It’s alive!: Ars reviews AmigaOS 4.1

Bundled and third-party applications

Bundled applications

Web browsers

No modern operating system is complete without a web browser, and OS 4.1 attempts to cover all bases by including three. AWeb is an open-source Amiga browser that is highly customizable and has for many years included some innovative features, such as the ability to configure any editor for entering text into any web form (this has only been recently replicated on other platforms with the Firefox extension It's Just Text!). iBrowse is a commercial Amiga web browser that has a bit more polished user interface that includes tabbed browsing.

OWB, the Origyn Web Browser, is the new kid on the block. Based on the popular WebKit rendering and Javascript engines, OWB finally brings Amiga browsing up to modern standards. Both AWeb and iBrowse are still waiting for updates that can properly parse CSS and modern Javascript, but OWB renders pages just as well as any WebKit-based browser (such as Safari or Google Chrome). With so many applications moving to the web, having a modern browser is essential for any platform.

E-mail

YAM (Yet Another mailer) has come a long way from its pedestrian origins. This open-source project, available in a special OEM version OS 4.1, now has a familiar three-pane interface. Built-in spam filters help keep the user's mailbox tidy. One nice feature of YAM is that it displays the total disk space occupied by each mailbox folder, giving the user a handy overview when it comes time for spring mailbox cleaning.

AmiPDF

AmigaOS 4.1 comes with a built-in PDF viewer called AmigaPDF. It correctly displayed all the PDF files I could throw at it, and performance has been dramatically improved in this version compared to the one that came with OS 4.0.

PlayCD

This simple application plays music CDs and grabs album and song information over the Internet.

UnARC

This file compression/decompression program supports drag and drop and is very speedy. I use it to extract application archives to the built-in RAM disk prior to installation.

DvPlayer (OEM version)

This is a media player that handles many video formats, including MPEG2 for DVD movie playback.

RawDisk

This handy utility works like Ghost on the PC, making exact copies of hard drives or partitions that can be cloned to other systems.

Third-party AmigaOS applications

WookieChat

New Zealander James Carroll, the developer of WookieChat, has continued to update his popular IRC application with new features, such as automatic smiley face graphics, web browser integration for hyperlinks (the client is the only one I know of that will accept a click on a URL, even if the text scrolls up in the time it takes you to click it), chat logging, custom sound notifications and colors, and a simple scripting ability that will let you automatically log on to a whole list of servers and channels, send nickname confirmation passwords, and so forth.

SabreMSN

From the developer of WookieChat comes SabreMSN, a Microsoft Network (now known as Windows Live Messenger) client that lets you annoy your friends with a perfect simulation of the "nudge" feature.

Photogenics

This graphics editor has many of the features of Photoshop, including multiple layers, alpha channel support, special effects filters, and clone brushes. Natural material brushes such as pastel and Wet Eraser make it easy to create digital art.

PageStream

This impressive desktop publishing program is still being developed, and the latest release, version 5.0, is available for AmigaOS, as well as Windows and Macintosh. Its clean interface belies a great deal of editing power. One of its major selling features is the ability to open, edit, and save PDF files with no conversions needed.

Hollywood + Designer

Hollywood is a commercial application developed specifically for AmigaOS and available only for that platform. The spiritual successor to SCALA, it supports animation scripts written for that legendary animation program. Designer is a graphical interface that allows users to easily create scripts. The resulting animations and multimedia presentations can be saved as an executable file that will run on Windows, OS X, or Amiga-based systems.

Rdesktop

This implementation of the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) allows AmigaOS users to log in remotely to their Windows desktops and servers, using a low-bandwidth protocol that is much faster than other remote-control options such as VNC.

Samba

The AmigaOS implementation of Samba, the open-source clone of Microsoft's networking protocols, allows AmigaOS users to easily transfer files back and forth between Amiga and Windows-based machines over a network.