adz wrote:
What?? Stuck back in the 90's? I doubt it. Wasn't the Amiga supposed to be ahead of the times?
This is a common misconception.
From the time the Amiga was introduced as Lorraine in 1984, up until 1988, it enjoyed the enviable position of being well ahead of everything in its price class, as well as ahead of computers well above its price class. It truly was ahead of its time.
By the time 1988 rolled around, the PC world had VGA graphics and OS/2 (a multitasking operating system). I don't even consider the Mac a contender, as it never properly multitasked until well into the late 90's. However, the Amiga had been around for a few years, so it had a definite price advantage. It also had the distinct advantage of being able to work directly with standard television signals, which helped Amiga find its niche market.
By the time 1990 rolled around, PC technology was coming down in price. Amiga was still relatively competitive with the A500, but the gap was closing fast. Commodore's response was the A3000, which was not at all competitive with VGA. It was basically the exact same video hardware but with the ability to address more memory. We did get some improvements with Workbench 2.04, but only to the extent to bring it up to par; there was nothing groundbreaking. Interestingly, we got CDTV, which showed some innovation still existed at Commodore, at least as far as marketing the Amiga was concerned; it was still, for all intents and purposes, an Amiga 500 with a CD-ROM drive.
We finally saw AGA in 1992, but as you can imagine, it was too little, too late. By this time, VGA cards came standard even in the cheapest PC's, and were cheap upgrades for existing PC's. New standards such as SVGA pushed the boundaries even further out of Amiga's reach, even with AGA. OS/2 2.00 was released. The Macintosh still couldn't multitask, but it too sported more advanced graphic capabilities.
I'd say the Amiga peaked in the late 80's from its own momentum; after that, Commodore mismanaged it to death. Honestly, I wish Commodore had come out with a 16 bit variation of the Commodore 64/128 instead (the mythical Commodore 65), and Amiga had stayed with its original designers.
