I found it vaguely hilarious (mostly ironic) that some of the most heated online discourse about "real" vs "emulation" has been within Amiga communities.

It's as if they missed that when the Commodore Amiga was demonstrated at that black tie gala event with Blondie and Warhol? It was also shown emulating IBMPC software.

Like, before you could even BUY one, one of the apparently selling points was emulation.

For a while, Amax II blew my mind, because it ran the Macintosh software from my parents' computers on my friend's Amiga faster and in color.

I've read from some (though never owned one myself) that the fastest MC68k era Macintosh was an Amiga (presumably one of those 1337 A4000 systems which shipped with MC68060s), with an Emplant board. I have no reason to doubt that.

I mean, I get it, I want a "real" Amiga (and I will not part with my Amiga 1200 and wonder what happened to my Amiga 2000). I have tried MorphOS on PPC G4 PowerBooks and it is not the same.

But, I would also be totally into a CPU upgrade. Sure there are MC68060 upgrades for my Amiga 1200. There are even vintage PPC upgrades (that cost an arm and a leg) that I would probably enjoy! But, in more recent years folks have come up with all sorts of FPGA Amiga CPU accelerators (what is a 68080? I don't know, but it's apparently FAST) and even more recently some ARM based CPU accelerators. Alas, I am not made of money, but a hot rodded Amiga, even if not "period" to me, still seems as if it would be friggin awesome, regardless of how "real" it is? Also, presumably such after market things are removable and it can be returned to stock.

These are microcomputers after all, swapping engine blocks in cars is a lot more effort based on the mass and tooling required; with price points to reflect it.

Similarly, if someone, someday, comes out with an Amiga laptop? I would be ALL OVER THAT! Even if it were "emulating" some things. Well, if I could afford one. Which, is dubious.

CC: @f4grx@chaos.social @Wintermute_BBS@oldbytes.space