Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: restore2003 on July 16, 2003, 04:59:59 PM
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This has probably been discussed before, but what the heck ;-)
Where would Amiga been today if Commodore did not hire Mehdi Ali as their Chief, and did not cancel the AAA chipset?
:-?
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This sorta question should be brought up with Dave Haynie. Since he was the guy who was closest to real development, his perspective alone would be worth listening to.
-john
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There are so many other factors as well, like how long it would have taken to develop the AAA chipset to release status. Also, I think Commodore's stance of the Amiga primarily being a toy rather than a producitivity-capable machine would have killed it sooner or later.
Or, x86 architecture and related development would have continued exactly as it has, and x86 would still be the cheaper, better performing option it is now.
And what if the Amiga had clung on to its own hardware technologies for too long, leaving behind the advantages of technologies like AGP has to offer? What is the likeliness of technologies like Zorro slots with only one company's research funding going to be able to match AGP, PCI, PCI-X, etc?
Assuming that Commodore would have made subsequent decisions at the right times, I think they would have ended up with a share like Apple's to the market. Or maybe Microsoft/Apple might have bought them up by then? Assuming that didn't happen, and Commodore/Amiga was still in practical existence and profit today, PPC development may be further along the road than it is now, but otherwise I think the picture would look much the same as it is now.
There are times when new ventures of making new technologies is appopriate, but not all the time. The last decade or so belongs to x86. Occasionally some new incompatible technology will break the mould and legacy of older compatible technologies, but it doesn't work all the time.
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The Amiga technology should have been sold to someone other than C=. Then it would have had a better chance at survival as ...........C= was its worst nightmare..... :-D
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Wolfe wrote:
The Amiga technology should have been sold to someone other than C=. Then it would have had a better chance at survival as ...........C= was its worst nightmare..... :-D
And also its bestest dream. Remember the good times under Commodore? It was ace for a long time. But AGA was too little, too late. And AKIKO should have been on all of the AGA mobos right from the start.
If only my foresight was as 20/20 as my hindsight :-)
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What is the likeliness of technologies like Zorro slots with only one company's research funding going to be able to match AGP, PCI, PCI-X, etc?
Just a minnor point, but C= had already decided to switch to PCI instead of continuing the Zorro series by late 1993 (they announced this at the November WOC/WOA Toronto show that year).
I tend to agree with what I belive Dave H. had said, basically AAA was outdated by 1993 and it made sense to move to more standard parts (Hombrie was sort of its own thing and not designed to run AmigaOS). This was true of the original Amiga- they used off-the-shelf parts where those worked and designed custom parts where no suitable parts existed.
As far as x86, I think PPC ended up where it did because only Apple used it on the desktop, a few million PPCs (say in a A1200-type system) might have changed Mot's mind. Maybe IBM will save it yet if they get serious about PPCLinux- early signs are positive.
Zoltan
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AKIKO should have been on all of the AGA mobos right from the start.
Unfortunately it was a bit of a hack, I think programmers eventually figured out how to do what it did faster than the AKIKO chip did (though it might have needed an '030, though I can't remember for use). What really was needed was some new hardware, C= basically never spent the money needed to keep developing new hardware. I guess they learned the wrong lesson from the C64 :)
Zoltan
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zee4 wrote:
What is the likeliness of technologies like Zorro slots with only one company's research funding going to be able to match AGP, PCI, PCI-X, etc?
Just a minnor point, but C= had already decided to switch to PCI instead of continuing the Zorro series by late 1993 (they announced this at the November WOC/WOA Toronto show that year).
I tend to agree with what I belive Dave H. had said, basically AAA was outdated by 1993 and it made sense to move to more standard parts (Hombrie was sort of its own thing and not designed to run AmigaOS). This was true of the original Amiga- they used off-the-shelf parts where those worked and designed custom parts where no suitable parts existed.
As far as x86, I think PPC ended up where it did because only Apple used it on the desktop, a few million PPCs (say in a A1200-type system) might have changed Mot's mind. Maybe IBM will save it yet if they get serious about PPCLinux- early signs are positive.
Zoltan
Yes, Dave Haynie stated that PCI was to be the new Amiga bus.
