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0 pointsrobinsonb52y ago0 comments

The other thing I miss from the Amiga is quite difficult to quantify, but it's that sense that you have the computer's full attention.

I put it down to low latency between the mouse counters and the hardware sprite, and immediacy of visual feedback due to the on-screen gadgets being rendered in a high-priority task distinct from the application's task.

A 40-year-old 7MHz computer can genuinely feel more responsive than a brand new machine thousands of times faster, because of those two things - even if the machine then takes minutes or hours to complete a job the new machine can perform almost instantly.

BeOS was probably the last system which offered that same degree of responsiveness.

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kstrauser2y ago

The Amiga’s mouse never, ever lagged. Unless the thing was completely crashed, you could always wiggle the mouse and see the cursor instantly leap in the right way. The cursor was the mouse in a way I haven’t really experienced since.

robinsonb5OP2y ago

The only time I ever saw the Amiga's mouse pointer lag was when transferring files over serial with TwinExpress at an unrealistically ambitious rate (for a machine without a buffered UART, anyway.)

But yes, that direct connection is one of those things you don't really notice until it's not there any more. The first time I tried using a mouse on a PC (with 1200 baud serial mouse) I described the experience as like trying to walk when my foot's gone to sleep.

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