Bless and Curse of Atari and Amiga computer designs

[h5n1xp]

Quote

Don't bash the Mac hardware too much.

The Apple Macintosh was significantly behind the technology of the Atari ST and the Amiga, but then it was released a year earlier, and didn’t have the same gaming heritage.

 

The huge advantage the machine had over ST and the Amiga, was Apple’s enforcement of software interfaces. Forcing programmers to use the operating system functions to program the machine allowed Apple to alter (improve/cost reduce) their computer hardware while retaining software compatibility (famously their original operating system assumed 24bit addresses, which caused problems when they used full the 32bit 68k). 
 

Amiga and ST coders were able to hit the hardware directly, locking the software to a single hardware generation. The Amiga was unable to break from its bitplane past, and the ST had difficulty convincing developers to use the advanced features of the STe.

Edited October 28, 2021 by h5n1xp

[calimero]

16 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

 

Don't bash the Mac hardware too much. The ST with its weak-a$$ YM2149 - retroactively thanks for that, [...]

Yamaha and Sight+Sound, ya fargin' iceholes! - could've definitely used the Mac's DAC to supplement it. The Mac was also easier to upgrade - if you could afford to do so - thanks to it using SIMMs [...] which didn't come standard to our ST computers until the long-delayed STe [and then only up to 4MB]. The Mac's software platform embraced the 68881/2 FPU better than the ST platform did.  [...] When SCSI was finalized, Apple fully embraced it whereas Atari Corp clung to ASCI.

 

 

Possible right but:

 

- ST did not waste any MC68000 cycles while drawing screen, like Mac did.

- so ST was 30% FASTER then Mac!

 

Also:

ST had 30% higher resolution then MAC

ST had 15% higher refresh rate on mono monitor then Mac

ST had colors modes

ST had full, numpad included, keyboard

ST also could replay samples

ST had ASCI before Mac got SCSI

ST had PC-compatible floppy format

ST could emulate Mac but with bigger screen, more memory, and FASTER then original!

ST cost 2.5x times less than Mac!!

(I could not understand why anybody would buy Mac back in 80s!)

 

Mac was pile of shit back in 80s. Software was also "child" like comparing to ST software back in 80s (I was using Aladin and Spectre emulators back then to test Mac software - Mac software was useless comparing to Signum, Calamus and Protext; Mac software was lcoming like from stone age)

 

Just to be clear: Mac was pile of unimaginableshit, engineering effort that fall short comparing to ST and Amiga...

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by calimero

[calimero]

I can  not publish post!

[zzip]

14 hours ago, calimero said:

Mac was pile of shit back in 80s. Software was also "child" like comparing to ST software back in 80s (I was using Aladin and Spectre emulators back then to test Mac software - Mac software was useless comparing to Signum, Calamus and Protext; Mac software was lcoming like from stone age)

Apple has long been more about being fashionable and trendy, more than having the best tech.   Mac was the start of that trend.   The early adopters of Mac tended to be creative types-  writers, artists, musicians, rather than techy types.

 

That said, I always thought the Mac OS was more refined and polished than the ST's GEM, even if it had its own quirks.

[Keatah]

18 hours ago, calimero said:

- ST did not waste any MC68000 cycles while drawing screen, like Mac did.

- so ST was 30% FASTER then Mac!

But stuck there because making speed increases would need new custom hardware. Whereas software could be run on any up and coming faster processors with minimal change.

 

18 hours ago, calimero said:

Mac was pile of shit back in 80s. Software was also "child" like comparing to ST software back in 80s (I was using Aladin and Spectre emulators back then to test Mac software - Mac software was useless comparing to Signum, Calamus and Protext; Mac software was lcoming like from stone age)

 

Just to be clear: Mac was pile of unimaginableshit, engineering effort that fall short comparing to ST and Amiga...

And yet the MAC's firmware was versatile enough to make it a DTP standard, and a favorite among creative types. Doing things in firmware allowed the machine's hardware to evolve much more easily and consistently than if by custom chips. The Amiga was shoved down a rabbit hole even more in that regard.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Apple has long been more about being fashionable and trendy, more than having the best tech.   Mac was the start of that trend.   The early adopters of Mac tended to be creative types-  writers, artists, musicians, rather than techy types.

And that was a good thing.