Also the Commodore-Amiga design team had already chosen HP's PA-150 as the next Amiga CPU (and I believe a second one as part of the chipset, for GFX...)
Without Mehdi Ali, Dave Haynie would have been promoted to president of Commodore... and I would be typing this on an Amiga :-P
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One important thing to consider is that
Commodore was moving towards an HP risc
solution using a new *nix based OS for
the Amiga line AFAIK. Things would be
very different now if that had happend. ;)
They didn't really see any value in the OS or
how it functioned and just wanted to make the
next "console" computer like the C64->Amiga->?
in my opinion.
Commodore went from the C64 to the Amiga
without any thought as to what the users
might think of it and same would have
happend to the Amiga although the name would
have most likely been retained. Much of the
development of Amiga is now in community led
efforts that would never have been possible in
the old Commodore days... :)
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realstar wrote:
One important thing to consider is that
Commodore was moving towards an HP risc
solution using a new *nix based OS for
the Amiga line AFAIK. Things would be
very different now if that had happend. ;)
They didn't really see any value in the OS or
how it functioned and just wanted to make the
next "console" computer like the C64->Amiga->?
in my opinion.
Commodore went from the C64 to the Amiga
without any thought as to what the users
might think of it and same would have
happend to the Amiga although the name would
have most likely been retained. Much of the
development of Amiga is now in community led
efforts that would never have been possible in
the old Commodore days... :)
Yup, you've hit the nail on the head.
Commodore were not interested in the Amiga, it was simply their next product... it would have been cast aside just like the C64 was, as soon as the next gen machine was ready.
Oddly this makes perfect sense, but has one fatal flaw, the Next gen machine would have been too much like the Amiga for it to replace the Amiga...
From the C64 to the Amiga is a massive jump in the way computers work... the next gen machine would have just been faster, and a bit better.
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The Amiga started out as a blessed child in the arena of computing because it was sooooooo cool and capable. If someone else purchased the tech and dedicated to do the research it would be alive today - I stronly believe that.
C= coulnd't make up it's mind on what tech to put out, what direction the tech should take so instead of dedicating to make one system superior, they went in all directions. Which limited funds, research and had mass failures.
C-64/128 Amiga PC and all the parts to there series CDTV etc.
A company that was dedicated to the Amiga tech could have went far.
From birth it was the "Grail" of desktop computers. Everyone saw a new vision and road to travel for the future of computing and C= had the lead and fumbled the ball.
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Amiga was a game/graphics machine when people wanted business machines... Now people want game/graphics machines, and we have to make due with altered business machines. (Or we become retro-computing freaks and create an Amiga scene... Oh wait, we've done that!)
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Ok, so now what? How can Amiga gain some of its popularity back? How can non amiga users be convinced to switch side? If you were head of Amiga Inc, what would u have done to achieve these goals?
8-)
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@ restore2003
If you were head of Amiga Inc, what would u have done to achieve these goals?
At the moment I think the best move is to see how well OS4 does when it is released, and once there is some decent software support for it (eg. a decent web browser, office-type apps), which will probably have given the OS enough time to mature and have a little more polish with some patching, I'd push the whole product (A1/OS4) to the masses through techie-journo websites as a cool, quiet-running machine with an efficient, decent performing small footprint operating system which has all the features most people need.
I would then make sure the XE model A1 gets a few processor upgrade options in the future to bring its speed up about 500MHz at the most, then the next Amiga hardware would be IBM PPC 970 (if IBM say that the 970 will be at the start of a decent upgrade path), and OS4 at least provide minimal support for it initially (at least so that it is a faster setup), then OS5's codebase being virtually entirely 64-bit.
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It would have been way easier if the A1 mobo`s were a bit cheaper, but i cant blame them, they dont sells hundreds of thousands mobo`s like MSI or ASUS.
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Given the current state of the x86 cpu market, I don't mind paying more to get a cooler, less noisy setup, and still get reasonable all-round performance.
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mikeymike wrote:
Given the current state of the x86 cpu market, I don't mind paying more to get a cooler, less noisy setup, and still get reasonable all-round performance.
