| > You very much do. It's like 3D-workstations and other pro-applications were not a competitive thing for PCs in the Eighties. I never said anything about 3D workstations in the 80s. I said 3D games were the tipping point where the envy flipped from PC->Amiga to Amiga->PC. And that has nothing to do with personal preference. > You need to connect the dots for a change, friend. I only brought it up to illustrate that you Westerners had a significant headstart; the tech I and most of my peers were fumbling around with beginning in the Nineties was already, parse this slowly please, available to YOU in the Eighties! Geddit? I got your point the first time. However you keep conflating personal experience with technology. Just because you didn’t have access to an Amiga 500 it doesn’t mean PCs were superior technology in the 80s. It just means your experience isn’t inclusive. Literally just that and nothing technical. this is the crux of your disagreement: Just because you weren’t able to experience the competition in the 80s doesn’t mean it somehow didn’t exist. > As great as the Atari and Amiga home computers and pro models were, these eco-systems, as such, definitely did not have the massive advantage in "all-inclusive" capabilities that is so often ascribed to them. You’re making a strawman argument here. We are simply comparing 80s home computers. In the 80s, PCs were several steps behind the competition. In general and against many common benchmarks and UX metrics. We aren’t talking about $10,000 top of the line workstations against “pro” STs, we’re talking about a like-for-like in terms of home computers and price points. PCs were much more upgradable. But then you could upgrade Amigas and STs too if you wanted. However PCs were the better option if you wanted something where you could define your own spec. Albeit this still wasn’t a common a thing until the late 80s. But I do agree that if you wanted the latest bleeding edge hardware then PCs were the way to go. However I’d wager you knew fewer people with $10,000 PCs than you knew with Amigas. ;) ——— Anyway, I think we’ve hit an impasse. You’re unwilling to accept that your experience is flawed and my unwillingness to accept your experience is fact. So perhaps we should quit here before the conversation degrades. |
Exactly my point. Your metric (for judging graphics capabilities) in this case was strictly preference (bias) about a set of games with a specific visual aesthetic from 1991/92 ("It wasn’t until the era of ray casting 2.5D 1st person shooter that PCs started looking better than their counterparts").
> Just because you didn’t have access to an Amiga 500 it doesn’t mean PCs were superior technology in the 80s. [...] this is the crux of your disagreement: Just because you weren’t able to experience the competition in the 80s doesn’t mean it somehow didn’t exist.
As I wrote, I got to experience Atari STs back in the day, albeit in a limited fashion. And this might come as a terrible shock to you, but people are also able to experience technology decades later and extrapolate accordingly. It's what historians (of science and technology for example) do all the time. Good lorde!
> We are simply comparing 80s home computers. In the 80s, PCs were several steps behind the competition.
Yes, until, by my estimation, 1987/88 (at a time a lot of dedicated PC-gaming magazines got off the ground as well). Strictly on technological grounds, i. e. on many technological but also economical metrics, as contextualized by real-world use cases across whole industries and economies in many nations.
The big deal about these home computers was indeed the "bang for the buck" mantra. This is, at least as far as I'm concerned, completely indisputable. But when evaluating whole eco systems against each other, a 386 workstation from 1987 is as much part of that equation as an Amiga 2000 workstation as XT-grade Europlastik from Schneider as an Amiga 500 or an Atari ST. That's not hard to comprehend.
> However I’d wager you knew fewer people with $10,000 PCs than you knew with Amigas. ;)
Well, the first Amiga I ever saw was an A2000 in a yearbook. And "in the flesh"? 2007, at a demoscene thing. PCs, incl. graphics workstations (such as the used one I bought from my mentor who got himself a 486 replacement)? All around me. Even at my grandma's workplace (chemical engineering) which I was often allowed to terrorize as a kidlet, already shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain. The STs were only an outlier, computers as music instruments; their users (households) also owning/sharing PCs. Video game consoles were much more popular when it came to arcade-style gaming. But that's just in my neck of the woods; I'm well aware that the Amigas were some of the most popular, and capable, machines here in Europe, especially Germany.
> However PCs were the better option if you wanted something where you could define your own spec.
Precisely. The openness of the eco system was and is, generally speaking, both strength and weakness.
> Anyway, I think we’ve hit an impasse. You’re unwilling to accept that your experience is flawed and my unwillingness to accept your experience is fact.
My experience is, as I've internalized a long time ago, certainly limited. But then again, so is yours. :p
G'day.