No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

SilverSlimer wrote:
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install Windows
3.1?

Because Microsoft were working together with IBM to develop it as the
future for Windows. However, they bailed and developed/focused on windows
95 and NT instead.

It was a good OS but had no applications. The IBM office application that
came with it "works", I think, was awful.

On 2018-11-06 2:06 p.m., Chris wrote:
SilverSlimer wrote:
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install Windows
3.1?

Because Microsoft were working together with IBM to develop it as the
future for Windows. However, they bailed and developed/focused on windows
95 and NT instead.

Yes, but that happened around 1989 if I remember correctly. Microsoft
was cautious and convinced IBM that it was planning to sell Windows as a
complement to DOS but not a competitor to OS/2. It's amazing, looking
back, how IBM was able to get fooled _twice_ by Microsoft.

It was a good OS but had no applications. The IBM office application that
came with it "works", I think, was awful.

At least it came with one at a time when office suites had to be paid
for and cost a fortune in many cases. It was a choice between IBM Works
for free with OS/2 or DOS with WordPerfect or Microsoft Office for a few
hundred dollars. It turns out that people preferred to spend the few
hundred.


--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

On 2018-11-06 2:17 p.m., Alan Baker wrote:
On 2018-11-06 10:35 AM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-06 11:55 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.

Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off.

yes it was.

The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the
PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting
product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install
Windows
3.1?

in other words, windows was a factor.

Only on OS/2's demise, not on the PS/2's.



Without OS/2, there wasn't really any good reason to buy a PS/2...

Nah, I don't believe that's correct. Despite the fact that the PS/2
introduced technologies which didn't catch on at first (PS/2 ports) or
at all (MCA), it doesn't change the fact that those technologies were
very good in general. Additionally, PS/2 computers were remarkably
sturdy despite their high cost. You can still find videos on Youtube of
people opening up PS/2s from three decades ago which work as well as
they could.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:51:05 -0500, SilverSlimer wrote:

On 2018-11-06 2:17 p.m., Alan Baker wrote:
On 2018-11-06 10:35 AM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-06 11:55 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.

Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off.

yes it was.

The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the
PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting
product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install
Windows
3.1?

in other words, windows was a factor.

Only on OS/2's demise, not on the PS/2's.



Without OS/2, there wasn't really any good reason to buy a PS/2...

Nah, I don't believe that's correct. Despite the fact that the PS/2
introduced technologies which didn't catch on at first (PS/2 ports) or
at all (MCA), it doesn't change the fact that those technologies were
very good in general. Additionally, PS/2 computers were remarkably
sturdy despite their high cost. You can still find videos on Youtube of
people opening up PS/2s from three decades ago which work as well as
they could.

The PS/2 was years ahead of it's time.
Bus mastering that could be controlled and customized in BIOS using the
driver disks that came with the hardware was only one advantage.
Those machines were rock solid but very, very expensive and designed for
business not home use.

As for OS/2, the CEO of IBM at the time seperated the business units and
made them autonomous and fully responsible for their own profit.
This resulted in the consumer PC division, Aptiva I believe, selling
Windows with PC's instead of OS/2. Of course this translated into "if IBM
doesn't even load their own OS/2 on their own PC's it must suck".

IBM basically proved, once again, that they were incapable of marketing
anything to home users.

On 2018-11-06 6:05 p.m., Alan Baker wrote:
On 2018-11-06 2:51 PM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-06 2:17 p.m., Alan Baker wrote:
On 2018-11-06 10:35 AM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-06 11:55 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.

Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off.

yes it was.

The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did
a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA
as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the
PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but
you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting
product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it.
Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install
Windows
3.1?

in other words, windows was a factor.

Only on OS/2's demise, not on the PS/2's.



Without OS/2, there wasn't really any good reason to buy a PS/2...

Nah, I don't believe that's correct. Despite the fact that the PS/2
introduced technologies which didn't catch on at first (PS/2 ports) or
at all (MCA), it doesn't change the fact that those technologies were
very good in general. Additionally, PS/2 computers were remarkably
sturdy despite their high cost. You can still find videos on Youtube
of people opening up PS/2s from three decades ago which work as well
as they could.


But "their high cost" was the problem.

Agreed. I never owned a PS/2 myself but my uncle did and it was my first
exposure to a PC. I bought the eventual PS/1 which taught me the basics
even though it wasn't a very good PC.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

On 2018-11-06 6:14 p.m., nobody wrote:
On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:51:05 -0500, SilverSlimer wrote:

On 2018-11-06 2:17 p.m., Alan Baker wrote:
On 2018-11-06 10:35 AM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-06 11:55 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.

Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off.

yes it was.

The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the
PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting
product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install
Windows
3.1?

in other words, windows was a factor.

Only on OS/2's demise, not on the PS/2's.



