Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer (most taking advantage of the platform's unique attributes and capabilities), and were not ported from other platforms.
During its lifetime, thousands of applications were produced with over 10,000 utilities (collected into the Aminet repository). However, it was perceived as a games machine from outside its community of experienced and professional users. More than 12,000 games were available. New applications for the three existing Amiga-like operating systems are generally ported from the open source (mainly from Linux) software base.
Many Amiga software products or noteworthy programs during the timeline were ported to other platforms or inspired new programs, such as those aimed at 3D rendering or audio creations, e.g. LightWave 3D, Cinema 4D, and Blender (whose development started for the Amiga platform only). The first multimedia word processors for Amiga, such as TextCraft, Scribble!, Rashumon, and Wordworth, were the first on the market to implement full color WYSIWYG (with other platforms then only implementing black-and-white previews) and allowing the embedding of audio files.
History and characteristics
From the origins to 1988
1985 Amiga software started its history with the 1985 Amiga 1000. Commodore International released the programming specifications and development computers to various software houses, prominently Electronic Arts, a software house that then offered Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Music and others. Electronic Arts also developed the Interchange File Format (IFF) file container, to store project files realized by Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music. IFF became the de facto standard in AmigaOS. The first to be shown were digitizer software ProPaint (in early beta). Both were used by Andy Warhol to produce a black-and-white photo of Debbie Harry at the Launch Gala at Lincoln Center, New York City in July 1985. In 1985 Commodore licensed the software called Transformer from Simile Research and put it on the market in January 1986, bundled with an external A1020 5.25-inch floppy drive. It emulated 8086 Intel-based PC-XT hardware. It could run MS-DOS and MS-DOS software such as Lotus 123 or WordStar. This provided early access to many applications, while waiting for native Amiga software to be developed. In 1985, Deluxe Paint emerged with graphic features that had been available only on dedicated graphic computers. It was dubbed the first Amiga "Killer application".
1986
In 1986, Amiga software products contributed to the Amiga's success as a game and multimedia machine. AmigaBasic from Microsoft, VizaWrite, TextCraft (word processors), Pagesetter (Desktop Publishing), Analyze! (Spreadsheet), Superbase Personal (Database), MovieCraft (animation), Deluxe Paint II, Deluxe Music, Instant Music (a composition music program for non musicians) from Electronic Arts, and GraphiCraft again from Commodore were released. GraphiCraft was used by computer artist Jim Sachs to produce Amiga software such as Defender of the Crown and Centurion: Defender of Rome from Cinemaware and the Amiga porting of Saucer Attack. Graphicraft was a predecessor of Aegis Images and AEGIS Animator, one of the first programs worldwide capable of creating animation videos and cartoons complete with audio stereo, featuring a cel animation working paradigm interface and outputting files based on delta-frame difference compression method which then were the lead for creating the ANIM file type standard. Byte-by-Byte Software Inc. released Sculpt-3D. It was the first rendering tool available for the first time to a vast audience of public, and in October of the same year, Impulse released TurboSilver.
1987 In 1987, the Amiga 500 (A500) was released. The Amiga software market moved in favor of entertainment over professional software.
ProWrite (word processor), Maxiplan 500 (spreadsheet), and Aegis Sonix, a music program similar to Instant Music, were produced. .
In July, Wordperfect created an "Amiga/Atari Division" and started selling a version of its word processor for the Commodore platform for US$400. It could load and save Wordperfect files created on any platform, such as IBM, Macintosh and Apple II. Wordperfect 4.1 for the Amiga was the first word processor in the world capable of opening an unlimited number of documents (limited by RAM), each in a separate window.
In 1987, Andrew Tanenbaum released Minix, a free version of Unix with complete source code.
At COMDEX NewTek showed for the first time a prototype of Video Toaster and Impulse released TurboSilver 2.0.
1988 In 1988, Photon Paint was released. It allowed digital painting using HAM graphics mode and the full 4096-color palette of Amiga on a single screen. Maxiplan 500 become Maxiplan 1.x, Electronic Arts showed DeLuxe Photo Lab (photo editing software), Newtek demonstrated DigiView 3.0 hardware and software image digitizing suite, and WordPerfect released the WordPerfect Library for the Amiga. At the summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Pro Draw graphic tablet with mouse emulation software was also announced, as well as Flash-Back and Quarterback hard drive backup software. Superbase Personal became Superbase Professional, Micro Illusions started shipping Music-X audio software for the Amiga, and Lattice released its C++ preprocessor for the Amiga. Cygnus Editor ubiquitous text editor, one of the most versatile text editors and best seller on Amiga since then, was also released this year. It was one of the first Amiga programs featuring an AREXX port. Gold Disk released ComicSetter (comic creation) and MovieSetter (32-color cartoons with stereo sound animation software). In November, at the World of Commodore Show, ReadySoft demonstrated its Amax Macintosh emulator for the Amiga.
GfxBase released the X Windows System for the Amiga. Running under AmigaDos it used a custom screen to allow users access to X Window programs on other Amigas as well as non-Amiga systems on the local network. Also the 3 button Boing! optical mouse was available for Amiga users.
