An ongoing issue with Amiga, since its inception back in the 80s was an unclear upgrade path. On top of that upgrade options (expansion cards in particular) were very pricey and seemingly aimed at some "professional market" (whatever that was back in the day.
At the same time, PC platform was becoming less expensive and migration path was very clear: you got yourself an IBM AT, you added some memory, Windows 3.1, some well-supported software and you could use it for pretty much anything you wanted without sinking a lot of money into each individual upgrade option. You could easily figure out what type of RAM your motherboard needed. You could easily add a hard drive to a PC. For A500, you had to spend $1500 for that GVP paperweight with a hard drive inside. In those days, you could get a very nice IBM AT for $1500 *with a hard drive*. I do not remember the price for Amiga's XT/AT emulator cards, but I remember that they were not worth the money at the time. This is why I ended up with an IBM AT and Amiga collecting dust. A3000 and A4000 were, IMHO, vastly overpriced when they were released. Consider that Commodore was never considered to be an avantgarde (as Apple for example) and this is again a marketing/perception issue.
Even today, as I am piecing together my Amiga collection, my head is "spinning" sometimes from all the upgrade options, their specs, differences and, above all, prices. PPC cards in particular were a disaster - in marketing, pricing and distribution.
Anyone blaming the Amiga users for Amiga's demise on the market is barking up a wrong tree. As with many other machines and technologies, wide acceptance, pricing and clear upgrade path can spell success or a disaster within a few years.
Amiga's current situation (lawsuit, no hardware) is just a continuation of the "market strategy" started back in the 80s: we are the best and you cannot do anything to us. As it played out, Amiga has slipped away because of that attitude and a much more inferior platform prospered (PC) because it was affordable, versatile and had much better software support (this also falls into "versatility" category).
PC platform also had an advantage of a broad hardware support from many vendors (not just IBM). This was very important for a teenager (or a home user in general) with a limited budget. Back in those days, IBM AT was priced 2-3 times the price of an equally well-equipped clone.
High-end Amigas were just as expensive as Macs and targeted a very limited niche at the time (video professionals and gamers).
There are many lessons in Amiga's demise and none of them seems to have been learned by Powers to Be who own the Amiga, in name, trademark or copyright.
Minimig seems to be a viable option, but it is still unclear to me what would I do with the board if I ordered it. It does not seem to be a complete machine. Maybe it is, but does not look like a complete machine.