Without OS/2, there wasn't really any good reason to buy a PS/2...

Nah, I don't believe that's correct. Despite the fact that the PS/2
introduced technologies which didn't catch on at first (PS/2 ports) or
at all (MCA), it doesn't change the fact that those technologies were
very good in general. Additionally, PS/2 computers were remarkably
sturdy despite their high cost. You can still find videos on Youtube of
people opening up PS/2s from three decades ago which work as well as
they could.

The PS/2 was years ahead of it's time.
Bus mastering that could be controlled and customized in BIOS using the
driver disks that came with the hardware was only one advantage.
Those machines were rock solid but very, very expensive and designed for
business not home use.

As for OS/2, the CEO of IBM at the time seperated the business units and
made them autonomous and fully responsible for their own profit.
This resulted in the consumer PC division, Aptiva I believe, selling
Windows with PC's instead of OS/2. Of course this translated into "if IBM
doesn't even load their own OS/2 on their own PC's it must suck".

IBM basically proved, once again, that they were incapable of marketing
anything to home users.

The decision to put Windows on IBM machines has to be the dumbest thing
I've ever witnessed. I was one of those people thinking that if even IBM
doesn't use OS/2, it has no chance.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

On 2018-11-07 9:16 a.m., Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-11-06 20:29, Alan Baker wrote:

Hence my statement: without OS/2, there was not sufficient reason to
pay the high cost of the PS/2.

OS/2 was ahead of its time, too. Still is IMO. It used a VM to run
Windows better than MS-DOS did. Linux would be the winner of the OS wars
if that facility was baked into its kernel: Imagine being able to run
any OS under Linux....

But wishing doesn't make pigs fly.

Nor does it produce rational Wolf K posts.


--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A whole bunch of lies and it's trivial to verify nowadays.

nothing about it is a lie.

The Amiga was first released as a production tool despite the fact that
it was first envisioned and became somewhat of a console. Look at the
Amiga 1000 and you'll know that it looked like and was very much a
production computer. That the Amiga 500 was eventually released and
marketed in the same fashion as the Commodore 500 (and available on
store shelves _everywhere_ despite what you claim) does not change that
it was produced to be a workstation and simply became a console because
that's what Commodore knew how to sell.

complete nonsense.

major software developers ignored the amiga. businesses definitely
ignored it. very, very few computer stores sold it. even the mac had
far more traction than the amiga ever did. it was a toy.

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os, not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.

hobbyists liked the amiga because it was cheap and had some games.
otherwise, it was nothing special. the amusement of the bouncing ball
demo wore off very, very quickly, as in minutes.

I can't say good things about
the operating system since I don't know it that well but it was indeed
ahead of its time since it could multitask AND the Amiga could run Mac
software better than Macs themselves if you purchased the software to do
so.

absolutely false. the amiga wasn't ahead of anything.

many other systems could multitask, including the mac, plus the mac
emulator on the amiga was a complete joke. it ran a few things but not
particularly well and nowhere near what an actual mac could do.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

It failed because Commodore didn't know what to do with it since
Tramiel, the real genius, left the company. They also dragged their feet
in improving the product which is why the Amiga 600, 500+ and 1200 were
barely any better than the original product despite being released some
8 years later.

it failed because it was a toy.

On 2018-11-07 8:33 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A whole bunch of lies and it's trivial to verify nowadays.

The Amiga was first released as a production tool despite the fact that
it was first envisioned and became somewhat of a console. Look at the
Amiga 1000 and you'll know that it looked like and was very much a
production computer. That the Amiga 500 was eventually released and
marketed in the same fashion as the Commodore 500 (and available on
store shelves _everywhere_ despite what you claim) does not change that
it was produced to be a workstation and simply became a console because
that's what Commodore knew how to sell. I can't say good things about
the operating system since I don't know it that well but it was indeed
ahead of its time since it could multitask AND the Amiga could run Mac
software better than Macs themselves if you purchased the software to do
so.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

It failed because Commodore didn't know what to do with it since
Tramiel, the real genius, left the company. They also dragged their feet
in improving the product which is why the Amiga 600, 500+ and 1200 were
barely any better than the original product despite being released some
8 years later.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,

IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS

i didn't say macos was dos. i said microsoft copied macos to create
windows.

not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.

Windows was DOS with a pre-built menu system plus a few simple to use
settings (such as customising the menus for different users). It was
essentially useless until 3.x.

win 3.x was only slightly better than earlier versions. as i said,
windows '95 was when it was actually usable.

To control user access, you had to go
into DOS. But that was so limited in the early versions of DOS that any
attempt to limit access could be over-ridden during boot, something our
students found out almost immediately. From Win95 one, user access was
better controlled, but still easy to work around.

