Optimism and the Amiga Community

[irishmike]

Well as is my custom, here is my two cents:

First off, For a platform that should have died off completely several years ago, we the user, have kept it alive by being a community of folks who help each other.  This is a wonderful trait and it should remain the mark of an Amiga user.  This sentiment should remain fostered IMO.

I became interested in Amiga back in the early 1990's and actually commenced to saving to buy one.  About the time I was half way to my goal ($1500) Commodore folded and I was left with the choice of buying a PC -- for the money I had saved, Apple II's were too high.

I will try to keep this short, however, I ended up with my first computer which was actually a Tandy 1000 TX.   Graduated to a PC where I ran my BBS, and then around 1994 bought a Macintosh Power PC (PowerMac 7500) stayed on that platform through until I bought a new PIII (self built) PC and ran Windows 2000 and XP... switched to an iMac and used that and upgraded to a Mac Mini last year. Somewhere in there became interested in Amiga again (the idea of OS 4 being developed brought me in) and fast forward to today where I am learning about Amiga with my A1200, about to obtain a second A1200 and plan to run a BBS from one of them -- once I establish cooling to my liking... and I run my current PC (PIII 1GHZ running Linux (Ubuntu 6.06) while I wait until Amiga may be a viable platform.

In the case that Amiga does not make it's comeback, I continue to use my A1200's in a hobbyist fashion (as well as to play the games I missed so much (Sierra Online games).  And for real work, my Mac mini and my Linux box work great.  There is actually very little I can't do on my Linux box.  

Since I am a big believer in open-source, I am watching carefully MorphOS and AROS as well.

I realize that this post was lengthy and I hope it was not boring to those who read it!

My Main point in all this is:  The Amiga Community is a shining example of what all computer users should strive for.   We need to foster the sense of users helping users and as long as we do this and the hardware is available we have our platform and our unique perspective on what the Personal Computer is all about.  This is a good thing and lets not loose it!

[irishmike]

@jarrody2k

it seems you misunderstand my post.  There were likely factors other than the community, but the support of user to user is IMO (as stated) that the main factor that has kept Amiga alive for 20+ years is the attitude that no matter what the users were going to keep the platform alive because the users loved it.   So more like -- the company that made this has abandoned the product and so I will seek support from other users and so on.  This is not the *only* factor for sure, but I do feel it is the *main* reason we are here today.  It is just one guy's opinion though :-)

[irishmike]

It's too bad that Commodore couldn't have benefitted from Microsoft being "big bad company" like Apple did in 1994-95.  Apple Computer was on the virge of being snuffed out by stiff competition from the Redmond Giant and then a court decided that Apple was the only viable alternative to their product so they basically told Microsoft that if Apple went under, they would regulate them heavily because they would have snuffed their ONLY competition in the market.  A few deals and so on later (and unfortunately part ownership), Apple lived on to make one of the greatest comebacks in history.  They are the largest manufacturer of Portable MP3 devices on the planet!

I just wish there had been some kind of transfusion like that which could have kept Commodore afloat.  I realize there was some management issues within the company and likely those would have had to been rectified, but the fact is that Commodore was not the only competition to a given company back then, so the place is history is wrong for this to have worked.

Just my thoughts.  Not really very relevant to the thread in general.  Just wishful thinking :-)

POINT:  If there had been development on Amiga for the years the platform has been absent from the mainstream market by the developers who worked on it (like Apple or Microsoft) then I think indeed Amiga would have been "Top 3" instead of the current (IMO) "Top 2"  (MS and Apple).

Who knows, Commodore could have been where Apple is today.