 

Quote

That said, I always thought the Mac OS was more refined and polished than the ST's GEM, even if it had its own quirks.

MAC OS and QuickDraw were unquestionably innovative at the time. Both exuded an air of sophistication.

 

But most importantly, MAC was not competing in a race to the bottom. Nor was it a "me too" entrant into the cheap home computing arena.

Edited October 29, 2021 by Keatah

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I really don't know details about early MAC OS, but according to what I did read, heard, it is much better organized than TOS. And it must have much better documentation. What DRI and Atari made with TOS and generally Atari ST HW and SW DOCs is not good. Lot of things is not explained well, not complete (like how to read joystick via TOS), and there are some silly errors too. And that had bad influence on SW.

Then, changing TOS ROM address space at STE was another point, what caused SW incompatibility. How on Earth they did not provide right at start enough TOS ROM space for later and more complex TOS versions ? Especially when TOS 1.00 even did not fit in provided 192 KB at start.

Sure, ROM chips were expensive in 1994-5, so they needed to save on them, but they knew that it will go cheaper, and despite it, did not provide more ROM space. And there was lot of it possible:  between 15 MB (where HW registers start) and 4 MB (max RAM size supported by MMU) is whole 11 MB .

[NoBloodyXLOrE]

23 hours ago, Keatah said:

And that was a good thing.

I don't see how it was a "good thing" that the Mac was designed more around being "fashionable" and trendy" and geared towards non-technical users rather than including the best-possible tech.

 

@zzip I address this to you as well; making their machine "fashionable and trendy" and gearing it towards creatitive types doesn't make it any less of a piece of shit. The dinky little monochrome screen, single disk drive, and slow system design obviously made it worse than the Amiga and ST. Besides, its OS was buggy and poorly designed. While it may have been better than GEM and Windows, it wasn't nearly as good as the preemptively-multitasked Workbench. Plus, its DAC was rendered more-or-less useless for anything other than simple sound effects since there wasn't enough storage for long PCM music.

The Amiga especially, with its Atari design philosophy, was a technical marvel, with the genlock feature in particular being an awesome addition that defined an entire use case for the device. Besides, while the Amiga's sound system was PCM-only, at least its sound chip had DMA, and it had a bit of extra CPU power to potentially even do software sequencing.

Edited October 30, 2021 by NoBloodyXLOrE

[Keatah]

2 hours ago, NoBloodyXLOrE said:

I don't see how it was a "good thing" that the Mac was designed more around being "fashionable" and trendy" and geared towards non-technical users rather than including the best-possible tech.

Since it's being claimed the early B/W 512K/1MB 68000 MACs were technically inferior, they would apparently need a cult following (as is also claimed). And those creative & DTP types provided just enough user base to carry it forward. That and the advertising. The ads were good. The screenshots appealed to many. That dinky 9" monitor was crisp and presented applications in a consistent manner.

 

The "best possible tech" is not always the best path forward. This has been proved time and time again. And in many fields aside from just computers. State of the Art machines usually only excel in niche usage scenarios. That means small numbers. The most commonly used example is VHS vs Beta. Beta was supposedly technical superior, but VHS won out. And this gave VHS time to refine and evolve and continue penetrating the market. S-VHS and S-Video for example. 8 hour recording time too.

 

In PC building one might be able to build a superior performing machine, but at the same time it requires specialized liquide cooling and RAM timings. Those parts may be hard to come by a few years after construction. And the machine wouldn't be able to take advantage of advancements in air-cooling for example. So forget technical superiority! Give me the run of the mill stull that everyone has. It will evolve and accumulate more refinement. Because. Numbers.

 

An aside - I personally never felt gypped by early Apple products. And some later ones too. Sure the II+ and //e and all MACs were expensive. But their solid construction and software versatility promoted longevity. The Amiga or ST would not have held up to how I banged my II+ around. Throwing it in the old Chevy's trunk unprotected. Hauling it around in my RadioFlyer. Accessing the Mini-Assembler, Monitor, Applesoft Basic, Integer Basic, Pascal, and Fortran -- all very easy.

 

2 hours ago, NoBloodyXLOrE said:

@zzip I address this to you as well; making their machine "fashionable and trendy" and gearing it towards creatitive types doesn't make it any less of a piece of shit. The dinky little monochrome screen, single disk drive, and slow system design obviously made it worse than the Amiga and ST. Besides, its OS was buggy and poorly designed. While it may have been better than GEM and Windows, it wasn't nearly as good as the preemptively-multitasked Workbench. Plus, its DAC was rendered more-or-less useless for anything other than simple sound effects since there wasn't enough storage for long PCM music.