Windows NT was the first non-DOS version. It was a derivative of OS/2,
whose first version MS developed for IBM. Up to Windows 2000 IIRC, a
system folder was labelled OS/2

so far, so good.

There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.

complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.

actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.

In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Windows was DOS with a pre-built menu system plus a few simple to use
settings (such as customising the menus for different users). It was
essentially useless until 3.x.

win 3.x was only slightly better than earlier versions. as i said,
windows '95 was when it was actually usable.

Not true, essentially since many companies at the time used Windows 3.11
for their businesses and some still use it to this day.

win 3.x was only slightly better than dos. it wasn't until win '95 when
windows took off because only then was it functionally better than what
existed before.

put another way, win '95 caught up to where mac os was a decade earlier.

microsoft word and excel were on a mac long before they were on windows.


There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.

complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.

That must be why Steve Jobs specifically stated that he wanted the Mac
to have proprietary ports, no internal expansion slots and an operating
system which looked the same no matter whose machine you were using. In
other words, that must be why Jobs did the exact opposite of what
Wozniak did with the Apple ][ whereupon he insisted on forcing people to
upgrade a whole computer to get one or two additional functions.

he didn't say that, the ports weren't proprietary, and nobody had to
upgrade a whole computer to get additional functions.

in fact, the pinouts of the ports were documented in inside macintosh,
a book available in any bookstore, along with full documentation of mac
os. *anyone* could buy it, not just developers. the information was not
secret.

mac os was *very* customizable. anyone who claims otherwise doesn't
know what they're talking about, regurgitating the old myths.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.

actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.

In comparison, sure. THAT is a correct statement especially the further
users got into the lifespan of a Commodore Amiga machine. However, fewer
titles does not translate into a machine being completely ignored by the
public or developers either.

it was mostly ignored. not zero, but close enough.

In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A whole bunch of lies and it's trivial to verify nowadays.

nothing about it is a lie.

I've done enough research about the Amiga to know that your statement
was complete garbage.

research != experience. i used mac, pc, amiga and atari back then and
ended up writing software for the first two. the latter two were toys.

The Amiga was first released as a production tool despite the fact that
it was first envisioned and became somewhat of a console. Look at the
Amiga 1000 and you'll know that it looked like and was very much a
production computer. That the Amiga 500 was eventually released and
marketed in the same fashion as the Commodore 500 (and available on
store shelves _everywhere_ despite what you claim) does not change that
it was produced to be a workstation and simply became a console because
that's what Commodore knew how to sell.

complete nonsense.

major software developers ignored the amiga. businesses definitely
ignored it. very, very few computer stores sold it. even the mac had
far more traction than the amiga ever did. it was a toy.

Software developers did not ignore it and the plethora of games shows
that it was very popular for a long time.

games = toy. thanks for the confirmation.

The issue with it, just like
the Atari ST, is that piracy was unbelievably high and THAT discouraged
developers from _continuing_ to produce software for it.

piracy existed on all platforms and was no more a deterrent on amiga &
atari than anything else.

in fact, there was *more* piracy in raw numbers on mac and pc because
there were far more users to pirate stuff.

businesses was where the money was, and very, very few businesses
pirated software. they had too much to risk by doing so.

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os, not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.

Considering how many of us wrote essays, produced spreadsheets and first
browsed the web through Windows 3.1, I wouldn't say that the operating
system was useless before 95 emerged.

people did that with dos.

the point is that win3.1 was only marginally more capable than dos.

hobbyists liked the amiga because it was cheap and had some games.
otherwise, it was nothing special. the amusement of the bouncing ball
demo wore off very, very quickly, as in minutes.

They liked the Amiga because it did more than the PC at a lower price
and had better specifications throughout.

except that it didn't. had that been true, businesses would have bought
amiga in droves and saved money in the process.

the reality is that they didn't, because the amiga *didn't* do more
than the pc.

it did less, much less, largely due to a lack of quality software, and
what it did do was not particularly good.

It wasn't perfect and much of
that was Commodore's fault but some people managed to keep using their
Amiga well into the late 90s because it COULD do everything that they
wanted to do including Internet-related tasks.

so could macs and pcs, with significant software and hardware support
the amiga did not have.

I can't say good things about
the operating system since I don't know it that well but it was indeed
ahead of its time since it could multitask AND the Amiga could run Mac
software better than Macs themselves if you purchased the software to do
so.

absolutely false. the amiga wasn't ahead of anything.

many other systems could multitask, including the mac, plus the mac
emulator on the amiga was a complete joke. it ran a few things but not
particularly well and nowhere near what an actual mac could do.

A complete lie. Mac OS before OS X lacked pre-emptive multitasking. It
had cooperative multitasking which was complete garbage compared to what
the Amiga was doing.

false. classic mac os had limited preemptive multitasking as well as
cooperative multitasking, the latter of which is not garbage. it's
simply a different model, with advantages and disadvantages. app
developers could choose whichever worked best for a given product.

