Scifi Alternate Future: What If Apple bought Amiga Inc.

[B00tDisk]

I think Apple would've pursued a "buy-it-and-bury-it" approach.  The engineers who worked on the Amiga would have been split up and farmed out over many, many, many sub divisions within the body corporate of Cupertino.  

Given Jobs' legendary assholery, I'd imagine that like his edict against doing anything positive for 8-bit apple systems post-Lisa introduction (the II-GS aside), he'd make mention of the Amiga verboten in Cupertino with dire consequences for those who broke that rule.

[B00tDisk]

Psy wrote:
I don't think it would have worked with Apple as I don't see what Apple could have brought to the table.

I have though of the idea of Amiga having been bought out by one of the Japanese computer companies.

If NEC bought Amiga: it would have meant large sums of capital and R&D resources.  For NEC it would mean having a microcomputer to replace it's 8-bit systems.  Also NEC probably would have went to the Amiga when it came to designing the TG-16.

If Hitachi bought Amiga: same as above.  Since Hitachi left the home computer market after their MSX compatible machines the Amiga would probably have allowed Hitachi to stay in the market.

If Sharp bought Amiga: like NEC it would have meant tons of capital.  The X68000 probably wouldn't have been released and the Amiga might have gotten the same kind of arcade ports the X68000 enjoyed.

If Sega bought Amiga: On the plus the Amiga chipsets would have quickly pushed past their limits by Sega's arcade teams.  Of course Sega's hardware engineers probably would not have got along with Amiga's engineers, Sega's engineers solved problems with fancy code not with fancy chips thus why Sega hardware mostly focuses on processing power.  Sega's engineers probably would have looked at the Amiga and ask why they can't replace the custom chips with general purpose processors.  Yet given how Sega was willing to test different markets (see the Sega Pico) and that Sega did try their hand with a home computer before (see the SC-3000H) they might have actually supported the Amiga better then Commodore did but that is not saying much.


If Nintendo bought the Amiga, it would have be used in the SNES end of story, Nintendo didn't make arcade boards and was even less likely then Sega to release the Amiga as a home computer.  

So the best and brightest future for the Amiga = game console.  

No Japanese company has ever broken through in the west with any computer offering, and the X68000 was holding down the 'weird alternative 3rd market' just fine without the Amiga in Japan.

[B00tDisk]

AeroMan wrote:
Amiga would have been useful to Apple back in 94 when Commodore died. They could have used lots of stuff from the Amiga, form chipset to Workbench and AmigaDOS, and maybe OSX would be different.

Hardly.  Jobs was ready to nuke and pave anything to make NeXTStep the new apple OS.  As to the chipset?  The chipset was antiquated by 1994 - even Dave Haynie will tell you so.

If Apple have bought Commodore by the 80's, it is pretty sure they would had it running in parallel as they had the Mac and Apple II. It is quite possible that the Amiga would have killed the Mac, just like the Mac killed the Apple II.

When C= could have purchased Apple it was well before the Mac.  Its highly likely there would have been no Mac if C= had bought Apple.

We could have OS X running in Amigas by now...

What, aren't there enough Linux distros for the various Amiga systems?  m68k, PPC+ Classic, A1, etc.

[B00tDisk]

Psy wrote:
B00tDisk wrote:

So the best and brightest future for the Amiga = game console.  

Except for Nintendo all of those companies had home computers, even Sega that had the SC-3000, of course like I said Sega would have a problem with not understanding the custom chips as Sega was all about distributed computing with programmable chips at the time.

NEC also had a home computer that the Amiga could have replaced.

...in Japan.  Again, there was never, ever a world-beater home computer produced in Japan.

B00tDisk wrote:

No Japanese company has ever broken through in the west with any computer offering, and the X68000 was holding down the 'weird alternative 3rd market' just fine without the Amiga in Japan.

They could have, many had far more capital then Commodore.

The X68000 was launched after the Amiga, so if Sharp bought the Amiga the x68000 would never have seen the light of day.
 

and the Amiga would now be as obscure as the X68000.  If not moreso.