@persia:
I disagree with some of your key points, and below is why.
persia wrote:
There was virtually no chance of any of the closed systems surviving. It is impossible for a single company to produce a computer as cheaply as the parts assemblers do.
Below you'll prove to yourself why it's just virtually impossible, but not impossible. But for your second sentence, consider that at the time there was no plethora of Taiwanese and Chinese parts manufacturers/assemblers. There were a few, but most of the stuff came from fewer, but larger companies. A lot more in-housing of technology than today. As an example, Commodore bought MOS, and that meant it had solved its problems with silicon, and not only that, but also made a profit selling 6502s and other parts. In fact, at that time it had a much better deal on silicon than many other players.
persia wrote:
Looking back it's hard to find a scenario that would see them survive. Apple pulled it off but sheer luck, guts and a cult of personality around Steve Jobs, take away any one of these and you'd be looking at a solid Microsoft world with only Linux asa an alternative.
Right there you proved your point wrong: Apple *DID* make it, and in fact growing very fast today, and may I add: with semi-propriatery technology, very much like the Amiga (most components other than the custom chips were generic).
In fact, to see why the Amiga *would* have survived, is rather simple, and I will juxtapose those to Apple's "hads" (as in: to have):
Apple had: Amiga had:
Steve Jobs Commodore
clout or renown clout or renown
from Apple 1 & 2 from VIC20 & C64
"culture" "best technology"
(ex. used by (ex. NASA & Hollywood
artists + DPS) used Amigas)
1st to market with 1st to market with best hardware
GUI, mouse, etc trinity: graphics, sound, video
(aka: multimedia)
To explain "culture": it's what gave you and/or many others that "Apple-envy" (the want, desire to own an Apple). Jobs is a cultured businessman. Amiga on the other hand, as everyone knew, maybe had not the best culture (anyone want to comment on non-square pixels?) but certainly the best technology, and most people at the time KNEW about this. Remember, they were looking behind the table at the Chicago CES, because they couldn't believe the Lorraine did what it showed on screen with its own technology. They thought it was faked!
And now what I believe is the real reason the IBM PC took over: it wasn't the cheap parts so much (although it played a role), but the fact that the largest market in the world, the US, and the largest spenders, US businesses, were sold: it was an IBM, and to top it off, they could source parts easily. Unfortunately, the last major factor was Microsoft. For the lack of anyone else trying to bring a GUI to the IBM PC, and doing it successfully, they gave the IBM PC a "fighting chance" against the Amigas, Ataris, Apples, and that was enough to make that trio ( 1. open architecture=cheap parts, 2. IBM was behind it, and 3. a "chirstened by IBM" OS, DOS, was at hand and a GUI, Windows, was starting to take shape, malformed and grotesque I may say, but very important to businesses nonetheless) the driving force for the IBM PCs. This was the critical time where marketing at Commodore failed miserably.
persia wrote:
Amiga's only chance would have been to embrace Intel hardware and remove reliance on the custom chips or put them in an video card that would fit in an intel box. Even then it would be hard pressed to survive a dogfight with Microsoft, especially in partnersip with IBM, which meant computers back then..
I disagree here too, for a simple fact: look at how many HUNDREDS if not thousands of peripherals were spawned around the Amiga. amiga-hardware.com lists over 1800!! Not only that, but the BEST peripherals were non-Commodore. In other words, there was a very big and thriving market for 3rd party manufacturers around the Amiga. In fact, it was just like the PC market! There was nothing really that much different between the two. The most "closed" part of the Amiga were the custom chips, but their interfaces were available to those wanting to make hardware.
persia wrote:
Face it, there's nothing but no win situations. There's no way that we could have had Atari and Amiga/CBM as viable companies in 2007. It was all a dream.
Yes, unfortunately, today it's all but a dream. But for Apple it's a reality. Amiga/CBM could have been here, was it not for their sheer lack of ability to market the superior goods they had. And their propensity to milk the damn cow until it bled to death! (C64 and then the Amigas, kept stale, technologically, and made just cheaper, a la C64)
persia wrote:
Actually their is one way, unfortunately it involves the use of a Tardis to go back in time armed with the for-knowledge of what has happened. But even then you'd never convince CBM to go open platform with Amiga.
Given the Dr. Who reference, I will whole-heartedly agree with you :-) Unfortunately CBM I think were too dumb to realize many things and wouldn't have changed even if you shoved future knowledge in their face. Perhaps this stubborness came from Mr. Jack? I don't know.
@bloodline:
"Actually there is a 6502 in the Amiga!" :-)
I concur with your "SuperVCS" theory, if Jay had stayed at Atari. Although now that I think about it, it would indeed be very interesting to see how the console/gaming market would have changed had they made a Sega Megadrive clone that early on (I believe he wanted to do the 68k machine even before 1982!).
@amigaksi:
A!! I get it! Backwards compatibility! Yeah, that would have rocked for the MILLIONS of C64 fanatics! Why even allow them to have MORE of a choice, by looking at other platforms (Ataris, Apples, Spectrums, Amstrads), for their upgrade path? "The Amiga keeps your investment in C64 software AND gives you an awesome NeXT-Gen upgrade path!!", could have been their marketing slogan. Damn idiots at CBM!
That might have been a genius move (assuming I'm not missing any big "buts") on Commodore's part. But... Commodore probably wouldn't be able to see it anyways... :-(
BTW, I *just* read your 2nd post, and I can see I pretty much re-iterated your exact thoughts with my above writing!
@downix:
Agreed. Exactly what I wrote before (sorry for the duplication, but I read the thread as I reply). The Amiga was open or at least 'open enough', because in part, back in those days it was part of the status quo of the "computer hacker" community or better yet the "homebrew club" ideal: hardware came with the necessary info to starting hacking it. Granted not all hardware, like Apple's, but even they eventually had documentation for doing hardware and software add-ons ( and if anyone here is not aware of this, I'd be glad to sell you my "Inside Macintosh" volumes, akin to the ROM Kernel Manuals of the Amiga - in very good condition may I add :-D )