Also, here's an Amiga running Mac software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jph0gxzL3UI In this case, it's an
upgraded machine but those kinds of upgrades existed even at the time.
Clearly, it would have been slower than what the video shows in 1993 or
1987, but even THEN, it ran the software faster than a stock Mac with
full compatibility.

it was not faster. i know the fanbois liked to claim that it was, using
contrived demos, but that was an alternate reality in which they lived.
very few apps worked properly with the compatibility card.

In other words, you're full of crap.

nope.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

It failed because Commodore didn't know what to do with it since
Tramiel, the real genius, left the company. They also dragged their feet
in improving the product which is why the Amiga 600, 500+ and 1200 were
barely any better than the original product despite being released some
8 years later.

it failed because it was a toy.

It failed because people didn't understand what it was (a game console
or a computer) and neither did Commodore. Your falsification of history
is unwelcome.

nope. it failed because it was nowhere as good as macs and pcs, it had
very little software and hardware support, with too few customers to
keep it viable. software and hardware developers mostly ignored it, and
without key titles and expansion cards, businesses also ignored it.
simple as that.

In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,

IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS

He clearly meant the interface, but the reality is that Windows before
95 was not a copy of the Mac at all.

it was very much a copy of the mac. bill gates even said as much.
anyone who has used both can see the vast similarities.

Windows 1 and 2 went in a different
direction and 3, with its Program Manager, would be unrecognizable to a
Mac user. 95 was similar insofar as it used a Recycle Bin similar to the
Mac's trash can. However, Microsoft used psychological evaluations to
create the most innovative change to the GUI in the Start button, a
feature that practically every other GUI copied, so it cannot be seen as
a Mac close especially since the Mac didn't have that feature at all.
Finding programs, on a Mac, was suddenly much harder than it was in Windows.

nonsense.

On 2018-11-07 10:13 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A whole bunch of lies and it's trivial to verify nowadays.

nothing about it is a lie.

I've done enough research about the Amiga to know that your statement
was complete garbage.

The Amiga was first released as a production tool despite the fact that
it was first envisioned and became somewhat of a console. Look at the
Amiga 1000 and you'll know that it looked like and was very much a
production computer. That the Amiga 500 was eventually released and
marketed in the same fashion as the Commodore 500 (and available on
store shelves _everywhere_ despite what you claim) does not change that
it was produced to be a workstation and simply became a console because
that's what Commodore knew how to sell.

complete nonsense.

major software developers ignored the amiga. businesses definitely
ignored it. very, very few computer stores sold it. even the mac had
far more traction than the amiga ever did. it was a toy.

Software developers did not ignore it and the plethora of games shows
that it was very popular for a long time. The issue with it, just like
the Atari ST, is that piracy was unbelievably high and THAT discouraged
developers from _continuing_ to produce software for it.

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os, not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.

Considering how many of us wrote essays, produced spreadsheets and first
browsed the web through Windows 3.1, I wouldn't say that the operating
system was useless before 95 emerged.

hobbyists liked the amiga because it was cheap and had some games.
otherwise, it was nothing special. the amusement of the bouncing ball
demo wore off very, very quickly, as in minutes.

They liked the Amiga because it did more than the PC at a lower price
and had better specifications throughout. It wasn't perfect and much of
that was Commodore's fault but some people managed to keep using their
Amiga well into the late 90s because it COULD do everything that they
wanted to do including Internet-related tasks.

I can't say good things about
the operating system since I don't know it that well but it was indeed
ahead of its time since it could multitask AND the Amiga could run Mac
software better than Macs themselves if you purchased the software to do
so.

absolutely false. the amiga wasn't ahead of anything.

many other systems could multitask, including the mac, plus the mac
emulator on the amiga was a complete joke. it ran a few things but not
particularly well and nowhere near what an actual mac could do.

A complete lie. Mac OS before OS X lacked pre-emptive multitasking. It
had cooperative multitasking which was complete garbage compared to what
the Amiga was doing. Also, here's an Amiga running Mac software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jph0gxzL3UI In this case, it's an
upgraded machine but those kinds of upgrades existed even at the time.
Clearly, it would have been slower than what the video shows in 1993 or
1987, but even THEN, it ran the software faster than a stock Mac with
full compatibility.

In other words, you're full of crap.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

It failed because Commodore didn't know what to do with it since
Tramiel, the real genius, left the company. They also dragged their feet
in improving the product which is why the Amiga 600, 500+ and 1200 were
barely any better than the original product despite being released some
8 years later.

it failed because it was a toy.

It failed because people didn't understand what it was (a game console
or a computer) and neither did Commodore. Your falsification of history
is unwelcome.


--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer