It's hard to overstate how much computers improved with each generation back then. Going from, say, an IBM XT or AT to an Amiga has no modern parallel. It was mind-blowing, exhausting, and exhilarating all at once.

You could literally count the number of extra colors you would get onscreen with each new computer!

The Mac M series is more impressive imo. But maybe that's just because it's more recent to me.

In the 1980s and earlier people thought that in 2000 computers would have the kind of AI we finally got in 2025 heh

In 1999 they even made a famous documentary about people in trench coats fighting AI