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Author Topic: Commodore without Mehdi Ali  (Read 15505 times)

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Offline mikeymike

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Re: Commodore without Mehdi Ali
« on: July 16, 2003, 05:27:23 PM »
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.
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: Commodore without Mehdi Ali
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2003, 12:24:45 PM »
@ restore2003
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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.
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: Commodore without Mehdi Ali
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2003, 01:05:59 PM »
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.
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: Commodore without Mehdi Ali
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2003, 01:43:17 PM »
I prefer to wait to see how OS4 turns out.  I'm in no hurry, just mildly impatient :-)
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: Commodore without Mehdi Ali
« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2003, 07:29:04 PM »
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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?  :-)