@realize

bill gats own Microsoft"

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maybe i am dyslexia

An Apple a day keep bill gates away

@Yo

"I understand that trashing MS is a fun and rewarding hobby, but to them it's simply 'business', don't you agree?"

I can remember that competition moaned about Microsoft that they built "warning messages" in early versions of windows (or MS-DOS I cannot remember) when someone wanted to use a non-microsoft software. They lost countless lawsuits. So "simply business" for them? Propably. I earn my money with "windows-related" services but I dislike the company and "Bill Gates".

BTW for similar reasons I dislike Apple too. But in real life you must choice one of the platforms. There is Linux of course but most companies use Windows. Perhaps this will change in future with more and more tablets as replacement and because of security concerns but it is reality at the moment.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 01-Sep-2013 at 10:01 AM.

i dont even exactly kow what gateway and so on did, did not or wanted to do with amiga. i remember escom did pretty nothing. and amiga technologies associated with petro t. did pretty nothing apart trying to sell out remaining broken stock, none wanted.
trying to blame microsoft for something that happened in the late 90ies as "killing amiga" is completely ridiculous, as ridiculous was to expect any serious company will invest in this tiny, obviously corrupt, obsolete and ill recognized brand/market.

at the time i was buying my a600 in 91 ive been told by amiga friends i would be better off with a pc for serious tasks. there is no need for ill will to be involved in decision to dump it any later. any sane and already successful company with a recognized line of products would proceed like this.

If only Gateway/Amiga Inc continued their collaboration with qnx, that was probably the last real chance of returning to a semi-mainstream status, if not on desktop, than on mobile devices and the embedded market.

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Microsoft didn't kill the Amiga, and neither did the constant changing of owners - the latter was just the final nail in the coffin. The Amiga was killed during Commodore times by incompetent company management, lame strategies, thoughtless decisions, and lack of technological advancement.

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AmigaOne X5000/020 @ 2GHz / 4GB RAM / Radeon RX 560 / ESI Juli@ / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition
SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@thread

We ourselves are killing Amiga all on our own.

Infighting, public perception, lawsuits, AmigaOS Licences etc.

we could have had Amiga on this :

beagleboard

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Download 499.26 Mbps, 659.94 Mbps Upload :)

@asymetrix

Ourselves?

Not sure about that. There are plenty of mudslinging about WinPCs, ipads, linux and pretty much every
version of OS and hardware out there, and they are doing allright.

The stagnation of Amiga was more a Hardware company issue than anything from my point of view.
I was an avid Amiga user back in the early 90s, but I remember reading the Amiga Magazines about
endless "promising future" and "new hardware in the pipeline....maybe" etc for xx years.
I went from excited, to mildly impatient, to annoyed and then just indifferent.

Eventually a WinPC entered the household and I havent really looked back until just lately.
Tbh AEON and Trevors energy caught my attention. Not enough to make me pay for the NG hardware.
But Im atleast following developments closely again.

So, Id say it was lack of direction that "killed" Amiga, more than anything else.

Last edited by Overflow on 01-Sep-2013 at 08:57 PM.
Last edited by Overflow on 01-Sep-2013 at 08:56 PM.

@rebraist

Quote:

Amiga died because of its 80s former strength (architecture) was its main weakness in the 90s.

Nail on head. There was no significant advancement from the release of the A1000 in 1985 until the release of the A3000 in 1990. Although the A3000 was a fine system, maybe the best Amiga ever, it wasn't enough. Workbench 2.0 was also an improvement, but again, not nearly enough.

From the "I am a dinosaur, I was there" department: the release of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 was a serious blow to Amiga, the magnitude of which is not always remembered nowadays. The perception before this was that x86 couldn't be a serious gaming platform, but Id Software demonstrated otherwise.

And the end drew near...

Last edited by bison on 01-Sep-2013 at 10:15 PM.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@bison

Have to agree with you on that Wolfensten 3D, after those kind of games started coming, it was the time when Amiga for first time really got behind on games.

And if you look even nowadays, it is still the the 3rd peson shooters that are the biggest sellers, and Amiga lost that boat at that crucial beginning. I caneasily see how some people even if they could have potentially bought Amiga, went to PC just for those 3D shooters they wouldnt get on Amiga.

After that also RPGs started shifting towards PCs as well (ie. 3D ultima underworld), and thats when bascially gamers who were willing to pay were lost in my opinion.

Finally, the last paying gamers were the simulation fans, and simulators werent so marginal on those days as they are nowadays, and all the good simulations went there too, thanks to 3D capabilities.

All in all, you could say that 3D gaming in general killed Amiga, but Wolfenstein really started it.


What comes to no serious company investing to Amiga.

Lets not forget that amongst original bidders was also Samsung.

Then on second round there was Gateway (although if i correctly remember they at start werent even interested in Amiga computers but woke up for demand after fans started ranting).

I have to say, from alternative reality point of view, Samsung had definetily been most interesting bid winner for Commodore.

Commodore UK, Viscorp etc. they propably had most sensible Amiga continuation plans, although they maybe wouldnt have had muscle to bring Amiga up otherwise.

