other form of compensation) changed hands. That's just a reheated version of the tosh incompetents threw at artists since time immemorial. I remember the last time when it was very en vogue: the pathetic "anti-art" movements of the 90s.

And programming? Processes and their manifestations, depending on definitions of course, can indeed be art. Just like writing and its manifestations (e. g. poems, novels).

Nothing ever is just a tool. Saying that X "can just be a tool" is a fundamental violation of that statement; saying then "X can be much more than just a tool" is a violation in form of a contradiction. It's very easy to parse...

> AI can be just a tool. [...] But AI can also be much more than a tool, [...].

Contradictio. Going back to Seven...

> AI can be just a tool.

Nothing, ever, is just a tool.

It is, if a little bit overcomplicated and therefore prone to failures. HP had a competitive product in the HP x2 G4 detachable graphics workstation, which already conforms to a superior form factor: a 2-in-1 detachable. These days they churn out smallish 3-in-1s... but from a pro's perspective it's just machines full of bad compromises, complete with fugly gamerbro branding. I had hoped Framework would pick up the slack, but they bungled it with their underperforming F-12.

Eh, thickness doen't really bother me much as long as it's within reason as maintainability/repairability demands it. I just don't see a need to integrate a keyboard into the chassis. Unless you go for a T-hinge or ezel-style convertible. But why would you, when you can design a detachable, a form factor that's much more versatile?

And don't get me started on integrating (non-removable) gaming controls, or the terrible visual design that screams "I AM a GAMER!1!!". That might float for a device aiming for that specific market, but is a complete no-go for business professionals.

The funny thing is... Acer already had a rather excellent pro design: the ConceptD 7 Ezel Notebook [1]. Wacom EMR, Xeon W CPU, RTX 5000, 32 GB ECC-DDR4, two SSDs etc. Keep Wacom EMR, exchangeable ECC-RAM, dual-SSDs. Miniaturize to flicker-free DCI-P3 screen between 8 and 13-inches. Offer good support. Done.

1. [https://store.acer.com/de-de/conceptd-7-ezel-notebook-cc715-...]

Acer following in Lenovo's footsteps with bizarre, overcomplicated contraptions.

The ideal form factor is already on the market for a productivity device like this: the 3-in-1 detachable. Make it maintainable (user replaceable battery, RAM, and two SSDs), get Wacom on board for some EMR magic, and add a pogo-pin attachable and Bluetooth-connectable keyboard folio that is essentially a modern IBM M4 or M4-1 Space Saver with trackpoint, trackball or a recessed analog stick. Have a nice docking option, too. How hard can it be?

Never had a personal smartphone, just work-issued ones that usually stay on-location after a shift. Yeah, it can drive people up the wall. I don't care lol.

> [...] I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years.

I'd buy a classic keyboard case x86 (with PCMCIA card slot, Enhanced Personal Computer Keyboard layout plus integrated trackball), preferably made to last, made out of metal. Sadly, no one makes decent cases for something like a Vortex86. It's either weird mini towers to appeal to the nostalgia of the Old Breed, or cheap 3D-printed contraptions in the vein of stompboxes (for MiSTer implementations). Sad.

> [...] a C128. But for the latter the majority of time was spent in C64 mode.

Did you make use of CP/M applications? I often wonder how well that worked back in the day; one of my best friends had a Commodore 128, but used it exclusively as a 64 as well for his pal across the street owned a Brotkasten (breadbin).

Well, at least you got to experience the "innocent" and magical beginnings of the extremely integrated general-purpose computer, still very open to tinkering. Its overspecialized modern logical conclusion, and I'm not talking about the retro scene here, is not something I want to be associated with.

My personal computing life began much later, in the early 90s, in a very strange place filled with people whose very personal philosophies, and computer experiences, were a much better fit for x86 land. But this is something you rarely see explored in the thinkpieces that often make the rounds here.

Yeah, I know. I just consider that "vertically integrated", or more precise closed system, approach inferior for general purpose computing.

Hire somebody who's got at least a modicum of understanding of (web) typography.

Small hint: A moving background layer makes reading supremely annoying, and for some people even (virtually) impossible.

GPC, eh? :)

Careful... overspecialize (overintegrate), and you breed in weakness.

You talk of vertically integrated contraptions. What are they for?

> I'm just casually familiar with guns, if I saw an AR-15, I'd call it an AK-47. Or a machine gun.

Okay. Sure. Just as there are people who call(ed) every video game console, or even home computer, under the sun "a Nintendo". I wouldn't call that casual familiarity... but I'm not here to argue about it.

> It's good to have a fandom.

I s'pose. If you've thought that's me you're sordidly mistaken; I'm not a gun afficionado but just somebody who's got to shoot short- and long-barreled guns to keep my weapon's permits, which I need if I ever have to carry one on the job. I would describe myself as casually familiar with guns, not more.

> I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition.

A "yes" on the AK, and a "no" on the Glock.

The AR-15, incl. its variants, isn't called "America's Rifle" for nothing; it's the West's (tm) (cultural) analogon to the AK. Make the test and ask some "normies" to pick out an AR-15. Then do the same for the Apple products. I doubt many will be able to pick out an Apple II.