You must suffer from CMPS (Chronic Missing-the-Point Syndrome). The questions was not whether we (the Cinemaware title playling public) would have been better off, but rather would Commodore (the computer company) have been better off.
Well,
A. that really hasn't been the general thrust of this thread, even if the OP tried to sound like it - it's been much more this wistful pining for the idea that maybe we could all have had chickenheads on our generic Unix workstations - and
B. who
cares? Commodore the company was sunk at least as much by managerial malfeasance and refusal to commit to improving its product line as it was by failing to catch on to some theoretically-inevitable shift towards Unix workstations (and I'd just like to ask, how much could they
really have expected to benefit from that? Even if they
had managed to establish a foothold in that market, it's not like Unix workstations were enough to save DEC from a buyout.)
I swear, it's like half the people in this community operate on the logic that the way things
did go is the only way things
could have gone - because Unix/Unixoid is the "in" thing right now, it
must have been inevitable, and anybody who explored another avenue that ultimately didn't pan out should be alternately mourned and castigated for their lack of vision in failing to accurately predict future developments and accede to their obvious inevitability. Who
cares if Commodore might have made it through a few years more, if doing so would require sacrificing their hands-down best product for some generic-ass Unix box? I'd
rather they have died doing something
good (or even having
done something good and just failing to follow up on it) than hang on through mediocrity.
