[cmrdporcupine]

Absolutely. That was Tramiel and Shivji's intent, I believe. Rock bottom price general purpose computer. People comparing to the Amiga are missing the point. Tramiel didn't care much about games, and was interested in "computers for the masses, not the classes" -- bringing cheap 16/32 bit computer power to the market (and as fast as possible before the competition could).

The comparison point for the ST should be the IBM PC or the Apple Mac, not the Amiga. Productivity computers that were many multiples the cost. In 1985, 1986 there was nowhere else where you were going to get that much memory and clock rate for the price Atari was charging.

That plus the crisp paper white monochrome monitor (no dubious interlaced flicker), the Mac-like UI, PC compatible floppies. They had potential for a real winner, but he problem is that Atari failed to effectively iterate. At least not until it was too late. The Falcon was a great machine.

[ShadowBanThis01]

Don't forget the built-in MIDI.

The inverse color scheme? Not so great... which people are finally admitting 40 years later.

[cmrdporcupine]

'twas easy enough to flip the palette

[rbanffy]

Not sure it was so, but it'd be interesting if the monochrome mode used two entries of the palette. Possibly also easier to implement as well.

[cmrdporcupine]

That's how it was. Flipping to inverse as really easy and there were lots of auto programs or desk accessories that included an option for it, including I believe Atari's stock control panel.