Many moons ago when I was attending college getting my Video/Radio Production degree, the primary computers the school used for animation rendering were Commodore Amiga 2000 and 4000 boxes with LightWave software.
For our younger readers, this is before Microsoft Windows 95 even existed. Amiga computers did things back then which were nothing short of incredible. More on that in a moment.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, but there is actually a new AmigaOS, version 4.1.
If you thought Linux had a strong community, ha! Amiga for whatever reason absolutely will not die. I swear that every other quarter someone says "Okay, that’s it for Amiga. Stick a fork in it – it’s done." But no. Amiga continues to bounce back and the community stays alive.
Weird? Yes. But I suppose it’s no weirder than Haiku, the OS originally aimed at the continued development of BeOS. (Yeah. Remember that one?)
AmigaOS 4.1 is, of course, meant for Amiga boxes (certain ones) running the PowerPC processor. No availability for Intel at the moment – but who knows, there may be an edition for that proc.
So.. if you happen to be of the Commodore persuasion, you’ve got a new OS for your Amiga box.
Reasons why Amiga was formerly the best computer box – ever
The Amiga box smashed the notion that PCs absolutely could not do production-ready video. When one of the boxes was outfitted with the Video Toaster add-on, all of a sudden – whoa – it CAN do it. And do it well.
When IBM compatibles were running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, and Apple Macs weren’t anywhere near OS X, and both those offerings could only do desktop publishing and semi-good multitasking, Commodore Amiga stepped in and showed everyone how it’s done. It was awesome – and it worked.
Related reading: Amiga.org. You’d be amazed what people do with Amiga boxes even today.
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I’m glad they keep developing the Amiga platform. It was (and probably still is) the best personal computer EVER, bringing workstation functionality to common mortals since the ’80s!
The availability of software for the Amiga OS worries me a little though: apart from the old titles very little has been produced, and most titles are still in their alpha or beta releases. Using the hardware isn’t a problem, of course. You can always rely on Linux for PPC (SuSe, Debian, Yellow Dog, and a few others) for productivity needs.
A positive thing, no doubt, is the fact that developing and promoting Amiga systems keeps the PowerPC architecture alive, which in my opinion is far better than Intel’s.