A500 potential

[mr_a500]

Rember that Windows 3.0 was 16 colors in 1993, why not have a 32 color workbench in 1987? The serious problem of A500 was memory limitation... i think today's computer world would be very different if the A500 was 2 Mb RAM and Commodore was a little more "clever".

This sounds a bit like a comment I made here.

Of course adding more RAM and an 020 to an A500 in 1987 would have been insane - waaay too expensive for what was basically a game machine - but I still think it would have been good for the A2000. I remember that the Mac (which was only B&W then) was at least twice the price of an A2000. I don't know exact prices, but I think they could have added 4Mb of RAM and an 020 and still be under the Mac price. With a little effort, Amiga 2000 could have had a 16 colour "kick-ass" GUI in 1987. (my A500 with 020 in 16 colours is not slow at all)

Even if they wanted to keep Workbench at 4 colours, they still could have attempted to make it look nice and consistent instead of the horrible fonts and icons and pathetic inconsistent GUI that they had. Amiga Workbench could have easily looked better than Mac! (and many people buy things based on looks only)

[mr_a500]

Sure, WB was OK for 1985-1987. What about 1990 with 2.0? Compare WB 2.0 with the competition. The fonts are ugly (topaz got worse!) the new icons look like crap and everything looks dull and unprofessional. They could easily have kept it at 4 colours and made it look nice. And if they had an awesome 16 colour WB in 1990, maybe Amiga would have sold more ....in the years they screwed up and delayed AGA while competitors had more colours.


Edit: I'm talking about the "professional" Amigas here, not the "game" Amigas like the A500 (which wouldn't lose sales because of the crappy WB look)

[mr_a500]

Even now on non-Amiga GUI's, with all the RAM and hard drive space these days, I don't have a background picture and junk like that because I don't like to waste system resources. Who cares that it was a 4 color WB. Do you really just sit there and stare at your fancy background in awe at how many colors it has? I'd prefer to use system resources for something useful.

What are you running now? MS-DOS or some Linux shell? Ooooh, all those GUI elements are taking up system resources... better use the shell. ;-)

"New for MacOS 10.6: Now command line only! That's right - we've gotten rid of the system resource-wasting GUI for the wonderful streamlined look of the text prompt. Buy a Mac today!".

It's not just about staring at fancy backgrounds.