Why not pay less and buy a Pegasos Mike? :-)
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I prefer to wait to see how OS4 turns out. I'm in no hurry, just mildly impatient :-)
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I still firmly believe that the best chance the Amiga had to survive would have been to have gone with the management buyout by Commodore UK, headed by that bearded David bloke (I forget his second name, Pleasance rings a bell?). Instead it went to Escom and right royally down the toilet. Just my two bobs worth tho! :-)
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by bloodline on 2003/7/16 14:01:36
Also the Commodore-Amiga design team had already chosen HP's PA-150 as the next Amiga CPU (and I believe a second one as part of the chipset, for GFX...)
IIRC, the PA chip was solely for the GPU (Hombre) and not the CPU.
Dammy
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squiggs1982 wrote:
I still firmly believe that the best chance the Amiga had to survive would have been to have gone with the management buyout by Commodore UK, headed by that bearded David bloke (I forget his second name, Pleasance rings a bell?). Instead it went to Escom and right royally down the toilet. Just my two bobs worth tho! :-)
Yup, had the UK deal gone through, The Amiga may well have survived, in a similar nicheto the Imac
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Yup, had the UK deal gone through, The Amiga may well have survived, in a similar nicheto the Imac
My thoughts too, unfortunately we'll never know. Lets hope OS4 starts things moving in the right direction again.
Regardless of what people think of Amiga Inc., I think we can agree there is a talented team working on OS4.
Zoltan
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zee4 wrote:
Yup, had the UK deal gone through, The Amiga may well have survived, in a similar nicheto the Imac
My thoughts too, unfortunately we'll never know. Lets hope OS4 starts things moving in the right direction again.
Regardless of what people think of Amiga Inc., I think we can agree there is a talented team working on OS4.
Zoltan
Agree, and think of the huge job of rewriting the entire OS to PPC :-o
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Agree, and think of the huge job of rewriting the entire OS to PPC
I thought all they had to do was recompile the source? The only reason its taking so long that they were using a stock A500 to compile it with? :-)
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To put it short: if Commodore had had decent management, it would now, with a little luck, be where Apple are now. Perhaps five percent of the worldwide computer market.
Now, there are several factors which could influence this, though:
Commodore did a lot of bad things towards the end of their life, as well as before. When does this theoretical competent management enter the picture? If we just propose that Commodore suddenly got rid of its old management in 1994 (straight before its death), we have to take into account two really odd Commodore path decisions from that time. One thing is the PA-RISC route. PA-RISC is now on HP's own death list, so right now, we would face right now a transition period either to the Itanium (HP's future choice), or to another processor, such as the PPC we all know and love. It should also be taken into account that the new Intel/HP processor still isn't aimed at the desktop market, both with regard to its environmental specs and its price. This is no problem for HP, which have always made PA-RISC workstations with very well thought-out cooling systems, but it would be for Commodore, whose systems are a lot more mainstream. Really, the only processors actually being developed with desktop use in mind today are Wintel and PPC, so any other processor choice could have proven fatal, since C= would have wound up with either an under-powered processor (ARM), one without a future path (Alpha, PA-RISC, probably MIPS, too), or one which is too expensive for consumer products (Alpha, PA, SPARC). These days would indeed have proven interesting times for a PA-bound Commodore.
There were also Commodore rumours about going for Windows NT, which would have killed the Amiga, without any doubt. You just can't coexist peacefully with M$.
Now, if we ignore those possible futures, what do we have then? Basically the Apple thing. At least Escom were clear about going to the PPC, so we have a processor for the future and no worries there, if we say Commodore would have done the same.
Back in 1994, Commodore's market is still basically intact. They release a new computer, either 68k or PPC based. Well, it would have been a work of wonder if they would manage a PPC transition in less than a year, but at least they would have a new computer out, or proceed to sell A1200s, A4000s and A4000Ts. They would lose a lot of funds on a PPC transition, and seeing as the lower stratum of the Amiga market was using A1200s, being wary of yet another upgrade in such a short time (both in Commodore's "one machine a decade" view and in the view of still teenaged Amiga users, who may have had an A500 for half their lives), they would have a lot of problems convincing the users, and as a consequence, the software houses, to switch.
