[ajross]

People didn't see it at the time, but the Atari ST was the first signal of the End of the Platform Computer.

On paper, this should have been perfect: it was a maximally cost-reduced 68k board with capabilities that met or exceeded everything on the market. It was faster than a Mac Plus or PC/AT and 3x cheaper than either, it had an EGA level framebuffer (though the color monitor was still a TV tube). I had one of these and loved it, and was sure it was the best computer in the world.

But it tanked, and it tanked because it didn't run Lotus 1-2-3, or Excel, or Netware, and you couldn't buy a VGA or ethernet card for it out of the back of Byte magazine.

Computers in 1984 were still small enough that you could just throw a good/cheap computer (c.f. the C64) with junk software (c.f. the C64) at the market and have the software vendors figure out everything by writing to the bare metal.

Computers in 1986 needed frameworks and commonality and ecosystems (above this level, note that diskless Sun 3's with 4.2BSD and NFS were reaching market at this moment too). And that meant just shipping something cheaper wasn't enough any more.

[cmrdporcupine]

Not sure what you're defining platform computer, but yeah, I think you're right. Tramiel Sr. also never understood the concept of an evolving platform with forward compatibility. Each of the Commodore home computers under his watch were bespoke and unique and not really expandable.

Operating system at both Atari and Commodore was treated as an afterthought and didn't get ongoing development. At Atari they put very little investment into the operating system after the original launch, and not much into the hardware either.

Not until his sons took over. Under them, Atari did finally make moves in the early 90s to try to build a large growable ecosystem on what was started and to diversify but it was too late.