terminator: AmigaOS cannot coexist on the wintel platform with windows.
It's unfair to call it Wintel, because there are hundreds of OSes that run on x86. Microsoft has a say in how the technologies are developed (they even play a big part in WC3 standards), but they don't own a patent on PC architecture and cannot control it completely.
Even XBox is not going to be a PC architecture, anymore. Microsoft doesn't like to limit themselves to one platform, which is WHY they have been so successful, and others have failed.
As mdwh2 pointed out, Microsoft is expanding to the hand-held market, much of which does not use x86.
When you're on PPC you are not in the MS sandbox.
The whole PC market is Microsoft's sandbox, as is everyone else's. Competition is not going to die no matter what Amiga releases. That's life.
terminator: They dominate x86. Do you think bill gates lays awake a night worrying about Apple's sales?
Absolutetly. Bill's concern is to keep Apple from getting too large, but without Apple Microsoft would be a complete monopoly and the government would have to break up the company. It's in Microsoft's best interest to keep Apple alive, which is why they invested so much money into Apple and write lots of software for the platform.
terminator: MS has annihilated every other operating system that tried to exist in their sphere.
It's arguable that they killed themselves. Note that today, there's only really two operating systems: Windows and UNIX. Everyone that has tried to make a new non-UNIX has died. Everyone that had a proprietary system died after PC clones started gaining momentum. Some even died before.
Besides, the most promising computers based on proprietary hardware, Amiga and Atari, were infamous for terrible management. Apple almost went bankrupt, too, before Jobs took over the company and repackaged everything in pretty-looking cases, which nobody in the PC market had done before (or at least not very well).
terminator: The CPU is everything right?
Nice to know you're as sharp at sarcasm as you are at economics. :-)
terminator: There isn't the time or the space here for an economics lesson either.
Of course, seeing how that's only the biggest problem with Amiga's plan for the future...
DonnyEMU: Mac games most of the times come out later than windows, but still sell profitably.
Yup. It still bugs me that there isn't more effort going into Mac software. The market is smaller, but there's also less competition so it IS profitable.
DonnyEMU: It wasn't until Atari with the ST came out and started UNDERCUTTING them that they released the A500.
Yup. I recall that the AtariST was very cheap for the CPU power and memory it gave you, even if it couldn't compete with Amiga at a graphics level.
DonnyEMU: Why did people buy Amiga software in the first place over the other machines out there? It probably wasn't the revolutionary market.
The Amiga was a fun computer when all the PC did was beep, and all the Mac did was leave no memory left over to do anything useful.
Today, PC's are a lot more fun, and if you want to really hack and code, there's Linux. Amiga cannot afford to use 1980 marketing tactics, anymore.
DonnnyEMU: Did you ever buy Amiga software in anywhere but a mail order or a place that sold software for other machines? Probably not.. There is a reason for this..
I used to buy my Amiga software from The Memory Location, which had PC's and Macs selling side-by-side. Of course, that was back in 1989.
[EDIT: PCs and Amigas, I meant. When I asked a sales rep why they didn't sell Macs, they told me they didn't see the point with Amiga around. After I got my A1200, they stopped selling Amigas, and they started selling Macs. They lived for maybe another two years before closing. Too bad. They were nice people, and was the last store I've ever visited where they allowed you to
open boxed software and try it out in the store!]