Well, this might not be such a big problem, since we all remember the 68k Amiga market staying relatively healthy even for a few years after Commodore's demise, even with new production runs of the old machines to satisfy the market. But they would have to keep the old 68k line in parallel with the NG market for at least some years, I suspect. RTG was only to come in OS 3.2 or 3.3, and CGX/P96 only came out after C= died, so there was no culture of avoiding hardware banging back in 1994. Looking at the software offerings of today, all RTG friendly and as hardware independent as possible, Hyperion are in an enviable position compared to that of a 1994 Commodore OS team. Apple didn't have to deal with this, since it actually managed to enforce programming guidelines and didn't have an across-the-line unified custom chip architecture like Commodore. You can't aspire to run any major 80's app or game on OS4, but you have a fair chance doing that on a PowerMac.
Still, Commodore was heading in that direction, so the programmers had better listen up, so we may have that problem routed, albeit not as smoothly as in Apple's case. The games do remain, though. You can't do a game without accessing the hardware on a standard A1200, so all the old titles would have to be left behind, leaving the NG C= Amiga an uncompelling alternative to all the Amiga gamers, which would make Commodore lose a lot of income in the short term, unless they managed to make the A1200 still seem like a compelling games machine, perhaps even upgrading it in the process, which would disrupt the NG transition.
However, the big problem facing Commodore to a much larger extent than Apple in the nineties is the commoditisation of the computer, particularly the PC, which coincides very well with Commodore getting in a serious mess. In the eighties, common people didn't have a computer. But their teenage sons might. A few years later, we have a situation where the teenage son is begging his father, mother or sister, to let him use the family PC, which cost several times as much as the Amiga he would otherwise have had. The computer market grows a lot in the nineties, but the Amiga wouldn't get much of a share of it, unless Commodore were very focused for once and made a computer targetting the family and not their usual market of teenage boys and video graphicians. This is difficult, since so many of the new computer users are already familiar with the PC from work, and it may be built and sold by anyone, not just Commodore. Apple's Performa line was no rampant success, as I recall. Instead, it might even shrink Commodore's market, since the existence of a PC in every family may lead to fewer teenagers buying a computer of their own, and if they did, it would probably not be an Amiga, since they are already weaned on the PC by now, and there is an ample supply of what once made the Amiga big - pirate software.
This - the lack of down-market adoption of an incompatible NG Amiga, and the PC invasion of the home - could force Commodore upwards, into a smaller but richer market, that owned by Apple. Commodore would have similarly specced machines to Apple, and would focus on their own up-market slots, namely those of DTV and multimedia. Note that both of these are now important Apple markets, so if one non-PC vendor could do it, then so could Commodore, especially considering that they already had a foot in that market. Newtek would be kept on board, just as Apple have always tried to appease Adobe and Quark, and this would lead to Commodore having a competitive solution. Scala is another big name which would still have been with us, and generated sales for a reborn, high-end Amiga workstation. These uses alone would secure an industry need for all kinds of other graphics titles, such as ImageFX (though that one in particular is still with us), ADPro, Imagine, Cinema4D, Real 3D (note how the last three are all surviving on the Mac and PC, with C4D in particular being very popular). In the end, a maintained and fairly prosperous market would ensure a steady flow of other applications, too. Not too bad, though all of us might not be able to buy a brand new NG Amiga, just as some people say that Macs are too expensive.
In the end, Commodore, what with it still having both a games market and a pro market in the early nineties, could have gone the Apple route, but Commodore culture stood in the way. Since going into computers, they had always made their main income from the home computer market, one which they would run a big risk of losing either through outside factors (home PC market exploding) or internal factors (incompatible new developments).
Looking at what Dave Haynie has written about Hombre, though, it seems that at least some parts of Commodore were willing to let the Amiga move up a slot. After all, I don't think that AAA was supposed to have been ECS/AGA compatible, and they were planning to introduce integrated networking (albeit still favouring ARCnet) on the motherboards. With AAA, LAN, DSP and OS3.3, the Hombre Amiga would have been a mid-nineties powerhouse, but perhaps pleasing not so much most of us A1200 users as those who ran Toasters or Scala. But this would have secured the future of Commodore, I think.
As for custom chips and buses, I don't think that's a problem at all. Commodore were after all moving in that direction, and simple market realities would have pushed them in that direction sooner or later. Apple ditched Nubus for PCI, after all, and though Zorro is a notch above that, the new bus would according to Haynie have been so similar to PCI that they would have chosen to use that instead, sooner or later.
