I agree and not here...
- Lack of chipset updates. ECS is not even worth mentioning. No Paula update. No chipset support for high density floppies. AGA was released too late.
Definitely, and I think this goes to the lack of money/interest Commodore had in R&D..
- Lack of professional software. Apple inc addressed this matter by setting up Claris. Commodore should have done the same or at the very least subsidised the development of professional packages such as Word Perfect.
Yeah, Apple had a person whose job was "Software Evangelist" that worked the press and the vendors (and helped developers get what they needed).
Wordperfect for the Amiga was nice, but not enough..
- The Amiga 500 and 1200 were too expandable. The worst thing Commodore done was providing the A500 with a side connector that allowed pretty much anything available on their big box A2000 to be used on the A500.
What? Too expandable? The expansions they had were too expensive (more specifically the A500) and non-standard. No game developer (well, most wouldn't) would develop for anything other than Kick 1.3 and 1M RAM because it was all most users had. I'm considering the possibility that the pseudo-closed A500 (although it was the best seller) was also what killed the Amiga in the long term. No video upgrades (DCTV and HAM-E, while kual, don't count). Every PC had a video card which was upgradable, but the Amiga line, you had OCS. (Eventually AGA, but only for a percentage of the users. The upgrade was to buy a new computer..)
- The Amiga 2000. Oh dear. First it was a expanded A1000 then a A500 with a massive expansion board. Simply adding double the RAM was not enough. The Amiga 2000 never should have left Commodore without a 68020+ processor and on-board SCSI. As many will agree the A3000 was a big box Amiga done right!
Personally, they probably should have gone from the 1000 to the 3000, but it needed more like AGA graphics by then, preferably on a video card
- Releasing/developing the following junk
CDTV - Designed to be user friendly. This was hardly the case with terrible disc caddy system, old 1.3 ROMs and no in-built floppy drive (when all Amiga software to that date was released on floppy) made no sense
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- CD was fine, and no one wants a floppy in their entertainment center, but it needed to come WITH VideoCD. Requiring an add-on? That means basically no one will use that feature, including developers.
A600 / C65 - Desperate attempts by Commodore in reliving the C= 64 era
Agree. Although loved now, the A600 wasn't a good idea at the time. (Although better than the A500+)
- Many more issues such as: poor marketing, lack of licensing the Amiga chipset to third party developers, not working with enemy Atari to bring down costs (by sharing components) and not moving to generic PC parts such as keyboards ultimately cost Commodore their business.
I agree with poor marketing, but I don't see any good coming out of licensing the chipset out.
There would be no working with Atari, so that's not a big deal. And I don't think generic PC parts matter much.
Poor R&D and poor marketing were KEY tho, I agree there..
desiv