The Amiga especially, with its Atari design philosophy, was a technical marvel, with the genlock feature in particular being an awesome addition that defined an entire use case for the device. Besides, while the Amiga's sound system was PCM-only, at least its sound chip had DMA, and it had a bit of extra CPU power to potentially even do software sequencing.

Oh sure. No doubt Amiga was technically more complicated and feature-rich at the circuit level. Maybe even at the OS level with preemptive multitasking too. Better DMA, blitter co-processor, genlocking, and advanced color like H.A.M. and 4096 colors on-screen simultaneously.

 

For all their amazing advancements & technology, the architectures couldn't be made to go faster. Not easily. Not enough buffering, not enough compartmentalization and separation of a subsystem's clock frequencies - compared to the PC.

 

And then marketing, no large chain really wanted to get into ST/Amiga because of perceived instabilities with support and overall cheapness. MAC had no such issues. In fact its high price helped create an aura of sophistication.

[NoBloodyXLOrE]

An "aura of sophistication" isn't worth that much when your machines run classic Mac OS - a case study of how not to write an operating system.
Also while the Beta vs VHS argument has been done to death, it generally seems that Betamax only has superior picture quality at the seldom-used Beta I speed, which provides only an hour of runtime (just like U-Matic, from which it is descended from and has similar quality to). VHS SP is comparable to Beta-II and Video8 SP, while VHS LP is comparable to Beta-III and Video8 LP, and VHS SLP/EP looks terrible but records longer than anything. And then of course Sony and JVC deadlocked again with S-VHS-C vs Hi8 (except for the fact that while 8mm and VHS-C had comparable quality, 8mm had longer runtime, hence why most VHS camcorders had LP while few 8mm models did). Past the rambling, my overall point is that saying that Beta was superior to VHS is debatable at best, they were comparable, since Beta had a better possible quality while VHS had a better possible runtime, with their tradeoffs averaging to a pretty even fight. Consumers chose runtime, and cheaper VCRs - JVC was willing to license the format while Sony kept the VCR production to themselves.

[Keatah]

23 minutes ago, NoBloodyXLOrE said:

An "aura of sophistication" isn't worth that much when your machines run classic Mac OS - a case study of how not to write an operating system.

And yet, somehow, someway, the primitive OS was able to scale with clock speed and accept further development. Got the MAC off the ground. And users loved it.

 

The consistent feel throughout applications was a huge plus. Learn one, learn all. Something 8-bit machines never considered. Something 16-bit machines were trying to get right.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

The reason why Sony's Beta was not so spread and successful as VHS, or better said, was far below it is not of technical reason. The real reason is simply that Sony wanted to manufacture it self, and did not sold licence to other manufacturers. While VHS was manufactured by lot of it. Ergo competition, ergo lower prices.  Reminds on case PC vs Atari, Commodore ?

[TGB1718]

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

The most commonly used example is VHS vs Beta. Beta was supposedly technical superior, but VHS won out.

Don't forget V2000 which was vastly superior to both those, noiseless still and slow motion, 4/8 hour tapes (turn them over and use both sides)

but again very expensive and the cheaper inferior types win

 

[Keatah]

Affordability is a feature of any product in and of itself. So if any given item is unaffordable, it ain't goin' anywhere.

[Sporny Kun]

I remember in my teenage years when the selling point of DOS PCs was "It do not run games (it is for -serious- work)"... Then when Linux started to get hold, the selling point of Windows PCs against Linux was "it do run games" ... irony of History...

 

The only thing that I did not like in the Macintosh, was the absence of an eject button on the floppy disk drive ! It was such a mess at a neighbourgh's home when the computer was stuck AND freezed before giving the possibility to eject. But the overall design seemed quite appealing.