I still don't think we should say that Commodore was all bad, or deliberately pushing the Amiga as a games machine.
First of all, Commodore was one of the richest and biggest companies of the computer industry back in the eighties. Most other rich companies were IBM clone makers, and after looking at GW2000's handling of the Amiga or Compaq's handling of DEC, we know that that kind of company culture can't deal with alien architectures or innovate enough by themselves. Atari would have been just as bad, since they disappeared from the market at the same time as Commodore. Can you think of any other company? None in the computer business, at least. Commodore had funds, engineers and technology. How many computer manufacturers have their own semiconductor factories (Commodore had, with MOS)?
Commodore originally didn't try to push the Amiga as a games machine, either. Quite the opposite. The Amiga 1000 must have been the world's most expensive and difficult-to-operate games machine, in that case. I even remember reading about how Commodore held an early meeting with software houses to rally development for the yet-to-be-released Amiga. When two of the attendees said they were planning to write a game, they were thrown out. The Amiga was supposed to be a serious computer. Then, the story goes, the two rejectees went on to form Psygnosis. =)
Commodore released the A500 because Atari was eating the Amiga's market with its small and cheap STs. They still spent more effort and money on establishing the Amiga as a serious machine than I think Atari did. Atari never cared about making network cards, never wrote their own LAN software or TCP/IP stacks, they couldn't even decide on a working expansion bus for their high-end machines. Why, they never even produced a machine with more than one Megabus/VME slot, or an 040-based machine. Compared to an Atari takeover, Commodore was perhaps a real blessing, considering the development of the ST line.
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You call that keeping it short? Jeeez I think that's the longest post I've ever read on here!
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Ooh, eight-year thread-necromancy burn!
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Ooh, eight-year thread-necromancy burn!
lolz
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The Amiga spirit is to get the best technology that you can get your hands on be it buying, or order your in-house chipfab, for a given price per unit factor.
As for Commodore (non)management. Putting focus in time on making a good base computing platform would likely helpt a lot, with emphasis ON TIME without clutter. Ofcourse with a sense of what will sell, and heavy R&D to beat competitors. Any project that used too many resources from the main focus should been closed down.
The base platform could then be sold in different configurations low- and highend. Extras or not extras. The A3000 with a PPC, PCI, accelerated 768x625 non-interlaced gfx for half the price would been something.
What x86-PC really suck at is handling large amount of data in a timely and synchronized way. Autoconfiguration is a mess. Efficient and straightforward processor is another factor. I really deplored the graphics and sound capabilities of that platform for a LONG time..
When people say the masses wanted PC's.. well the reason that it turned out that way is because the business people thought that only IBM could make good computers in 70s and 80s. So companies bought IBM because the management was lobbied to think it was good. And the result is obvious.. ;)
People that did't suffer from being weak to "feels safe" then, and compatibility-anxiousity today, are more free to make rational choices.
A lot of development is now taking place that would not happened with Commodore. Like FPGA boards to replace deteriorating originals. System software is replaced with AROS etc.. The main difference is a engineering/community driven development path rather than a management in suits one. The downside is lack of capital. Right now it seems the mobile market with ARM based "computers" are eating the old M$.
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There are so many other factors as well, like how long it would have taken to develop the AAA chipset to release status. Also, I think Commodore's stance of the Amiga primarily being a toy rather than a producitivity-capable machine would have killed it sooner or later.
Or, x86 architecture and related development would have continued exactly as it has, and x86 would still be the cheaper, better performing option it is now.
And what if the Amiga had clung on to its own hardware technologies for too long, leaving behind the advantages of technologies like AGP has to offer? What is the likeliness of technologies like Zorro slots with only one company's research funding going to be able to match AGP, PCI, PCI-X, etc?
Assuming that Commodore would have made subsequent decisions at the right times, I think they would have ended up with a share like Apple's to the market. Or maybe Microsoft/Apple might have bought them up by then? Assuming that didn't happen, and Commodore/Amiga was still in practical existence and profit today, PPC development may be further along the road than it is now, but otherwise I think the picture would look much the same as it is now.
