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The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (Platform Studies), by Jimmy Maher
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Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commodore products); and the boring, beige adult box used for business (exemplified by products from IBM). The game machines became fascinating technical and artistic platforms that were of limited real-world utility. The IBM products were all utility, with little emphasis on aesthetics and no emphasis on fun. Into this bifurcated computing environment came the Commodore Amiga 1000. This personal computer featured a palette of 4,096 colors, unprecedented animation capabilities, four-channel stereo sound, the capacity to run multiple applications simultaneously, a graphical user interface, and powerful processing potential. It was, Jimmy Maher writes in The Future Was Here, the world's first true multimedia personal computer. Maher argues that the Amiga's capacity to store and display color photographs, manipulate video (giving amateurs access to professional tools), and use recordings of real-world sound were the seeds of the digital media future: digital cameras, Photoshop, MP3 players, and even YouTube, Flickr, and the blogosphere. He examines different facets of the platform -- from Deluxe Paint to AmigaOS to Cinemaware -- in each chapter, creating a portrait of the platform and the communities of practice that surrounded it. Of course, Maher acknowledges, the Amiga was not perfect: the DOS component of the operating systems was clunky and ill-matched, for example, and crashes often accompanied multitasking attempts. And Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. But for a few years, the Amiga's technical qualities were harnessed by engineers, programmers, artists, and others to push back boundaries and transform the culture of computing.
- Sales Rank: #443313 in Books
- Published on: 2012-04-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .81" w x 6.00" l, 1.28 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 344 pages
Review
The Future Was Here is proof of just how exhilarating Platform Studies can be. Jimmy Maher has the rare talent of writing technical descriptions that are both challenging and accessible so that, at the conclusion of each chapter, one experiences the rewarding pleasure of having learned and understood something new and difficult.
(Doug Reside, Digital Curator for the Performing Arts, New York Public Library)The Future was Here is by far the best document on the history, technology, and significance of the Commodore Amiga. An emotional read for those of us who were there, while explaining to everyone else just what made the Amiga such a seminal machine.
(Jesper Juul, New York University Game Center; author of Half-Real)Jimmy Maher shows us how 'the Amiga' was a phenomenon not just of hardware and software, but of community and creativity. He digs past easy nostalgia and into the telling specifics, revealing what enabled the Amiga to define so much of the playful, media-rich personal computing world in which we live today.
(Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Computer Science Department, University of California, Santa Cruz; author of Expressive Processing)At once challenging, rewarding, emotional, and insightful...a compelling read for those interested in the Amiga platform, as well as those interested to learn more about the culture of computing.
(John F. Barber Leonardo Reviews) About the Author
Jimmy Maher is an independent scholar and writer living in Norway.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A strong book about a fantastic machine
By sien
The Future was here (2012) by Jimmy Maher is an excellent book about the wonderful Amiga computer. If you are an Amiga enthusiast or someone who remembers the Amiga fondly you can stop reading now and simply go and order the book for yourself. You won’t regret it. The book isn’t perfect but it offers a very welcome in depth study of an amazing computing platforms.
The Amiga was designed in the early 1980s by a team lead by Jay Miner . The Amiga was based around the Motorola 68000 chip that was also the CPU for the technologically less advanced and considerably more expensive Apple Macintosh. What was special about the Amiga is that it had a chipset that enabled much of the graphics and sound processing to be handled by something other than the CPU. Agnes, Denise and Paula that formed the original chipset. Sprites, blitting and sound were vastly superior on the Amiga to other contemporary systems. The Amiga wouldn’t really be outclassed as a computer for 6-7 years after its release. Today, such a leap forward is unthinkable.
The book covers the Amiga’s creation, the chipsets and the operating system the Amiga used., Next the release of the machine and the ‘Boing’ demo are described. The details of why the Boing demo was impressive and some of the tricks that were used is well described. Then there is a chapter on ‘Deluxe Paint’ which was one of the most famous Amiga painting programs that could create color art that was not possible on other systems of the time. The Amiga’s contribution to 3D modelling - SSG and Sculpt-Animate are then described. There is then a chapter on NewtTek and the HAM system for using all of the Amiga’s 4096 colors. Following a look at the Amiga’s OS there is a chapter on the Amiga demo scene that describes how clever hackers produced clever short bits of art on the system. The penultimate chapter describes Cinemaware and Psygnosis and some of the games on the Amiga. Finally there is a chapter on why the Amiga died in the 1990s.
