Where Are They Now?

[MiAmigo]

So...what ever happened to the original developers of the Amiga - hardware, software and systems? Where are they now?

[MiAmigo]

We need to get them back together so they can re-assemble Voltron - I mean the Amiga!:laughing:

[MiAmigo]

I wonder if the Amiga was the "High Point" in the careers of most of them, or if most of them went on to bigger and better projects?

I would guess that the Amiga was a once in a lifetime experience for all of them and they remember that time when they were creating the Amiga under the supervision of Jay, as the best time of their careers and the most fun they ever have had creating something new and exciting.

Projects like the Amiga don't come around very often.  I doubt any of us will see anything even close to the creative genius that was assembled to think up what became the Amiga again in our lifetimes, in any field, and specially not in the field of computing.

It will probably take many more years, or perhaps generations, before another quantum leap is made in computing, like the Amiga made happen with Personal Computers when it was first introduced.

It still baffles the mind to think that Commodore ownership and management could so completely screw up and miss out at making the Amiga the dominant personal computing choice in the late 1980's and prevent Microsoft from ever becoming the giant monster that it became in the 1990's and beyond.  The management of Commodore during the Amiga years must go down in history of computing as the most inept and incompetent computer company managers of all time.

The only reason they don't, is because no one remembers the Amiga or the people who killed it.  The good name of Commodore, which the C64 series of computers earned was not tarnished, because the C64 was too big of a success.  It is almost like Commodore was two different companies and the former Commodore is still remembered for their astounding success with the C64, while the failure of Commodore's management during the Amiga days was so complete and Microsoft's dominance to over powering, that no one even remembers the Amiga, which is devastating to everyone who knows what the Amiga should have really become, and also knows that Windows should never have gained 1/10 or less the popularity that it now has.  If the Amiga had been marketed and developed properly, Microsoft should have been put out of business, instead of the reverse of that situation and Commodore going out of business.

I guess Commodore's success and longevity of the C64 was also the cause of their downfall, as management did not see that the world of computing was changing at an unbelievable rate, and they could no longer rest upon their successes.  Commodore needed to aggressively begin R&D on the successor to the Amiga, later called the A1000, so they would have been the first company to start using dedicated video cards and sound cards.  They needed to stay 1 or 2 generations ahead of all other Personal Computers, instead of thinking they could just keep selling the same 1984-85 technology for 5 to 8 years.  Every Amiga user knows that the AGA chipset was too little too late.

Ask any of those original Amiga engineers and developers about how many of them Commodore kept working on improving the later generations of Amiga computers and operating systems and how little was spent to keep the Amiga head and shoulders above any other Personal Computer.  How much marketing money was spent to get Amigas into every business, school district, and government agency?

I don't blame any of the original Amiga engineers and developers for the monumental failure of the Amiga to dominate in every arena, I blame Commodore management for not keeping the Amiga ahead of every other Personal Computer on the planet, and for not placing an Amiga in business, schools and government, where it could be seen by everyone as the best personal computer ever invented.

With the proper marketing, sales should have been ten times more than they were the first 6 months and then exploded to 100 times more during the following 6 months.  With that amount of sales and success, Commodore would have had the resources to improve AmigaOS into a secure multi-user, business capable operating system that it would have had to evolve into, for it to replace Windows as the most popular operating system in the whole world.

That is what should have been the path of the Amiga, if not for the thieves and blind, greedy, idiots who ran Commodore into the ground from 1986 to their demise in 1994.

The hard part is innovation - the harder part is getting people to accept  it and believe in it enough to give it a chance. That was the real miracle of the Amiga. I'm sure that that type of genius and innovation exists today - maybe even somewhere on this or some other Amiga forum.

All it needs is a little faith, a lot of money, and the right people coming together to make it happen.

I don't want to believe that it can't happen in this lifetime!

[MiAmigo]

Nah things have moved on way too much, just like building hot rods in the 40s and 50s has no place compared to modern technology like a 2002 BMW M3 there is no way 3 guys can build a computer a decade ahead of an Intel i7 3700k + £300 ATI GPU PC today.

However the original Amiga team DID do lots of cool things for over a decade. Miner produced the Ranger Chipset for Commodore (who stuck it up their ass lol) and RJ and Dave went on to design (for the day of launch) the most sophisticated console and hand held console due to some ingenious chipsets too.

RJ Dave and Jay had plenty of ideas and plenty of talent to make them reality but they never had the good fortune to end up with a company who didn't pi$$ away such technological advantages

Probably why a lot of backyard inventors are looking at space travel, that technology is basically just one step ahead of V2 rockets in Germany some 70 years later. Pathetic....just like Apple and Microsoft computers are today (hardly a quarter of a century's worth of white hot technical advancement in hardware or OS over my Amiga 1000 and KS 1.2 haha losers)

History and I both disagree. Innovation ends when the human race goes extinct - then and only then. But the comment does prove my original point - getting people to actually believe it can happen is the harder part.

[MiAmigo]

There was no possibility of stopping the IBM juggernaut, but if the Amiga had had the quality of Management it deserved, then Commodore would now be occupying Apples position.
The Amiga would have had to change to PPC and then X86-64.
Would the OS have survived?, or would it have become another linux port?

Its quite possible Linux wouldn't even exist, had the Amiga survived, and evolved.

[MiAmigo]

Also there's no reason to believe that Motorola wouldn't have been able to evolve their line of processors just as Intel did - had they had the reason and the opportunity. We'd then have 3 major processors on the market, instead of just the two.

[MiAmigo]

Seems to be a little bit of misinterpretation of what I meant on a few levels. I was speaking of 'then' not now, in so far as the AmigaOS being fully established and a main player in that (past) time.

Also, I was not referring to the current AmigaOS being re-engineered to supplant today's Linux - again, I was speaking of a 'what if' of back then, not now.

In general, I was hypothesizing on something many of us do: What if the OS had been allowed to evolve to the point of say, Windows, to a fully mature, fully realized product, used by millions?

That would certainly make it a little more difficult for any third or fourth party OS to be introduced into the mix - much as it is difficult for one to be introduced now. That's all I was really referring to - 'then' not 'now'.

My approach to creating a new OS for the Amiga would be to start from scratch, as if neither Windows or Linux existed. (And also, still keeping in mind what most modern computer users expect in the least from their computers - what I'll call the 'common courtesies'.)

But to me, neither Windows nor Linux are the 'be all' and 'end all' of OSes. Personally, I prefer command line interfaces, but I realize the general public requires GUIs. I don't swear by either of them, although I often do swear at them!