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

[taunusand]

AndyC wrote:
Well..

Anyone subscribing to the infinite alternate universe probability theory can rest assured that somewhere, out there in the space time continuum, Amiga is the dominant platform, Bill gates flips burgers at McDonalds, and Amiga accellerators are reasonably priced...

 :-P

I'm with you! :insane:

[DiskDoctor]

Three things are implied:

1) world would have been better
2) current PC sound & graphic performance would have been achieved in 1999 if not earlier
3) Microsoft and Apple would have had to try really harder :-)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

DiskDoctor wrote:
Three things are implied:

1) world would have been better
2) current PC sound & graphic performance would have been achieved in 1999 if not earlier
3) Microsoft and Apple would have had to try really harder :-)

:-)
And ppl would be writing in 5th generation programming languages, computers would have very little to no boot time, the OS would be way more flexible, both to use it as well as for programs to.

*sigh*

[hayashi]

If anything, I'm sure modern OSes wouldn't need about 1024 times the amount of RAM (and a processor several hundred times as fast) that they needed back in the Amiga's heyday in order to run smoothly.

[persia]

Modern OSs do a lot that '80s OSs didn't, I doubt a modern AmigaDos would be any smaller or faster than OS X, MS Windows or Linux.

[amigakidd]

In this alternate universe... 2009

--Computing World--
Commodore International: 40% Market Share and gaining
Current Products: AmigaONE  Notebooks and Desktops,
Operating Systems: Amiga OS V rel. 3, Web Broswer: Galaxy 5.0
MP3: Vicky Shuffle, Touch, Deluxe
Cel Phone: The Pet Phone G3
Other Products: iCDTV mini, AmigaBlu Gameconsole
Retail Stores: 678 worldwide
Clone Makers: Gateway, Acer, Asus
Current Aquisitions: Assets of Apple Inc.
(defunct as of 1997), Palm Inc., RIM
Milestone: Purchase of NeXT and QNX in March 1994 prevented
Commodore from losing the market.
Plans for future: Cloud Computing

Atari Inc. (Disney/Time Warner Corp.): 60% and losing
Current Products: Falcon X PC Series Machines Notebooks and Desktops
Operating Systems: GEM Operating System release 6 with Aero interface, Web Browser: TOS Explorer 8
MP3: None - Moon Player (Defunct as of 2004)
Retail Stores: None, Atari's are sold everywhere
Clone Makers: HP, Compaq, Packard Bell
Other Products: Atari Office 2009, Atari Xbox, Atari Lynx V
Milestone: Purchase of Microsoft in 1994 and Sega in 2001,
Atari was the shining star in the late 90s and early 00s
during web 1.0 and early web 2.0
Plans for future: Cloud Computing

Linux and Open Source Timeline was never touched.

-- Gaming Consoles --
AmigaBlu - 1st Place
Atari Xbox - 2nd Place

-- Gaming Portables --
Nintendo Gameboy Color 3 - 1st Place
Atari Lynx V - 2nd Place


I would love to be in this future.

[bloodline]

Really, the question in the topic is wrong... it should read:

"How would have been the computer world if Amiga and Atari had not messed up?"

Since the only reason for the death of Commodore and Atari was themselves. They failed to keep up with the rest of the industry and take advantage of their dominant Home Computer positions!

[Belial6]

"Since the only reason for the death of Commodore and Atari was themselves."

That has pretty much been the history of computers for everyone.  MS isn't dominant because they did everything right.  The are dominant because they shot themselves in the foot fewer times than everyone else.

The only reason that Mac is still out there as a far second run competitor is because MS bailed them out so that they could claim competition.

It will be interesting to see what the long term holds for Linux.  Is giving everybody pellet guns safer for you foot than having your CEO swinging a shotgun around or does it just mean that you die the death of a thousand cuts in a strung out mixed metaphore?

[Amiga_Nut]

You know as much as it hurts me to say this, as someone who knows they will never ever be as happy about computing as the day I read/watched reviews of the Amiga 1000, we wouldn't have the CPUs we have today.

Amiga died because Commodore was selling the same 8mhz bullcrap 4 years after the A1000 went on sale and not investing in R&D. Doom/Polygon games were released...PCs had byte per pixel screens...Amigas were stuck with bitplanes and slow CPU+2D custom chip assistance only...cue the 'wooo I want a PC' from discerning gamers!

However, if chipsets had been improved more than once every half decade and OS development been continued on form we probably would have had OS 4 in 2000 so god knows how great things would be OS wise. What I remember about the Amiga is it was an efficient and elegant system, and just imagine how creative you could be now if things had kept a pace with what I was doing in 1990 with my 8mb A2000 + framegrabbers....like painting with 200 frame animbrushes and composing my own scenes of Battlestar Galactica from ripped footage of recorded Videos

If you take it to its logical conclusion you would have an almighty system for manipulating sound/video/images that also happened to play games on a par with the latest consoles so...

PS3/360 quality games
Truly mind bending realtime graphics manipulations in 1080p HD
Writing music without the need to buy any expensive music
An OS that made you feel like you wanted to use the machine

Ahhh it's nice to dream now and then

[warpdesign]

If Commodore had have survived, any modern "Amiga" would similarly likely have been a very different platform, only sharing the name (e.g., consider that Commodore's plans were at one point to move to RISC machines running Windows NT).

Yes. And it's a good thing... Much like cars done today have nothing to do with cars made 24 years ago, fortunately!

Fortunately, today's "amigas" have nothing to do with original "amigas", but unfortunately, todays "AmigaOS" is the same as the one we had in 1985. Same limitations.

[MASSAMIGAN]

Maybe we would have World War 3 since "AMIGANS" and "ATARIANS" hate it each other so much plus the MAC and PC people on the other side.




Greetings to all "AMIGANS"