[LINK] Jobs not all bad

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Mon Oct 10 20:11:29 AEDT 2011


On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 00:56, Stephen Wilson <swilson at lockstep.com.au> wrote:
> You're substituting personality cult with geek
> cult.

How can we discuss if someone brought great advances or not, then, if
you´re going to label it "geek cult"?

I think the Amiga led the path in 1985 for others to follow, with
great stereo sound, custom video chips and the original 4096-color HAM
mode in 1985 and subsequent AGA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HAM6example.png

"When the Amiga was launched in 1985, HAM mode gave it a significant
graphical advantage over competing systems. It allowed the system to
display all of its 4096 potential colors, though with the
aforementioned limitations. This far exceeded the then PC state of the
art, which was EGA with 16 colors from a palette of 64. Even the newer
VGA released in 1987 with its flagship games mode, Mode 13h, had 256
colors from 16,777,216. The Amiga therefore had a way to display
digitized photographs and rendered 3D images. HAM mode was also
frequently used to show off the Amiga's ability in store displays and
trade presentations, since competing hardware could not come close to
the graphical quality."

But don´t believe me, here´s the 1985 BBC programme presenting the Amiga
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS-NYK-8KL0#t=251

Compare with Jobs´ Mac (also 1985 video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kabWOFsX1fo

Which one was the most innovative?. Which one pushed the envelope with
regards to what home computers could do?. That´s why I say Jay Miner
deserves some credit, too. Otherwise the young people of today might
end up not knowing about Miner´s genius and thinking Steve Jobs pretty
much invented mass computing and all its advances.

(a local journalist said with a straight face that Jobs "invented the
smartphone" (sic), and that "no one before thought about adding a
computer to a phone". Gee, I must have dreamed about Palm/Handspring
popularizing the concept with the Treo as back as 2001)

Let´s cut the Jobs-hype, that´s all I´m saying.

Regards,
FC




More information about the Link mailing list