How would have been the computer world if Amiga and Atari would have survived?

[Fransexy_]

In a nostalgic Sunday afternoon I thought about how computing would be today if Amiga and Atari would have been survived as the mainstream computers instead of MAC and PC

What do you think?

[r0jaws]

Accelerators would be a bit cheaper, probably.  :-)

[weirdami]

Between those two perhaps Amiga would have a 95% share and perhaps Atari fanatics would brag about how Atari's don't need virus checkers.

[taunusand]

@weirdami
You just made me slip of the edge of my chair, laughing :lol:

Ouch :bigcry:


But, I think you just may be right :-)

[amiga_3k]

That probably would have meant that Commodore was still around (sorry, the Yeahronimo Commodore business is not what I call Commodore) and would have implemented a 'Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga' button on the Amiga keyboards. And Say would have grown into a version 10 or so, with some pre-sets for perfectly impersonating George Double You, Bill Gates and Madonna. It probably would have a 'sister' program called 'Sing'.

It also would probably mean that JPEG and GIF would never be so popular also meaning that, on web-sites, there wasn't the transparency problem most IE versions deliver.

[Hattig]

Well assuming that Commodore never messed up in the 80s and 90s with regard to the Amiga (possibly by not losing millions on PC clone making), and having a wider range of computers available to cover more market areas through the 90s and get ongoing repurchases and upgrades ...

I would presume that they both would have had to change CPU architecture in the 90s. Amiga was meant to go PA RISC at the high end, but possibly that would have changed in the long run to PowerPC. I imagine Atari would have gone PowerPC if the ST/Falcon had continued, or MIPS. The 90s had so many different architectures!

Still, if they were both PowerPC in the early part of this decade, the cumulative marketshare of Apple, Amiga and Atari would have been a higher impetus for PowerPC CPUs to be improved sooner and better than they were ultimately. So PowerPC could still be around in desktop computers, in a similar manner to x86 CPUs today, perhaps a bit ahead even.

However the Amiga and Atari would be using the standard buses - PCIe, graphics cards from ATI, NVIDIA, etc, and so on, rather than custom chipsets. I think custom chipsets would have been dead by the end of the 90s, or even earlier. AmigaOS/Workbench would be similar to modern Mac OS X or Windows 7 in function, style, etc. It may have gone through a Mac OS -> Mac OS X transition period to make up modern in terms of memory protection and so on, but it would have remained AmigaOS.

[Tension]

Zorro V

that would have been nice...

ah well.

[actung_bab]

maybe we have power brick the size of a small fridge to power it hehe
hopefully they whould have got cdrom drives let alone blu ray or dvd
l must admit is nice day dream oh excpet the power brick u need wheel barrow to move around   :-D

[persia]

Most people would still remember what it meant to crash a computer.

Amiga Inc would be producing creepy snowmen for Atari based mobile phones (which would be the size of toasters and not be able to dial and look at your phone book at the same time).

[ChuckT]

I never owned Atari but a High School friend said that software publishers had a hard time making money due to all of the software pirates and a lot of games were pirated before they hit the shelves.  He said the Atari platform had the worse piracy.  

I don't particularly like the hardware out there on the IBM side but it is faster than anything currently available.  I'm interested in writing my own operating system as a hobby to replace what I don't like in terms of operating systems.

Anyone who attempted to do this would be far behind because the other companies are years ahead and programming the USB port or flash animation is complex and involved but if you don't like the operating system then change it and use the existing hardware.

[spirantho]

If CBM and Atari had won.... in other words, without the ultra-fierce competition between technology developers, because they're both closed companies....

Our computers would have about 200MHz processors, about as powerful as a Celeron 300, using about 128MB RAM and about 4 Gig hard disks. Permedia-2 equivalent power for graphics cards.

The internet would be at about HTML 3 standard, no dynamic HTML, no streaming video in good quality. Broadband would be about 512KBps.

However, the operating systems would still run faster than they do today.... and computing might still be fun.

[Crom00]

Well if Commodore maintained it's competetive edge by making it's own CPU's like it did for the C=64 they could have maintained their dominant place in the market. The C=64 was a huge hit in part to the low price and Commdores ability to hit the lowest price point.

As soon as they started using CPU's from Motorola they lost that edge.

They also had lots of talent under one roof. Personally I'd have those guys designing graphics chipsets, and sound dsp's for use in amigas first then license out to others.


To give you some context for todays world. Imagine if INTEL set out to make a low cost home-media center pc. They produce the CPU's and supporting chips. They could undercut everyone.


If I remember correctly Commodore tried chapter 11, but from what I know about the process your piers (vendors and suppliers) decide if they want to allow you to live or die.
Now who was supplying Commodore with their parts? Chinon, Sony, HP, ETC. Their competition.

Lets face it, Mr. Tramiel didn't make many friends in the industry either. I think when push came to shove it was time for Commodore to get theirs.

Sadly the Amiga paid for all those transgressions.

[Psy]

spirantho wrote:
If CBM and Atari had won.... in other words, without the ultra-fierce competition between technology developers, because they're both closed companies....

Our computers would have about 200MHz processors, about as powerful as a Celeron 300, using about 128MB RAM and about 4 Gig hard disks. Permedia-2 equivalent power for graphics cards.

The internet would be at about HTML 3 standard, no dynamic HTML, no streaming video in good quality. Broadband would be about 512KBps.

However, the operating systems would still run faster than they do today.... and computing might still be fun.

I doubt that that since Atari and CMB would still be competing with game consoles, Sega released a computer based on their console back in 1983 during the boom of Z-80 based home computers and there would be no reason why Sega wouldn't have done it again if the specs of home computers were close to the specs of its home consoles.

I think we'd have seen Atari, Amiga and Mac share the some basic architecture,  they might differ with graphic and audio chipset but odds are they would have been pushed onto cards to make them far more upgradeable with low end models having these chips integrated.

[Triton199]

To give you some context for todays world. Imagine if INTEL set out to make a low cost home-media center pc. They produce the CPU's and supporting chips. They could undercut everyone.

its called the ATOM  :lol:

[bloodline]

Well, just a note... if Amiga had survived, it would now be a poor man's Mac...