Ars has published part 5 of their history of the Amiga. “By July 1985, Commodore had everything going for it. The Amiga computer had been demonstrated in public to rave reviews, and everyone was excited at the potential of this great technology. That’s when the problems started.”
Its a great series, it would be nice if some of the youngsters around here read up on some of the old school computers like Amiga and Atari; realise that had Microsoft not got the leg up they did, a completely different alternative version of history would have come about.
I owned an Amiga 500, upgraded the memory, (IIRC 1.5MB in total), I was tempted to get an Amiga 1200 instead of a PC, but I eventually caved in like most people and purchased one (to my great disappointment at the lack of improvement over my Amiga 500).
Oh, here is a link if you’re interested in more about Amiga:
http://www.amigau.com/aig/amigahistory.html
Does anyone know what agency was responsible for the awful advertising? I’ve always heaped the blame for the demise of the Amiga squarely on the shoulders of the C= management, but it’s about time the ad agency took some flak too.
It sure as heck wasn’t Chiat-Day (I think that’s the correct spelling for the ones Apple used)!
As much as I’d love to heap tons of scorn on them, no ad agency (well, most) creates and releases any campaign without the approval of the client … I suspect that the abysmal advertising for the Amiga was a direct reflection on the lack of imagination and belief (and understanding) that the Commodore management had at the time.
What a complete shame that such an amazing machine was stifled by such a dimwitted and incompetent board.
I still have my trusty A2000, complete with Quantum 250M (whoo-hoo!) HD and additional RAM
That, coupled with a really cool game-programming language, AMOS, brought me countless hours of programming nirvana …
*sigh*
I owned an Amiga 500, upgraded the memory, (IIRC 1.5MB in total), I was tempted to get an Amiga 1200 instead of a PC, but I eventually caved in like most people and purchased one
Maybe I am the nut but I never caved in to the DOS/Windows PC. After Commodore/Atari I went to the Mac. I was so intrigued by its GUI and we had an SE at school. And in my opinion, Windows was just GEOS/Finder/Workbench done poorly. I perceived it as a cheap ripoff of other systems. Funny, I feel that way today about current versions of Windows. It’s a good feeling not getting caught up in that mess because I know guys who got caught up in it early on and became dependent on certain Windows apps, but not they despise Windows yet feel stuck because of those apps.
I probably would have gone Mac as well but back then Mac’s were hugely expensive. IIRC the NZ -> US exchange rate was in the toilet, NZ was just recovering after a recession, there was not much money floating around back at that time.
Even as early as 1998, the cost of even a low end Mac was incredibly expensive. The all in one powermac was priced at 4 grand for the low end model. This was back when the minimum wage was $7.50, so for many, computers were unaffordable, and a Mac was more so – most of the recent computers purchased in New Zealand has only really occurred in the last 7 years with the improvement in the economy – off the back of strong commodity prices.
They should also get off my lawn – and stop tracking mud across my nice, clean floor!
I used to work in computer retail during the time that Amiga started losing big to PC in the home computing market. I remember games like wolfenstein, wing commander, ultima underworld really started to draw gamers away with 256 color vga graphics. although Commodore countered with the A1200, and even with the blitter and the improvements in memory bandwidth in the AGA chipset, the Amiga’s use of slow bitplanes made it incapable of competing against the fast VGA 256 color planar mode where one byte represented one pixel on the screen and thus was perfect for Doom-style games which relied on fast pixel scaling.
gamers were also already drawn to consoles such as the Snes and Megadrive, which despite having much slower cpu’s could still deliver superior graphics due to better video hardware.
and this is my major gripe with Commodore, in my opinion they lingered too long on their rapidly outdated hardware, and then delivered far too little when they finally upgraded.
Releasing the Plus/4 when a BASIC/RAM extender cartridge (like they successfully did with the VIC-20) would do.
Choosing not to be sold at the (then-)largest retail chain in the US.
Boring and complex advertising (good advertising: simple and to the point).
Stopping production of the Amiga 1000 for an easter egg.
The initial bugginess of the AmigaOS
Marshall Smith’s Cancelling the Commodore LCD in an era where the laptop was still in its infancy — and immediately after they sold more LCDs their first day of sales than they had sold Amigas in the entire previous year!
Rattigan’s turning the company around — and subsequent release for doing so!
The story of Commodore is varied, with very high highs and very low lows. There’s a lot to be learned from them — both by positive and negative example.
EDIT: And now, at last, I finally get the reasons behind the numbers 1000, 500, and 2000…
Edited 2007-12-10 23:58
Typo in the headline.
I figured “hHistory” was an Amiga inside joke and I was left out, having never used one…
Just because you have a fancy title such as CEO, doesn’t mean you have half a clue what you’re doing. I really need to find some company to pay me lots of money to screw up, only so I can be fired and payed millions in severance.
The saddest part is that these schmucks are probably still around, lifting big salaries while being completly incompetent and not contributing anything.
Edited 2007-12-11 03:22
Sounds like NFL coaches.
