Top 3 worst ideas in Amiga history?

[m4rk1z]

Well, i was in there from the beginning so believe me on this:

1. The price, too high for all models (the first a2000/a3000
   and later a4000 i saw was in a tv broatcast studio)!
2. The a500 was great for gaming but BIG mistake making all the
   games with ONE firebutton like the C=64 had (later/too late
   corrected with cd32)
3. Sound chip should be 16bit in first place.

The only stuff that keeped me long time (until 1993/95) into the
amiga was the demo scene and games until they lost support from
companys b/c of high piracy just like the c=64...

cya

[alex]

1. No visionary management.  Imagine what the company would have been like with the tyrannical perfectionist and visionary Steve Jobs.  Actually, anyone  who would have focused on bringing in the very best at a reasonable cost.  I mean they had their own die-factory for goodness sake, they were not even that dependent on using others technology.  The legendary bumblings of the most terrible management team and borad in the history of computing.  They should make a movie about this or press charges.

2. Product placement and features.  Example. The A600 is a great machine when the expectations are properly set as being a sub-A500 machine, but as a successor, it was a joke.  The A3000 was great and should have evolved and almost did with the additional video card for UNIX, but again no vision.  The A3000/UX could have been a game changer.  

Amiga always had the engineering brilliance, the technical genius, but failed to put them together in a cohesive strategical and committed way.

3. No commitment to products.  These half-baked launches, aborted programs, poor roadmap for products.  Someone was just trying to turn a damn buck.

[Hell Labs]

1. No visionary management.  Imagine what the company would have been like with the tyrannical perfectionist and visionary Steve Jobs.

Introducing the New Commodore-Amiga TS32!


Actually I agree with everything you said there.

[Pentad]

I've often wondered how things would have turned out if the Amiga 3000 would have shipped with the AAA chipset.

What a powerhouse machine it would have been at the time, nice OS, advanced chipset, and UNIX to boot!   Clever, huh?

:-)

P

[Plaz]

All these pages and no one's mentioned the death bringer Commodore PC Colt? Multi-Millions wasted on a poor clone when they should have been expanding development and marketing for the Amiga Technology.

When the Colt appeared, it was Commodore raising the white flag and laying prone to the rest of the industry. At that moment they traded innovation for the chance at a quick buck and doomed the company. All that and ticking off third party developers, was pretty much the one-two punch.

Plaz

[motrucker]

#I, 2, & 3  -  Hiring Irving Gould!

[LoadWB]

Introducing the New Commodore-Amiga TS32!

I... uh... I want to laugh but cannot because I am a little creeped out by it... :nervous:

[Minuous]

The A2000: overpriced and underpowered. The flagship Amiga of its time should and could have been so much better.

I'll think of 2 more later

[quarkx]

All these pages and no one's mentioned the death bringer Commodore PC Colt? Multi-Millions wasted on a poor clone when they should have been expanding development and marketing for the Amiga Technology.

When the Colt appeared, it was Commodore raising the white flag and laying prone to the rest of the industry. At that moment they traded innovation for the chance at a quick buck and doomed the company. All that and ticking off third party developers, was pretty much the one-two punch.

Plaz

 If you read the book "On the Edge", you will see that the Commodore PC line was never given the "Green light" or thought of by Commodore head office in the US. Even Commodore North America thought is was a bad Idea, but Jack let it go because of the sales in Germany.Jack never did want to enter the PC clone market, just because he would have to buy the chips from intel or another source - a total waist of money since he had a perfectly go Chip fab at his fingertips.
 It was totally made in in Germany, and was out the door before management (Jack) could kill it. The only reason it did survive, was because in Germany and most of Europe, Commodore sold everything it put its name on. That is why instead of killing things like the C116, it was only sold in Germany, because Germany was the "Dumping Ground" and people there just bought it up.

[cecilia]

The A2000: overpriced and underpowered. The flagship Amiga of its time should and could have been so much better.

I'll think of 2 more later

excuse me???

I'll have to disagree there.

in 1989 I got my A2000 because I wanted a more expandable amiga and the 500 wasn't it for me.

this purchase was THE most important of my entire career as it was really the turning point for me (even if I didn't realize it at the time).
I was able to eventually add HD's, memory, acceleration, DCTV, external storage, CD drive and god knows what else.

