
A history of the Amiga, part 10: The downfall of Commodore - msh
https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2017/01/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-10-the-downfall-of-commodore/
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pmoriarty
I fell in love with the Amiga ever since I saw an Amiga 1000 in the first
issue of Amiga World.

Amigas were clearly light years ahead of virtually all other personal
computers at the time -- with the arguable exception of the Atari ST, which
had the reputation of being better for music. But the Amiga was better for
games and had better graphics. As a hardcore gamer, I knew instantly that the
Amiga was what I wanted. Somehow I convinced my parents to get me an Amiga
500, as my second computer (after the TI99/4A) and spent a lot of time
collecting games and demos, and connecting to BBS'.

Somehow the rest of the world didn't really see the clear superiority of the
Amiga, and stuck with their boring IBM PC's and Macintoshes. Commodore
collapsed, and virtually every other personal computer became extinct, as most
people just wanted to buy whatever they had used at work (IBM PC) or school
(Apple). This was an early lesson for me that superior technology does not
always win. In fact, it's often the inferior technologies that win, for a
variety of reasons -- especially marketing.

I kept my Amiga for a long time, but eventually migrated to Unix (SunOS, Irix,
Dec Alpha's OSF/1, and Solaris), and eventually to Linux on a PC. It had
become increasingly clear that newer tech had left the Amiga in the dust. Some
people still stuck with the Amiga long after I stopped using it, but I donated
mine long ago. Sometimes I wish I'd kept it, so I could bring it out for
nostalgia's sake every now and then, but it's a lot of equipment to lug
around.

I often wonder how the personal computer landscape would have changed had the
Amiga won. Back then, it seemed like Microsoft, the IBM PC, and Apple have
kept us back 10 or 20 years with their dominance.

~~~
pjmlp
I like to think its architecture is what gave rise to the idea of having
dedicated sound and graphics cards on all computers and game consoles.

I followed another path, settling on Windows, after a decade of UNIX.

The UNIX culture never seemed to be much welcoming to the demoscene culture,
which had more points of contact with the gaming culture on Windows.

For a while in the late 90's there was a website that tried to be Poet for
GNU/Linux. They never managed to have more than a few demos there.

~~~
digi_owl
Not sure i follow, as the trend had been ongoing ever since the C64 (if not
before).

As for the whole demoscene thing, i am not surprised given that it grew out of
the cracking scene on micros. By being more elaborate versions of the intros
cracking groups added to games (and those seems have made something of a
comeback as cracking groups have to provide their own installers because games
rarely ship as complete ISOs these days).

That said, i never got the impression that the demoscene was much interested
in the PC platform once it started sprouting soundcards and graphics
accelerators. I guess it just became hard to judge the prowess of the demo
developers when the platform was not a fixed package.

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pjmlp
Demoscene moved into shader competitions on the cards themselves, like 4KB
demos on the GPU.

[http://iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/nvscene2008.h...](http://iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/nvscene2008.htm)

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digi_owl
So they effectively turned the GPU into the CPU...

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squarefoot
Watch also the "Deathbed Vigil" video by Dave Haynie, an interesting and
moving account of what was happening during the last days of C=. I would
recommend to watch it especially if you never touched an Amiga and always
wondered why those nerds adored it so much.

~~~
orionblastar
Kim Justice has another series of videos on Youtube about Commodore, Atari,
and Amiga. She did a lot of research on them.

Commodore did not market the Amiga in the USA, and the PC Clones caught up in
1987 with VGA and Sound Cards. When Windows was preloaded with a mouse on PC
Clones nobody needed the Amiga. The Amiga was cheaper than the Macintosh, but
PC clones were cheaper than the Amiga.

Amiga had mostly video games, and Commodore could not get business apps
written for it to compete with PC Clones nor get many computer dealers to
carry them as Jack Tramel burned computer dealers by putting the Vic-20 and
C64 in toy stores and discount stores.

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jonSson99
great Amiga movie out, didn't know about the Euro demo scene. I didn't get one
until the Video Toaster. [https://fmovies.se/film/from-bedrooms-to-billions-
the-amiga-...](https://fmovies.se/film/from-bedrooms-to-billions-the-amiga-
years.9o59x)

~~~
eriknstr
Tried to download it using youtube-dl, their server returned a funny message.

HTTP Error 503: Have you the ability to read quickly as the light?

PS: The video is actually hosted on Google Video. Copying the relevant Google
Video URL from devtools network monitor allows youtube-dl to fetch the video
correctly.

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toyg
We complain about today's management class, but in the '80s scumbaggery and
general thievery really were at Far-West levels.

The Amiga was a fabulous game machine and a great computer.

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bleair
Rather amazing how inept management was. The amiga was way ahead of its time
(the software architecture and design choices) and thus it might never have
succeeded, but the management actively did things to increase cost of
production (the a600, the various tower versions of the 2000 and 3000) and
harm its own sales.

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Zardoz84
I had the luck of buying an A1200 a few years ago. Really impressive machine
for 1992. Compared against my PC on the early 90s... well Can't run DooM, but
have a lot of nice games. The majority of the games that I played from 1990 to
1995 was 2d games. Games that could have ran on these A1200 without any issue.