There are times when new ventures of making new technologies is appopriate, but not all the time. The last decade or so belongs to x86. Occasionally some new incompatible technology will break the mould and legacy of older compatible technologies, but it doesn't work all the time.
Maybe not, the console market is 100% non x86 and on launch day PS3/360 games shat all over 400% more expensive PC/Mac.
But Commodore fired/lost critical staff even from C64 times (which explains impotence of £400 C128) and 66% of OCS A1000 designers = ECS joke of an upgrade in A3000 which they binned 3 years R&D by Jay Miner AKA Ranger chipset.
Atari without MOS=fail AND Commodore with Jack=fail.
Now had Jack not been forced out his own company he would have ripped the balls off an incompetent bull****er like Ali. And Jack went from PET to C64 in 4 years. All post Tramiel Commodore designed in-house was C128 and 264 series white elephants *meh*
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This has probably been discussed before, but what the heck ;-)
Where would Amiga been today if Commodore did not hire Mehdi Ali as their Chief, and did not cancel the AAA chipset?
:-?
I think by the early 90s it was clear that the Amiga was falling behind technology wise. It was still a nice entry level PC, they had dedicated engineers, good 3rd party hardware support, and a devoted following.
Without Ali and all of the destructive turmoil and total lack of strategy he caused whatever they did it would have been for the better.
Still, "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss". You never know...
Although Hitler was dead and Charlie Manson was incarcerated.
I have read that the final blow to Commodore was they were struggling for cash due to the inability to import anything in the US market because of an injunction by a federal court over Cad Track for their use of their XOR cursor patent.
Even if they continued to fumble along in the low-end market Commodore and the Amiga could have easily been saved. It would not even have taken a Steve Jobs. Steve Ballmer could have done it or 90% of anyone named Steve. Anyone who could have effectively dealt with the Cad Track situation.
The Cad Track thing was total BS.
What a ridiculously easy concept concept to have a patent for.
Amiga uses a sprite for the pointer anyway!
At the very least they could have made some sort of deal to survive.
It is like dying of strep throat or something that is easily treated with antibiotics.
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Without Ali and all of the destructive turmoil and total lack of strategy he caused whatever thy did it would have been for the better.
I heard Ali came from the mining industry, any truth to that?
Any particular reason why Ali was even hired?
In the 1980's there were loads of people with money and influence but no computer clue. Not even a small one.
injunction by a federal court over Cad Track for their use of their XOR cursor patent.
What computer used that patent?
Maybe they should be LARTed as gift from the Amiga community for screwing up Commodore even more ;)
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Any particular reason why Ali was even hired?
In the 1980's there were loads of people with money and influence but no computer clue. Not even a small one.
*cough*johnsculley*cough*
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What computer used that patent?
I'm not sure. I would think that patent more pertain to products like GEM based stuff (like Ventura Publisher and Atari ST), Windows, drawing software, etc. Anything that uses a mouse pointer that does not have hardware sprites.
Ideally you want a pointer that does not destroy the underling content as you move it about the screen. There are various ways to accomplish this. The Amiga way would be the Sprite.
The Cad Track thing worked on the basic principle that if you take any number and XOR or another number twice the end result is always same number you started with.
1 xor 4 xor 4 = 1
2 xor 4 xor 4 = 2
3 xor 4 xor 4 = 3
etc...
Lets say the 123 this is the contents of my screen and the 4's represent my pointer (shaped like a +).
123 xor _4_ = 163 xor _4_ = 123
123 xor 444 = 567 xor 444 = 123
123 xor _4_ = 163 xor _4_ = 123
I can place the cursor on the screen with one XOR operation and remove it with the second XOR. This is very fast because I don't need to save the underling contents of the screen in order to restore it.
The ugly but somewhat useful side-effect is that the pointer changes colors depending on the underling screen content.
This is useful because you can always see the cursor. You don't have the situation where you have a red pointer obscured because it is directly over a red object.
So, What computer used that patent? No Commodore computer I can think of. Perhaps some feature of the Bit Blitter?
That was the nail in Commodores coffin. Sad but true!
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What computer used that patent?)
Here we go... I think I may have found it.... Amiga Workbench....
I bet its not the pointer but the window outline when you move/resize windows.