The book is a little disjointed. It jumps around a bit in time and from subject to subject. It’s also a little haphazard in what it covers. The detail in some areas is deeper than the detail in others. There is also not enough thought given to how the Macintosh managed to survive while the Amiga floundered. The explanation is probably that the Macintosh managed to find an application that it was ideally suited for that worked for many businesses, desktop publishing, while the Amiga’s great abilities never found a similar market that was large enough. In addition the Amiga failed to improve the technology substantially to keep it ahead of the competition. The failure to develop new chipsets is, however, covered well by the book.
Maher has written an excellent account of a wonderful computing platform that is now largely a memory. He manages to capture just how it felt to use a computer that did give a glimpse of the future and describe many of the features that made it so outstanding.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Amiga Forever!
By Ali son of Khalil
The Amiga was the second computer that I ever knew after the programmable John Sands Sega SC3000H. I fell in love with my Amiga 500 as a child so it holds a special place in my heart. In all honesty no computer has ever left such a profound lasting effect on me.
Jimmy Maher, thank you for explaining away the mystery. I have always known that the Amiga was a beautifully designed and built machine, but I never knew the technicalities of what made it so superior to the Macs, Ataris and IBMs of its time. I have always wished that the Amiga never died, thanks for nothing Commodore.
55 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
A good read for computer historians
By K. Medearis
I loved this book... and dislike it, too. let me explain. In this book, I was looking forward to reading about the development and progression of the custom chipset and OS that made the Amiga a joy to use and envy of all my nerdy friends. I expected to read about how developers/users pushed the machine to its limits to astounding results. Unfortunately, there is very little of that in this book. In fact, the author dedicates chapters to describe limitations and shortcomings of the machine.
I would have loved to have seen a chronology of the Amiga as a platform, from OCS to ECS and AGA and plans for future chipsets (and what related Amiga products are available today, even if only loosely though companies such as Commodore USA). Instead, most of the book focuses on the original Amiga 1000 design and limitations (a machine that was quickly replaced by its successors, so the author's choice puzzles me). There was no serious credence given to the expandability of any of the machines, implying that most owners had little more than the stock amount of RAM and no hard drive.
There is also a strange selection of programs analyzed. An odd amount of text in this book is dedicated to the functions of the Deluxe Paint series. Although mildly interesting, it is not what I had expected to be reading about in this book.
I doubt you'd know by this book that 90% of the Amiga's games even in 1994 looked far superior than most PC games. From 1985-1995, who owned a PC set up that could compete? PC's/sound cards/graphics cards were still expensive. And PC joysticks were crap unless you were playing a flight sim! Playing a game on a PC was an exercise in configuring your machine for hours to execute directX appropriately while hoping that everything you owned was compatible. But these are topics for another book, I suppose.
Why is there a detailed study of Menace? Not the best Amiga game by any stretch. He mentions a far superior looking/sounding game, Shadow of the Beast -- that would have been an excellent study! Why wasn't the CD32 discussed? Or higher end machines like the 4000/040?
Most folks who would be interested in buying this book would likely have used and loved the Amiga, but this book reads almost like an outsider's curiosity of the machine in retrospect, rather than a labor of love. Did the author ever own an Amiga "back in the day?" He admits to using emulators for most of his work on this book. This makes for a rather dry read. And what is with the extremely distracting choice of referring to all Amiga users in the feminine (I've never met a female Amiga user. I suppose some existed. somewhere.) It made me continually read the text again trying to think "who is the author referring to? Did he mention a female user by name earlier and I missed it?"
If you are looking for a fascinating platform study, read "Racing the Beam" -- it's about the Atari VCS (aka Atari 2600). Jay Miner essentially developed both the 2600 and original Amiga. But the Atari book is more fun to read -- how programmers did so much with so little. You find youreself "pulling for" the Atari, the little machine that could. However, "The Future Was Here" reads more like "the little machine that should have." I LOVE the Amiga (I still have my 2000 and it still works), so I just hoped for a little more here.
If you don't mind a rather indifferent view of the Amiga 1000 system and are in need of an Amiga retrospective, check out the book. It isn't bad -- but seems to be "the little book that should have."
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