*cough* Cheney *cough*…
The first time I’ve seen a Amiga Commercial, was on the inner sleeve, by a (German?) band called “16 BIT”. They had this hit called “Changing Minds” an fortunately I found this video on YouTobe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FrF-JiGeuA
Now guess what computer is used in this clip…
Ready for some nostalgia? 🙂
Edited 2007-12-11 08:19
Got the vinyls of changing minds and ina-gadda-da-vida at home as well as a longplayer on CD. The cover of changing minds is full of A500 promotion. 16 Bit is the same who later became quiet famous as Snap! and introduced with “The power” one of the new sounds of the nineties and went #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. But the power was not original but stolen by Snap!, anyway it’s a great tune (have it at home as well).
Got the vinyls of changing minds and ina-gadda-da-vida at home as well as a longplayer on CD. The cover of changing minds is full of A500 promotion. 16 Bit is the same who later became quiet famous as Snap! and introduced with “The power” one of the new sounds of the nineties and went #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. But the power was not original but stolen by Snap!, anyway it’s a great tune (have it at home as well).
Hey, I love that song and didn’t know that an Amiga was somehow involved in its creation. Thanks for that!
It is funny to recall how much Amigas were used in the mainstream multimedia production back then. Some people say that earlier versions of Lightwave were used on Amigas to produce the special effects the original Galactica TV series. PCs were so primitive in comparison back then that it is not even funny…
A friend of mine used to run a small computer shop when he lived on the US during the early nineties and he did make quite a living basically selling Amigas with the Video Toaster(?) and Lightwave bundles. Then the CG market went to the huge Unix workstations sold by SGI and the Amigas were dropped to the sidelines. It is sad to see all this legacy fading into obscurity now… :/
No more nostalgia.
I’m still crying from the recent C64 revival article ..
(thanks for the link)
Nowadays business is the same as business back then. The only difference now is nobody is willing to innovate for the sake of innovation, as the Amiga engineers did. So we wind up with mediocraty, as is our fate.
celebrate mediocrity. failure is the best revenge. that is nothing new.
I think there is a REAL OPPORTUNITY right now for a platform that is not Mac, Windows or Linux but one that incorporates the best of all of them and is presented as a real alternative.
Not since the late 70s and 80s have people been more willing to look at alternative computing platforms then they are today.
Major screw-ups by Microsoft with Vista; Apple with Leopard; and Linux vendors that can’t seem to unite around a standard distribution have opened the door.
An innovative thinker with lots of cash could buy-out and unify all assets related to the Amiga, have the OS converted to work with Intel/AMD chips and hire a kick-ass marketing/ad agency.
AmigaOS 4 is nothing at the moment. How many people have used (and therefore, tested) it, what, like three men and a cow? It’s most likely riddled with bugs – not something you want in an OS without any decent memory protection.
AOS4 is a relic of the past. It is interesting, but it doesn’t stand even the slightest of chances against Windows, Mac, or Linux out in the real world. A geek’s toy, at best.
>An innovative thinker with lots of cash could buy-out and unify all assets related to the Amiga, have the OS converted to work with Intel/AMD chips and hire a kick-ass marketing/ad agency.
And wind up dead when “oh dear, I’m sorry sir, that northbridge you needed is discontinued. Oh, and you can’t get the documentation on a replacement for another 8 weeks. Well, I’m sorry sir, Microsoft and Apple have non-competitive agreements with us preventing documentation from being released to other vendors, I’m sure you fully understand…” You go AMD or Intel you’re just as dead as BeOS.
Control your hardware, or die off. I say go with one of the licenseable CPU designs, like ARM, MIPS or my recommendation, SPARC. Then you control your own fate.
A platform is more than the OS or the CPU, and just because something is commodity does not mean it is the wisest choice. Speaking from experience, if you wish to persue such a dream, you’d best do it from the strongest position possible, and that means controlling each and every component you use, from the CPU to the plugs that connect the USB ports. Why else do you think Commodore could so agressively price it’s Commodore 64 compared to the Commodore 128? Commodore made virtually every component in the 64, it did not in the 128, resulting in lower margins on the higher priced unit.
Various Open Source operating systems have proven this not to be true. It isn’t in the best interests of any hardware vendor to artificially restrict access to documentation. In fact, for a closed source OS with a small amount of cash to spend on signing NDA’s, it would be significantly easier to gain access to hardware documentation than for an Open Source OS. Your biggest problem would be hiring enough warm bodies to write the drivers, not getting the documentation.
Various Open Source operating systems have proven this not to be true. It isn’t in the best interests of any hardware vendor to artificially restrict access to documentation. In fact, for a closed source OS with a small amount of cash to spend on signing NDA’s, it would be significantly easier to gain access to hardware documentation than for an Open Source OS. Your biggest problem would be hiring enough warm bodies to write the drivers, not getting the documentation.
Oh really? How is ATI 3D on Haiku, OpenBSD or AROS lately for ya?
