Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: Pyromania on September 28, 2012, 12:33:55 AM
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As I sit back and watch the Samsung vs Apple Smartphone battle unfold I remember back to a simpler time in 1994. Commodore went Bankrupt and I worked for Commodore Philippines. I spoke on the phone with one of the few remaining employees at Commodore in the US, I think his name was Chris Ludwick. He told how companies thinking about buying Commodore would tour the building and review Commodore's technology that was for sale. One company he kept bringing up again and again was Samsung. They ultimately took as pass as you know but I often wonder what the Tech world would look like today if they had bought Commodore in 1994.
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As I sit back and watch the Samsung vs Apple Smartphone battle unfold I remember back to a simpler time in 1994. Commodore went Bankrupt and I worked for Commodore Philippines. I spoke on the phone with one of the few remaining employees at Commodore in the US, I think his name was Chris Ludwick. He told how companies thinking about buying Commodore would tour the building and review Commodore's technology that was for sale. One company he kept bringing up again and again was Samsung. They ultimately took as pass as you know but I often wonder what the Tech world would look like today if they had bought Commodore in 1994.
Yes maybe it could have been something very special :)
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The sad thing is that if it happened today then Samsung & Apple would be fighting to buy the patents just to use in the courts.
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The sad thing is that if it happened today then Samsung & Apple would be fighting to buy the patents just to use in the courts.
I think that was the fear at the time, too - that Samsung was only interested in the technology, not the product.
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I daresay that with the exception of a few starry-eyed companies no longer with us (Quikpak USA, Escom) nobody was really interested in the company v. the technology. Let's face facts: Gateway bought the Amiga to threaten Microsoft with. Look where that got 'em. Escom never put serious work into the Amiga beyond continuing to crank out the same boxes that C= in the US had designed and built. We all know the A1200 should have had Fast RAM out of the box, and up against Apple's offerings the puny 14mhz 020 was just that: puny. The 4000 was in dire need of HD as standard - the days of floppy-only computers was long dead, yet what did we get? Sweet FA. Boxes assembled out of extant parts, and then jack. Escom's "best intentions" might have been R&D and improved models down the line but they led the attack with decidedly late 1980s/early (very, very early) 1990s era tech and paid the ultimate price in addition to trying to get into the razor-thin margins game of selling bog standard 386 and 486 PCs - you know, same thing that helped kill C= ?
Anyone outside of those companies was interested in C= for the tech patents possible, not because of anything uniquely Amiga. Had Gateway kept developing it the OS would've gone away and been replaced by QNX, with everything legacy running in a "sandbox". IOW, emulated.
Which is...well, what we have now with whatever version of UAE runs on your OS of choice.
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I remember Amicon when Gateway was interested in the Amiga, Fisher came there and refused to look at any Amigas on display. (his dream was right in front of him hahaha)
He gave a speech about how they wanted to use the Amiga to multitask by playing video and music at the same time, well there was a room full of Amigas already doing that.