1989–1994
In 1989, Rashumon was first launched. In 1990, AmigaDOS 2.0 was released. The interface of the Workbench GUI was changed to a fake 3D aspect using gray shades. For the first time, Commodore introduced a style guide for developers on AmigaOS; because of this, the majority of Amiga software developed for AmigaDOS 2.0 had a standardized GUI that improved usability. Programs such as Imagine 3D, Lightwave, ImageFX, and Scala continued using non-standard GUIs. AmigaVision was released and bundled free with any model of Amiga 3000. Directory Master, Directory Opus, TurboCalc, Photogenics, ImageFX, PC Task, Photogenics, Caligari, Final Calc, and Cinema 4D all belong to this period.
1994 to today After 1994, Commodore's demise left Amiga to an uncertain future. Windows-based PCs became the standard in the home and the office. Many software houses either left the Amiga market or ran into financial troubles. In 1996, Aminet was created. Aminet was the first centralized Internet repository of all Amiga public domain software and documents. It was the first Internet experiment of a centralized software repository created and maintained by one community for the community itself. Amiga's browsers like AWeb, IBrowse and Voyager were enhanced. Voyager was the first browser to adopt tabbed browsing. Mailers like YAM are still used. In productivity software, programs like Candy Factory for image processing were still being developed, for VFX and animation programs like Wildfire by Andreas Maschke (ported by the author to Java later). other prominent graphic software include fxPAINT by IOSpirit, fxSCAN for OCR and scanning by IOSpirit, and SketchBlock painting program by Andy Broad for AmigaOS 4.x. Last but not least Tornado3D raytracing program by the Italian company Eyelight.
Usability Amiga software presents a complete graphical interface, following Amiga WYSIWYG "desktop paradigm" and native AmigaOS interface guidelines; that is to say, the software is mouse-driven and presents also pull-down "menus" and "dialogue windows". AmigaOS maintained a text-based shell allowing software to present a text-based GUI, or a "command line".
Cataloging The main software categories are Productivity software (also called application software); Support and maintenance utilities for formatting hard disks, recover or backup data, etc.; Multimedia software (graphic, video, music); Communication software (including the software for dealing with Internet and any other net); Programming tools for developing products and applications; other utilities that enhance the ease of use in any Operating System (for example Application Launching Docks); Accessibility; Games; Emulation software that allows a computer to run software written for another architecture.
Productivity software
Amiga created productivity software which covers graphics, video, design and CAD software; graphic utilities; vector graphics programs and converters; word processors; programmable text editors; database and spreadsheets; science, entertainment and special use programs: entertainment; fractals, virtual reality, artificial intelligence; route planning; personal Organizer, notebook, diary software; personal budgeting, home banking and accounting.
Support and maintenance utilities
Amiga created utilities for hard disk partitioning; diagnostic tools; VGA promoting tools for ancient Amiga software with TV resolution graphic screens; game loaders for storing and auto-loading from hard disks, auto-starting non-standard floppy disks; disk copiers; backup and recovery tools, archive and compression utilities; command line interfaces and text-based shells; graphical GUI interfaces with WIMP paradigm; advanced graphics systems; PostScript; fonts; font design; audio system; native, external, widely common used, and third-party filesystems; MultiView; MIME types; USB stacks; Firewire stacks (IEEE 1394); printer drivers; video digitizers; graphic tablets; scanner drivers; genlocks, chroma-key, signal video inverters; infrared devices and remote controls; WiFi and Bluetooth devices; and special devices.
Music
Music software includes sound design; audio synthesis; music; audio digitizing and sampling; hard disk recording; speech synthesis; audio trackers; MOD music module filetype.
Communications software Solutions include modem software, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, Packet Radio; Prestel, Videotel, Videotex, Minitel; Teletext, Televideo, Viewdata; FAX, answering machine and voice mail; ISDN; networking and Ethernet protocols; World Wide Web (TCP/IP stacks, browsers, E-mail programs, newsreaders, Internet Radio, proxy server support programs, PPP, Telnet, podcasting, RSS feed, Distributed Net, Google Services, Instant Messaging and chat, FTP and FTP server, weather casting news, Webcam supporting, clock synchronization, SMS Short Messages, Web development and HTTP server, Peer2Peer, VCast (online VCR), YouTube, Flash player, monitoring webpages, Remote Desktop, SSL, SSH, et cetera); communication protocols.
Modem, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, packet radio Termite, X-Term, A-Term, Baud Bandit I and II, OnLine! Direct parallel and serial cable connect: ParNET, SerNET Fidonet Mail: Amiga version of GNU AWK, AmyBW, Q-Blue QWK and Blue Wave mail readers BBS management: C-NET II, Zeus BBS, Hydra BBS, DLG Pro, AmiExpress, Infinity, Tempest (software) Packet Radio: AmiCom, AmigaTNC, and Amipac Amateur radio: Amiga Amateur Radio Group, AMIGA-FAX/SSTV, METEO/FAX/SSTV, PakRatt, Multicom, AmTOR, AmigaCALL.
AmiExpress