 

Nowadays, I find the design always appealing, but I know enough stuff to be able to prefer a Linux PC. (and anyway, I never had enough money to spend for such a machine)

[ParanoidLittleMan]

PC was just too expensive at beginning to be gaming machine. And there was no gaming support in HW, so I don't think that it was because some advertising or even Microsoft approach. But expansion slots and architecture made possible to add what is needed for gaming - audio card, joystick ports, better video - of course in 80-es, early 90-es for those with deeper pocket. Indeed, the turning point were custom motherboard chips and integration of common functions in them.  If some seller said that PC don't run games it was just stupid and simplifying. And likely to use people's vanity - 'I don't buy toys, I buy what is needed for work ....'  . 

Windows had game support from beginning (little then), and there was game support in diverse Linux distros. For instance some famous games were developed on Linux, and released first for it - Quake, Unreal Tournament .  When Win95 arrived, PC was already gaming computer too.

And to add, 3D support was good not only for games but for CAD too.

Ahh, and I don't like when people says Windows PC or Linux PC. All my PCs were running both. And in past, one ran OS2 too ?

[youxia]

Flight Simulator, released in 1982, was so cutting edge code-wise that it was unofficialy used to test clone compatibility.

 

Yes, PC at the beginning was too expensive to become a mass-market gaming machine, but people were totally playing games on it.

[zzip]

On 10/30/2021 at 12:32 PM, NoBloodyXLOrE said:

 

@zzip I address this to you as well; making their machine "fashionable and trendy" and gearing it towards creatitive types doesn't make it any less of a piece of shit. The dinky little monochrome screen, single disk drive, and slow system design obviously made it worse than the Amiga and ST. Besides, its OS was buggy and poorly designed. While it may have been better than GEM and Windows, it wasn't nearly as good as the preemptively-multitasked Workbench. Plus, its DAC was rendered more-or-less useless for anything other than simple sound effects since there wasn't enough storage for long PCM music.

The simple answer is that it wasn't for us.   A lot of us approached computers as gamers and hardware snobs..    like BITD we'd argue Amiga vs Atari ST and couldn't understand why most people were buying "obviously inferior" PCs.   The truth is most people don't care about the multimedia capabilities of a system, they just want to be able to run certain name-brand applications.

 

To you the Mac screen might have been dinky and monochrome,  but to the writer and artist it was high-res (compared to what came before) and crystal clear.  It allowed WYSIWYG to go mainstream.   Sure the Atari ST and Amiga could do that too, and the Atari ST monochrome monitor was larger and higher-res than the Mac.   But they didn't get all the name brand applications and later Macs also got bigger higher-res screeens too.

 

If you put a Mac user in front of an ST or Amiga, they'd probably find GEM familiar but missing features and finesse and Workbench odd and not user friendly enough.   There was a clique that soon developed around Macs where Mac users in that clique believed it was superior to everything else, and that clique continues to this day

[zzip]

On 10/30/2021 at 6:43 PM, Keatah said:

And yet, somehow, someway, the primitive OS was able to scale with clock speed and accept further development. Got the MAC off the ground. And users loved it.

 

The consistent feel throughout applications was a huge plus. Learn one, learn all. Something 8-bit machines never considered. Something 16-bit machines were trying to get right.

They also changed architectures what, four times now?   And basically rewrote the OS from scratch as a BSD-derivative.    So it wasn't that the original Mac was that scalable per-se,  but Apple kept the brand name even as everything inside changed.  Todays Macs have very little to do with the original.

[zzip]

16 hours ago, Sporny Kun said:

I remember in my teenage years when the selling point of DOS PCs was "It do not run games (it is for -serious- work)"... Then when Linux started to get hold, the selling point of Windows PCs against Linux was "it do run games" ... irony of History...

Similarly one knock against Atari computers specifically was that "Atari is a games company, therefore you can't take their computers seriously".   Then a few years after Atari folded, Microsoft released the XBox become one of the biggest game companies in the industry...  and no-one seemed to care about that anymore

[h5n1xp]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

They also changed architectures what, four times now?   And basically rewrote the OS from scratch as a BSD-derivative.    So it wasn't that the original Mac was that scalable per-se,  but Apple kept the brand name even as everything inside changed.  Todays Macs have very little to do with the original.

As Steve Jobs famously said in an interview shortly before he died: "I'll let you into a secret, Apple is a software company"... For Apple hardware is just a platform to run their software.

 

By hiding the Macintosh hardware behind their operating system, they are able to alter the architecture as they wish and retain software compatibility. That design philosophy was there from the start, so it didn't matter how crappy the original hardware was... Apple were just able to sell you a better computer and all your old software worked.

