#amazing computing

USA 1986

New versions of Linux available for the Amiga were examined in this issue, with a comment in one piece how “many in the Linux community are absolutely, completely, positively sure that Linux will knock Microsoft off the OS throne.” In the meantime, it was becoming more possible to watch QuickTime files on an Amiga, and Jim Collas had transferred from Gateway to Amiga Inc, with the editorial ready to see great promise in that. One column proclaimed “the next Amiga” was the (approvingly described) Sega Dreamcast, with that company’s sure-to-succeed turnaround having provided a shining example for Amiga Inc.

USA 1986

USA 1986

Bringing Windows video files onto the Amiga (to do the same thing with QuickTime appeared to require paying a hefty license fee to Apple) featured in this issue. The editorial had to deal with a British and a French Amiga magazine closing down, but insisted “We are in a valley,” and that “Amiga Inc. is working on a new system that will be a new step for Amiga technology” that would bring us out of it.

The concept sketches of just a few months ago had turned into a mockup, at least, of an “Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer.” This issue also included a great many technology announcements from Amiga Inc. and other companies, if also some complaints it all remained sort of general. So far as something you could actually do at the moment went, there was one article about Amiga software to get images off a digital camera.

Grand plans from Amiga Inc. for revolutionary advances in computing were fit into this issue (delayed by a week, so the editorial explained, by reasons including “the hooky spent by some advertisers who went to see the new Star Wars release”). The computer pictured on the cover wasn’t quite as iMac-like as a first glance would have it; the monitor was a separate unit and could be replaced.