But basically all in all, I have got impression that Escom wasnt such a bad winner at all. Just that it got bankrupted on its PC side was unfortunate. After all, they had Walker and PPC plans there going on already, their demise just came year too soon.

@Bugala

Quote:

Then on second round there was Gateway (although if i correctly remember they at start werent even interested in Amiga computers but woke up for demand after fans started ranting).

I suppose that's possible too, but what I quoted from Carl Sassenrath seems to say otherwise, that is was more a pure business decision to obtain leverage in pricing:

Quote:

The opposite. Gateway wanted leverage in how it dealt with MS. The patents were good, but a competing OS (in those days, when Win was so lame) would have been even better.

some similar quotes and link to Carl-s's post

#6

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@number6

Ah, now i finally understood that sentence. I saw it before too but didint quite get it.

Im quite sure my impression about gateway not being interested in Amiga computers at start was wrong when now looking at Carl Sassenraths comment.

@Bugala

Quote:

Have to agree with you on that Wolfensten 3D, after those kind of games started coming, it was the time when Amiga for first time really got behind on games.

It started to go downhill in late 80s when 386+VGA were expensive but attractive systems to gamers. Many games were first released on PC (i.e. Civilization in 1991 and other MicroProse titles) and Amiga conversions were released later if at all.

I am not sure if better management or better chipset could have saved it. PC was hugely popular and inexpensive in the USA and the best publishers were in the USA, so that was it. Commodore failed to acquire its home market and was it even possible to fight against the army of PC clones?

(Clones always win )

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

Colonel Mustard killed the Amiga in the kitchen with the candlestick.

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@thread

I suppose the expanded headline may read something like:

The last real chance for re-establishing Amiga as a viable platform was killed by Microsoft business practices during Bill Gates' watch.

Ergo, Bill Gates killed the Amiga.

Yes, many entities and/or conditions all killed Amiga in some way. In capitalism every company experiences ups and downs, the trick is to avoid a continuing downward trend (3Dfx, Palm, Sgi, Sun). Companies fall behind their competition all the time and recover or reinvent themselves, i.e. There was a time when intel fell behind AMD, and there was a time when ATi fell behind Nvidia, and now iOS has fallen behind Android.

Irrespective of the falling behind the computer gaming market, and the bankruptcies; with the right amount of investment the Amiga could have returned to the mainstream market during Gateway's reign. The harsh reality: that was its true last chance. Everything since then is just vultures picking off the Amiga carcass.

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All the way, with 68k

Quote:

Nail on head. There was no significant advancement from the release of the A1000 in 1985 until the release of the A3000 in 1990.

Actually, it wasn't a real advancement: the real advancement came in 1992 with the AGA chipset, which wasn't that advanced since lots of things remained unchanged: Paula,... The A3000 didn't bring any major change: still 32/64 colors, same Paula,...

So it took Commodore 7 (!!) years to release an upgrade to the original chipset.

Of course, it was far too little (especially with the lack of chunky modes, real hi/true color modes usable for more than viewing images, no built in scandoubler (99% games still could not be displayed on a VGA monitor),.. and I won't even talk about the 1200 which didn't come with a built in harddrive (versions could ship with one, but it wasn't always there, so editors still shipped games on floppy drives without installers most of the time).

Too little too late.

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Quote:

Clones always win

I don't think Mac clones won ;)

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@agami

Quote:

The last real chance for re-establishing Amiga as a viable platform was killed by Microsoft business practices during Bill Gates' watch.

amiga died by itself. is microsoft bound by some sort of hypocrates aid to life support dying computer platforms? why not blame linux, apple, ibm, nasa, pantagon, kremlin, and the rest of the world for not helping amiga in need?

deleted

Last edited by wawa on 02-Sep-2013 at 11:53 AM.

yet again

Last edited by wawa on 02-Sep-2013 at 11:53 AM.
Last edited by wawa on 02-Sep-2013 at 11:53 AM.

@bison

Quote:

bison wrote: @rebraist ... From the "I am a dinosaur, I was there" department: the release of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 was a serious blow to Amiga, the magnitude of which is not always remembered nowadays. The perception before this was that x86 couldn't be a serious gaming platform, ...

Hmmm - back in 1992 I was just doing my CAD Analyst course. At school PCs with 286 cpu still were standard, with the first 386s appearing in some classrooms.
Operating system was MS-DOS 5.0, later MS-DOS 6.2.
MS-Word 4.0 didn't have pulldown menues, nor mouse support - all was done by thousands of key combinations.
Windows 3.1 was released on March 1, 1992, and took some years to be used at this school.
Hardwarewise a bog standard PC was able to make a mono "Beep" and normally came with a Hercules compatible monochrome graphic card at a price of approximately 6,000 DM (today 3,000 €).

To be honest, back then none of us Amigans thought a PC could be a serious platform for anything at all - given that the latest Amigas came with Mouse, multitasking OS, 14 Bit stereo sound, 24 bit colour depth and at half the price of an PC...

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