Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

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I was a huge Amiga fan in the 80s, but I'm really not seeing anything beyond nostalgic value for the brand in 2015. That value is strictly limited in cash terms.

When Jobs came back Apple stopped being beige and started producing fun, quirky, colourful computers with iconic visual design. Jobs didn't try to re-release the Apple Mac - he tried to produce a product that had the USP of the original Mac, but with newer technology and better design.

A successful Amiga reboot would have to reinvent the Amiga difference and not just produce something average that happens to run AmigaOS. You'd have to introduce technology maybe five years ahead of the market mainstream and dramatise it with show-stealingly awesome demos.

That's a hard thing to do in 2015 - possibly harder than it was in 1985 - and anyone planning to do it probably won't be aiming at any of the current computing form factors.

Totally agree with you. As I mentioned in another comment, I'd like to kind of rethink things on the software end (and possibly the hardware end if that were in the budget). Anyhow, I doubt I'd be involved in such a thing with current obligations stretching out several years already, but it is nice to think about. :)

The Raspberry PI is the Amiga of our era.

I see the Pi as more like a Spectrum. The Amiga of our era is, well, Apple. Yet Apple seems to have lost focus on desktop users.

Apple does in no way capture the imagination like the Amiga did in the 80s, for most people it was the first interaction with a "real" computer, pure magic.

Apple is just more of the same.

There's no Amiga of our era. When I got my Amiga 500 in 1988, I was blown away: My jaw literally dropped. This was the future, years ahead of schedule.

Apple has had some awesome, amazing products, yeah. But it's all incremental.

I was an electronic tech in the air force back then and a buddy and I disassembled a couple of Sony laser disc players for the lasers. We got a pair of servos and created a 2 way mirror deflection device. We used the STEREO output of an Amiga 500's audio to control the servos' deflection, one channel for each servo/direction. With a little programming, we were able to "paint" a picture on the wall with the laser.

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