See how the line changes colors depending on the underling screen content?
That for sure is the result of using an XOR operation.....
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We could all talk for ages on this topic.
Just a couple of observations. I tend to agree with the theory that Commodore learned a bad lesson from the C64, in that you can continue to sell old tech for a long time. That worked when your product had killed off all competition and was king.
Having said that, part of the appeal of Commodore machines is that you knew you could buy it and use it for years with new software still coming. So selling old tech, while we criticise it, was actually integral to the Amiga's success in markets like Europe.
Their difficulties came about when the PC and clones came along with their, backward compatibility forever mantra. People were then a little less bothered about buying newer, faster hardware more often, because they knew their software could be taken with them.
Of course we all know that Amiga software was generally backwards compatible and could be made to work with certain tips and tricks, but never the less the PC and clone mantra was strong, and if Commodore DID launch a totally new architecture (like C64 to Amiga) then your software was stuffed.
I also like the theory that Commodore UK would have done a better job. In general I regard UK companies as backward and non-committal R&D wise, and notorious for listening to the bean-counters. We're also notorious for ruining a perfectly good product just to safe a few pennies in production. That is why generally UK products are ****, and our manufacturing has died a death. However, one thing Commodore UK knew how to do was market and sell the Amiga. The batman pack was a master stroke, and fended off the dominance of SNES and Megadrive for at least 2 years in my book.
As to where Amiga could have been nowadays. It's already been said. The best we could hope for is a market the size of apple's.
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But also in the UK they had Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad. (did I miss anyone here), which really didn't fair as well in the rest of the world as C-64 did, I reckon.
Something that hit me when the PS3/X360 came out was that these were, or are the new Amigas, in a way. They have PPC, similar concept, but 20 years newer. Would have been nice to mod a X360 to run OS 4.x on. :lol:
All you can do now is linux, and that can be run on anything plus your grandmother's cell.
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But also in the UK they had Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad. (did I miss anyone here), which really didn't fair as well in the rest of the world as C-64 did, I reckon.....
The only one that springs to mind is Dragon who produced the moderately successful Dragon32 and the too-late to market Dragon64. I believe they came out of Wales.
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Here is why (http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/) hohn Sculley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley) ever got hired:
"They exhausted all of the obvious high-tech candidates to be CEO… Ultimately, David Rockefeller, who was a shareholder in Apple, said let’s try a different industry and let’s go to the top head hunter in the United States who isn’t in high tech: Gerry Roche."
Maybe Irving Gould (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Gould) should be blamed for the commodore mess? ;)
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Here is another point Commodore failed to notice.
Time of C64 rise coincides with fall of all cart based consoles due to video game crash BUT time of A500 coincided with US fascination of P.O.S. NES (puke) or idiots spending MORE than 512kb A1000 cost on pathetic CGA PCs or 128k mono Mac.
If you look at the total sales the US consumers buying that crap is one of the reasons that......
A. Amiga sold only 9 million less than the 22m C64 for compatibles (inc 5m for 128/128D/PET64/SX64)
B. US Games like Simpsons arcade lovingly programmed for C64 (DOS PCs) but not Amiga. Crazy.
US consumers need to take 1/3 the blame. Gould's 7mhz 68000 'is fast enough for consumers' attitude until 1992 another 1/3 and management decisions like not marketing A1000 for a year in mid 80s another.
Said it before but never again would one computer be as revolutionary as Amiga 1000 in its place among inferior rivals of EGA PC/ST/MAC/8-BIT. The war was over before the 1 millionth A500 was sold.
PS They could have sold A1000s in 1986 direct to consumers dropping RRP by 40% ie how Jack sold PET :)
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Here is why (http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/) hohn Sculley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley) ever got hired
Wow, that's...almost as illuminating as to why Apple went to **** in the '90s as the one where he was babbling about why using Motorola chips was a bad idea.
When I first saw the Macintosh — it was in the process of being created — it was basically just a series of components over what is called a bread board. It wasn’t anything
Because yeah, all that junky hardware stuff, who cares about that? It only makes the machine work, that's all.