 

Commodore and Atari had the expensive task of retaining hardware features which had become outdated in order to ensure compatibility with their software back-catalogues.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

8 hours ago, h5n1xp said:

As Steve Jobs famously said in an interview shortly before he died: "I'll let you into a secret, Apple is a software company"... For Apple hardware is just a platform to run their software.

 

By hiding the Macintosh hardware behind their operating system, they are able to alter the architecture as they wish and retain software compatibility. That design philosophy was there from the start, so it didn't matter how crappy the original hardware was... Apple were just able to sell you a better computer and all your old software worked.

 

Commodore and Atari had the expensive task of retaining hardware features which had become outdated in order to ensure compatibility with their software back-catalogues.

All I know about Apple from direct talk with one owner (my brother, around 1998), and look it, is that it had no BIOS settings, all was some kind of AUTO config.

That's something I don't like - because I understand much more than average user, and like to set, improve things. For instance EPROM programmer was first thing I made for Sinclair Spectrum - to play with it's ROM .

Surely, concept that did not encourage programmers to do direct HW (register) access is good way to ensure SW compatibility for future. And to not pull out max from HW in most cases when it is needed. But it was so with Atari ST - TOS was done by people experienced with that (DRI) . There is plenty of SW, games too,  which do practically everything via TOS functions. And we can say that Atari ST line and TOS versions are compatible about 80-90% with first ST. Lot of old SW works fine on TT, Falcon too. And it would be more if Atari made better documentation.  Then, there were some hardly understandable changes in TOS, which resulted in not working games because floppy code started using Timer-C, while it was never written to keep that timer unchanged (before disk operations).

And of course, part of problems is on programmers, who did not listen to recommendations.

Then, there were those who wanted to pull out of existing HW, and why not ? In 1987-8 there were about 2 millions of STs already sold, so why not give them max possible SW - what means Assembler with experience - yes, some time is needed to reach top level of 68000 programming. So, no it is not fair to blame Atari or programmers to make games like Carrier Command, No Second Prize, Starglider 2, Potsworth & Co ....  They worked hard on not easy task, and those games were sold well.  

Still much better than what was with 8-bit computers - in most cases every new model was not compatible with previous ones.

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, youxia said:

Flight Simulator, released in 1982, was so cutting edge code-wise that it was unofficialy used to test clone compatibility.

I sorta remember that being said BITD.

 

Quote

Yes, PC at the beginning was too expensive to become a mass-market gaming machine, but people were totally playing games on it.

Again BITD I remember mentally placing the PC above all other computers at the time. Atari 400/800, C64, and more, those were lesser machines. PC was even above the venerable Apple II. Initially I never wanted to play games on it since my exposures were to the green monochrome screen. And games were supposed to be be in color. But I did log some time with Flight Simulator. Loved the hi-res screen (compared to Apple II) and the faster-than-2-FPS it sported.

 

I got stuck and blindsided by advertising telling me the Amiga was superior over PC. And I fell for it, got an Amiga 1000. Found no software to use it. Nothing like the extensive library of Apple II. Sold it for some Arcade money, and R/C car money, and to support post-teen spending habits.

 

I got 2x stupid and later in 87'/88' bought a 500 on the premise that 4-years after the 1000, there's be some games available. Duped again. There were a few games of interest, like F/A-18 Interceptor and Terrorpods and MarbleMadness. Maybe Tactical TFX. But by and far nothing easily available to me. So for any real work I continued using Apple II.

 

I did enjoy Deluxe Paint and Photon Paint, and Digi-View for a while, till it was replaced by the PC. PC had higher resolution, more colors, faster disk access, bigger storage, and more.

 

During my "Amiga years" I had watched the PC go from Hercules Monochrome to SVGA powerhouse. Enough was enough. I saved for a 486 and put the Amiga into storage. The Amiga simply never evolved or grew. Today the Amiga is the PC's bitch through WinUAE.

 

58 minutes ago, h5n1xp said:

As Steve Jobs famously said in an interview shortly before he died: "I'll let you into a secret, Apple is a software company"... For Apple hardware is just a platform to run their software.

I occasionally think about it that way. I know I should maintain that philosophy more consistently. I don't give a rat's ass how many MHz is flying around in my iPhone or how big the bus is. There's little school buses driving around in my phone? How cute! I just want it to work. And have relevant apps and stuff.