I learned computer graphics and animation from this computer and this propelled me to work on Emmy award winning projects..

mistake?

not for me

[cecilia]

Thought of another one: the rollout price of a 256kb A1000. IMO, was too expensive and cost prohibitive for many of its prospective users - which were primarily loyal Commodore users of course. This is a tough thing to decide though - price it too low and people and professionals might not have given it a second look. Price it too high and people might rather go for an old standby such as Apple or IBM. Guess in all fairness, it was priced pretty well - but compared to the ST, no so much. I believe a 512kb system should have rolled out at around $1k, maybe $1.3k tops with some more software and a monitor. Better or more RAM solutions that were cheaper should have been made more available too, instead of rare or years later that were STILL too expensive for what they were.

yes, price is a tricky thing but my experience is that once I saw the potential of Amiga (I recall going to an amiga convention in New York in the late 80's) - I saw LIVE, and my friend's LightBox (a pageflipping program later incorporated into DeluxePaint), and the Summagraphics tablet, the music programs, etc, etc....i just KNEW I HAD to have this computer.

this was the first computer I saw that I knew could be used by artists. at the time the Apple seems way to crude to me. just not good enough.

so I saved my money and bought my Amiga2000. It wasn't cheap but worth every penny.

[ElPolloDiabl]

The A2000: overpriced and underpowered. The flagship Amiga of its time should and could have been so much better.

I'll think of 2 more later

The A2000 was certainly overpriced when it first came out, but this a common theme with new things: rake in money off of all the rich people who want the most powerful system. A year later it was $2000 with 020 and 50MB Hard drive. Compare that to Macs at the time they were about $3000-$5000.

I thought the A2000 was great, you could switch off the Accelerator and play all the arcade games. Switch it back on and do some more serious work.

[KThunder]

the only thing that should have been different with the 2000 is it should have had an '020 cpu out the door instead of releasing that later. The 1000, 500, and 2000 were really pretty much the same computer, with different form factors and expandability.

the 2000 was really ugly though. not sleek and cool like the 1000, 3000, or even the 500. as workhorses go the 2000 is a clydesdale thats been kicked in the face be a bull.

[save2600]

I agree that the A2000 was priced too high for too long. I love the A2000, but it *is* essentially just an A500 with slots, a big box and a beefier power supply. Image and perception are everything though - the A2000 was a BEAST! In America, BIGGER is BETTER don'tcha know? lol

I remember shaking my head at the price of a barebones A2000 system in the late 80's and up until the early 90's when some retailers still had them for sale and outfitting them with 2091's, OS2.1, etc. They were never really deeply discounted, at least - to my knowledge - for a particular computer such as the A2000 to last 'that' long and continue to be a viable machine years later, amidst all the changes in computing, is nothing short of astounding. The damn thing literally grew with the computer user and the upgrade options were nearly endless. The A2000 was obviously a hugely successful concept for C=, especially from a gross margin point of view and around the time one would have thought they were starting to discontinue the model, you know they weren't going to be unloading 'em cheap for the Video Toaster and other speciality users at the time. From a business standpoint, I guess I would have done the same thing. At the end of the day, you can't really fault Commodore too badly here. IF you subscribe to the doctrine of not fixing that which is not broken that is. lol

[Pentad]

Does anybody else wonder if Atari would have done better with the Amiga technology?

[save2600]

Does anybody else wonder if Atari would have done better with the Amiga technology?

Nope. They would have done exactly the same thing ultimately - just as they did with their ST line. I'd go so far as saying that Atari's brand name was already tainted to the point that hardly anybody at the time would have taken them seriously. Atari is Atari and that means console gaming and maybe their A8 line - but soon after the 2nd and 3rd generation 8-bit computer line (which were really all the same machines basically), they had already burned so many bridges with retailers that yes - they would have not stood a chance marketing anything as innovative as the Amiga. And when you look back at the ST days, C= did a much better job with the scant advertising and marketing than Atari ever did with any of their products at the time.

IMO - As only Nixon could have gone to China, only Commodore could have handled the Amiga.