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by Danox
9 days ago
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The Amiga had a superior and hardware and software combo, the total package was extremely good. After the Amiga died I moved on into a Mac running OSX, and later Apple Silicon, when you combine the MacOS with Apple Silicon, it feels very similar to the Commodore Amiga in short, the total package of hardware and software made by one company, provided a level of integration that Microsoft Windows still can’t equal even with all the separate OEM’s making Windows computers across the world. Nothing beats a vertical computer company who has control of the operating system and the hardware that is the edge that Apple has over its competition, if the next computer or the SGI computer was around today with the technology advancements of today I definitely would be in the market for one, back in the day. I couldn’t afford one but today I can. |
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All things considered, no. It didn't. It had, for quite a while, a better bang-for-the-buck appeal, hardware- and software-wise, especially in the market niches it was designed to appeal to. But that headstart was over technically in late 1987 (386, VGA, AdLib, MT-32), and economically from ca. 1990/91 onwards, strongly dependent on market, of course, and not including the lowest margins, e. g. the home computers (based on their use cases, for a lot of people, used or new A500s, A600s or A1200s were still excellent deals even in 1993).
And philosophically? I say that was over before the first Amiga was even born. The adaptability speed and sheer potential of an open platform built around the relative stability/predictability of ever-evolving standards, as well as vendor diversity, ate you raw. It was just a matter of time.
The multitasking OS part is, I think, a quite overrated as well as romanticized retelling of history, written mostly by younger retro nerdlingers with roided-out (largely anachronistic) machines, on top of members of the Old Breed that sometimes still fight the Platform War. I can understand that. If Apple and Google won the hardware race by way of elimination with their to me rather miserable offerings, I'd most likely not be in the best of moods either, lol.
> Nothing beats a vertical computer company who has control of the operating system and the hardware that is the edge that Apple has over its competition [...]
Speed and overspecialization/overintegration are not everything. Especially old Amiganers should have learned that lesson by now...
Oddly enough, Apple made exactly one machine I really liked to use: the Newton MessagePad. The rest of their merchandise has been, through the bank, inferior given my specific preferences and use cases. The same goes for all iterations of their mainline operating systems. What remains is a bit of a soft spot for the Apple IIc. Just on account of its really lovely looks.