Hardware vendors make a ton of cash through exclusive deals. Certain vendors, OS, system, whatever, get docs before others, and the haves are the ones that shell out the pile o cash for it. Everyone else is always playing catch-up, and catch-up. So Linux can run my Radeon 9200 fully supported? It can’t run many games on my X1050 due to driver issues, and the lag time on that is so far now that by the time they’re sorted out, it will be 6 generations behind.
Er, all three of those are Open Source, and ATI recently released specs for their hardware. Support for ATI 3D will be great, provided they can find enough warm bodies to write or port the drivers.
Compare this with the (closed) MacOS X, which has good support for 3D hardware from ATI and Intel, and had it long before ATI opened their specs.
Sure, there are plenty of other operating systems and yes, I was a fan of BE, Inc. when they came out with the BeBox and BeOS. Deep down, I still think Apple should have gone with Be for their OS. However, none of these OSes has the cult status that the Amiga brand name does in the computer business nor the history.
Simply put, the pieces of the puzzle are all there waiting for someone smart enough to put them all together. If I could do it, I’d immediately put together a consultative group of the original designers and others. Solid thinkers like Carl Sassenrath and his Rebol programming language would definitely be asked along with such notables as Dr. Alan Kay creator of SmallTalk. I’d even like to consult with strategic thinkers like Gary Kasparov.
Tell me about it, but no one is willing to invest the cash required.
Agreed. We can’t wait to get REBOL 3 ported and working on Syllable.
Er, all three of those are Open Source, and ATI recently released specs for their hardware. Support for ATI 3D will be great, provided they can find enough warm bodies to write or port the drivers.
Compare this with the (closed) MacOS X, which has good support for 3D hardware from ATI and Intel, and had it long before ATI opened their specs.
Yes, my point exactly. In addition, try and find modern accelerated 3D drivers to closed sourced OS’s like OS/2, or Tru64. Unless the company is willing to provide docs on their next-generation products, you will forever be in the cycle of playing catch-up.
Control your hardware else the software will never gain the strong position it needs to be in to survive.
But you originally claimed that only certain “preferred” vendors have access to hardware documentation, but that isn’t true and I’ve given examples of both Open Source and closed systems which have access to documentation and are able to make full use of it. All it takes is cash to hire people to write drivers.
Well, they will. That’s what NDAs and Developer Relations programs give you. If you’re Open Source you have to take what they give you, but that still covers a good 80% of the core hardware out there. It’s only certain things like video and WLAN hardware that tends to be kept under wraps (& certain NIC vendors who’s names begin with B).
My point is that there is no big conspiracy by hardware manufacturers to restrict access to hardware documentation. Sign the NDAs, write the drivers.
> My point is that there is no big conspiracy by hardware manufacturers to restrict access to hardware documentation.
Who said anything for conspiracy I’m talking business sense. Apple gets Intels latest months before any other vendor. NDA’s still don’t get you the latest docs, they get you second-tier docs unless you’re willing to invest the billions these companies now demand. It is good business sense for these companies. What does it matter to them what some 500-1000 unit product needs in comparison to 10,000-100,000 unit products? Make the little guy wait a little, what harm is it?
If you have innovative ideas and lots of cash, why tie yourself to an old model? At this point, it’d be better to be a spiritual ancestor, than to just make an updated clone of an old machine.
Get a team of people who are equally innovative, talented, and organized (not just your programmers, mind). Once you have your intelligent people, ask them what they’d want in a computer, and see how much of it is feasable with the constraints you have to work in; that’s how the Amiga got off the ground.
Myself, I probably wouldn’t try to resurrect the Amiga — however, I might purchase the Commodore name to work under, especially if I wanted to convey the image of a user-friendly, fun machine with a customizable base. The going price right now appears to be a touch over $5 million, about 1/5th what it last sold for; bargain basement, as corporate names go.
>Myself, I probably wouldn’t try to resurrect the Amiga — however, I might purchase the Commodore name to work under, especially if I wanted to convey the image of a user-friendly, fun machine with a customizable base. The going price right now appears to be a touch over $5 million, about 1/5th what it last sold for; bargain basement, as corporate names go.
Hey, sounds good.
and pst, have I got something to show you….
Hehehe. The name Commodore mostly tastes like failure to me…
>>I think there is a REAL OPPORTUNITY right now for a platform that is not Mac, Windows or Linux but one that incorporates the best of all of them and is presented as a real alternative.<<
Uh? In the PC/server world, the number of successful OS has decreased steadily, what’s make you think that a ‘real alternative’ would gain steam?
>>An innovative thinker with lots of cash could buy-out and unify all assets related to the Amiga, have the OS converted to work with Intel/AMD chips and hire a kick-ass marketing/ad agency.<<
A *humongous* amount of cash you mean, because to attract users you’d need first to have applications and I doubt very much that the existing AmigaOS applications would please existing users..
A BeOS “revival” (very, very unlikely) would at least give you some applications which are not ‘stale’ by todays standard, but not a lot though: the formats used (PNG, websites, H264, ODF/OOXML..) evolve quickly so applications ‘rust’ quite quickly too..