Steve would say: “The organization can become bigger but not the Mac team. The Macintosh was set up as a product development division — and so Apple had a central sales organization, a central back office for all the administration, legal. It had a centralized manufacturing of that sort but the actual team that was building the product, and this is true for high tech products, it doesn’t take a lot of people to build a great product.
Except that according to Andy Hertzfeld's account, (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Things_Are_Better_Than_Ever.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium) that's exactly what happened...oy.
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Here is another point Commodore failed to notice.
US consumers need to take 1/3 the blame. Gould's 7mhz 68000 'is fast enough for consumers' attitude until 1992 another 1/3 and management decisions like not marketing A1000 for a year in mid 80s another.
Yeah, the 68020 was available in the mid 80s, they should have made an Amiga with it (12, 16, 20Mhz) around 88-90. :idea: I guess even the less attractive 68EC020 was out by then.
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Mehdi Ali was not the only one to blame.
A few multi million dollar lawsuits were going on at the time whch C<=ommodore could not afford.
Amiga was branded a gaming machine, so could not enter the business market. Not even now its not taken seriously.
When Commodore was for sale in Bahamas Commodore UK submitted a 3M bid, along other high bidders, Commodore UK - withdrew the bid because they thought they did not stand a chance with the big boys.
Commodore UK had the only winning bid, other bids did not meet the deadline or demanded conditions which made them all void.
Commodore UK had a winning hand and threw it away.
Even if Commodore survived, the AAA chipset is incomplete and incompatible with all amiga software.
Our fast and effecient OS, our superior OS - where did it get us ?
If we ported Open Office, our fast OS wont run it fast. Why ? because the OpenOffice application has high resource requirements.
Large applications are more 'meaty' they do more, and have more complex algorithms that need more hardware resources.
It does not matter how fast the OS is, an Wordprocessor is not made to be fast, just to process words and that it does well.
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Large applications are more 'meaty' they do more, and have more complex algorithms that need more hardware resources.
It does not matter how fast the OS is, an Wordprocessor is not made to be fast, just to process words and that it does well.
Yeah, makes me think of that video on Youtube where good ol' Rob Hubbard talks about that his music for a game, back in the early to mid 80s, was only 1k long or so. Compared to the amount of RAM we have now. :roflmao:
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Yeah, the 68020 was available in the mid 80s, they should have made an Amiga with it (12, 16, 20Mhz) around 88-90. :idea: I guess even the less attractive 68EC020 was out by then.
I think the price would make it fail.
Yeah, makes me think of that video on Youtube where good ol' Rob Hubbard talks about that his music for a game, back in the early to mid 80s, was only 1k long or so. Compared to the amount of RAM we have now. :roflmao:
What you lack in IQ you have to compensate with RAM and MHz hehe.
Guess any new platform with the philosophy to get the best hardware for a given price has to focus on technically aware people and not the surrounding masses. Ferraris are not for everyone.
The last successes has been in ipod - music, iphone - mobility, ipad - mobile internet. Maybe this can hint on what's the next thing the market will love?
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This has probably been discussed before, but what the heck ;-)
Where would Amiga been today if Commodore did not hire Mehdi Ali as their Chief, and did not cancel the AAA chipset?
:-?
I haven't read the other posts but here's what I understand
Irving Gould wasn't prepared to do the hard work required to make Commodore successful but didn't like the idea of other people getting the credit for Commodore's successes.
Thomas Rattigan got pushed out after he turned Commodore around. If it wasn't Mehdi Ali ruining Commodore it would have been someone else just like him that didn't understand the business.
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So ultimatly Irving is to blame?
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Tough to say where Amiga would be if only one of the line of people who caused it to fail hadn't been there.
Amiga survived as long as it did because it was so far ahead, but out of the gate it already stagnated with no real advance from 1000, 500/2000 to 3000, a 5 year span of time. While Amiga was staying to mostly the same capabilities both the Windows PCs and Macs were slowly and steadily gaining capabilities and was a continuation of the 'rudderless' careening around that started at Commodore after the 64.
At best if all things had been improved including no Medhi Ali, Amiga now would be in the same state as the Mac where its parent company could only really sustain itself by coming up with products in areas where the clone market isn't. Windows didn't win by being better than anything, it won by being easily and cheaply able to be purchased by a wider market and rode the wave of hardware produced by many manufacturers into businesses and homes.