How is the creative spirit of the Mac and the Amiga similar?

fxgogo

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Mar 8, 2022
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I was not a regular Mac user until 2011 with a Mac Mini, although I have followed the Apple world from the days of the Apple II. I was an Amiga user in the 90’s for a good few years. I loved the spirit of the Amiga and the community then and even today, especially the creative spirit.

Does the Mac have something similar? I know there were loads of creative apps for the Mac, and was it similar to the Amiga?
 

Yoda

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Jan 22, 2023
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I never used an Amiga, but have been a Mac user since 1986. For me, the Mac's great strength came around that time and into the 90s with Desktop Publishing, which put the power to communicate even the most complex publications of just about every type into the hands of anyone who wanted to use it. (Not always to good effect!)

For a long time I ran a college/university publishing house based on (mostly) Macs, which turned out everything from advertising flyers and materials, to full course books and guides. We also produced magazines and newspapers, including doing a lot of commercial work. I stuck with using Macs ever since, because they just seemed better suited to the simple business of being used to get things done, and not so much to needing to be tinkered with.

In the UK, I suspect Commodore's big push into home computing and gaming may have dampened their market in more 'pro' type of uses because we never seemed to see much of Amiga-related activity. I'm interested to hear what Amiga users of the time (and since) have done with their systems.... it's never too late to learn new tricks!
 

phunguss

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Dec 24, 2023
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I bought an Amiga 1000 in 1986, upgraded to an A2000 and eventually an A4000 with a Video Toaster. SOOOO much time spent on Deluxe Paint. I also had an Emplant card, that you could put a Mac ROM onto and emulate the MacOS 6/7 inside the Amiga OS. Eventually I got the Toaster Flyer: the non-linear video editor with two 9GB drives. Very expensive, and a little glitchy. Somewhere around 1999 I sold it all and went towards the Mac because I got into desktop publishing and web design. I loved those Amiga days. If I had one now, I would probably be lost.
 
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Kai Robinson

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There's also the massive price difference to contend with, at least here in the UK.

An Amiga was way more powerful, thanks to the custom chips, the litter, coprocessor, graphics etc, but it was well over half the cost of a Mac.

When the A500 came out, it gave you a 68k machine with 512k of RAM, easily expandable to 2MB if needed. Had more expansion than the Mac Plus,

However, it never really competed with a Mac either (again, due to the price), it's competition was the Atari ST.
 
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