 

And I'm beginning to see that with a Windows PC. Like with MAME. It can be put on a JumpDrive, configured with relative paths and stuff, and transported between machines. The underlying hardware is irrelevant as long as it's a Windows PC.

 

Quote

By hiding the Macintosh hardware behind their operating system, they are able to alter the architecture as they wish and retain software compatibility. That design philosophy was there from the start, so it didn't matter how crappy the original hardware was... Apple were just able to sell you a better computer and all your old software worked.

I appreciated that when I moved from a II+ to a //e. Though at the time I'd classify Apple as a hardware company. And Apple may not have adopted that concept early on.

 

Quote

Commodore and Atari had the expensive task of retaining hardware features which had become outdated in order to ensure compatibility with their software back-catalogues.

The bane of custom chipsets.

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Keatah

[NoBloodyXLOrE]

8 hours ago, zzip said:

The simple answer is that it wasn't for us.   A lot of us approached computers as gamers and hardware snobs..    like BITD we'd argue Amiga vs Atari ST and couldn't understand why most people were buying "obviously inferior" PCs.   The truth is most people don't care about the multimedia capabilities of a system, they just want to be able to run certain name-brand applications.

 

To you the Mac screen might have been dinky and monochrome,  but to the writer and artist it was high-res (compared to what came before) and crystal clear.  It allowed WYSIWYG to go mainstream.   Sure the Atari ST and Amiga could do that too, and the Atari ST monochrome monitor was larger and higher-res than the Mac.   But they didn't get all the name brand applications and later Macs also got bigger higher-res screeens too.

 

If you put a Mac user in front of an ST or Amiga, they'd probably find GEM familiar but missing features and finesse and Workbench odd and not user friendly enough.   There was a clique that soon developed around Macs where Mac users in that clique believed it was superior to everything else, and that clique continues to this day

Yes, there is most certainly a Mac clique, and I generally regard such people as idiots. Also, the Amiga eventually got far higher resolutions too, but you haven't really spoken to any ways the Mac is a good computer, just one that was marketed in the right way to become successful. You can get the mindless masses to buy anything if you're convincing enough. It was, in any objective, measurable sense, far inferior to its competitors, and still is.

[Keatah]

Early Mac hardware was elegant enough to not get tangled up into itself. Simple and straightforward. Appreciated by those that enjoy making and using software. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

21 hours ago, Keatah said:

 

"Commodore and Atari had the expensive task of retaining hardware features which had become outdated in order to ensure compatibility with their software back-catalogues. "

 

 

The bane of custom chipsets.

 

That's not because custom chipsets. Custom chipsets were made to reduce production costs, size of computer - and it gives less power consumption, better reliability. 

Examples:  Early PCs had no custom chips, mainboard was full with low integrated logic chips (74LS... and similar).  C64, Atari XL serial had more of them, and it was only way to make them at affordable price.  Sinclair Spectrum is interesting case: it used so called ULA chip, mostly for video - something like in factory connectable logic array, so we can call it PAL with much more logic units.

And of course, as things gone more and more complex, it was the only way. PC became successful in sales only when custom chipsets for motherboard started to be used (around 1990+) .

It is not chipset what causes 'outdated HW features', but overall concept, not designing it future expansion proof. IBM had already decades of experience in it.

And Apple has more than new manufacturers/designers. Then, there is factor: when is not worth anymore to push old design, and rather making complete new.

And all it was determined with very important factor: price.  IBM did not care how much it will cost. And early PCs were very expensive - I saw prices about 6000 DEM in 1983 - basic models.

Those who wanted mass sales needed to keep production costs low. And Commodore, Atari knew how to do it. They did not expect that machines will be used much 10 or more years later, so future compatibility was not relevant factor. Same stays for SW, of course.

 

And no, PCs and Apple are not so much backward compatible as some may think. You can not run most of old SW in latest Win - what self requires newer PC, or newer Apple. Apple even changed CPU line - because performance and price are main factors. There are diverse emulators to run older SW, so not really better than using some C64 emulator on PC ?  When someone buying new CPU, motherboard in like 6 year intervals, it means usually need to get new RAM boards, video card, sometimes hard disk - because connectors, slots change too.

Compatibility has it's limits. If you push it too much, will cause more bad than good.