Were Amiga owners short-sighted? Could Commodore have helped?

[Gorf]

The Amiga was a multimedia powerhouse that was ahead of it's time, but because of those shortcomings US businesses didn't take it seriously and only considered it a "toy", which meant it's market and sales potential was immediately limited in the US and eventually crippled it in the home market too.

Sadly this is very true. Not only in the US but also in Europe.
They should have stopped producing PCs much earlier and show that they believe in their own product.

You mentioned Apple paying MS to port Office...
Apple did also buy out Claris and shipped the Macs with a complete office suite.

Commodore could have made a similar deal - maybe with IBM for Lotus?
Or buy out Applix.

What is Applix??? They made one of the first wysiwyg office-suites for Unix and VMS. Quite nice with its own oo-scripting language, that would have made it easy to integrate with Arexx.
It also could read MS-Office files!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applixware

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by Gorf

You mentioned Apple paying MS to port Office...
Apple did also buy out Claris and shipped the Macs with a complete office suite.

Apple did not buy Claris: Claris is spin off of Apple software team that made MacPaint and MacWrite! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claris

Originally Posted by Gorf

What is Applix??? They made one of the first wysiwyg office-suites for Unix and VMS. Quite nice with its own oo-scripting language, that would have made it easy to integrate with Arexx.
It also could read MS-Office files!

M$ Office was not so important in 80s - or more precisely: it was not at all important in 80s
If I remember correctly, Amiga had WordPerfect?
Atari ST had Microsoft Word (it was called 1st Word) and it was WORST ever program on ST! It was unbelievable terrible and useless. True piece of shit in comparison to any other Atari ST word processing program. They made only one version (I think it was ver. 4) for ST.
World had to wait until 1991. and Windows 3.x until it get INFESTED with Word/Office crapware!

There were bunch of other programs (and formats) in 80s even on PC. I do not remember that I was: 'oh, gosh, I can not read .doc' (btw .doc extension was used and by other programs in 80s). Only on Atari you have like 10 programs for data manipulation (back then programs often were mix of Spreadsheet and Word processing in one application like STeve or german Protext in 80s which is, btw, much better than later Word and Excel and OLE crap...)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by kovacm

Apple did not buy Claris: Claris is spin off of Apple software team that made MacPaint and MacWrite! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claris

So it is a spin-off that never spun off:

"The original plan was that Claris would become completely independent from Apple someday, and go public. But that never happened."

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/user...larisworks.php

M$ Office was not so important in 80s - or more precisely: it was not at all important in 80s

quite true for the 80s, but not so much for the 90s

If I remember correctly, Amiga had WordPerfect?

Yes Amiga had quite some word-processors back than - I did not like Word Perfect and settled for "Final Copy" .

So we had word processors and even DTP (Pagestream), but there was always a kind of shortage of spreadsheet and/or database programs.
And there was never a office package that would integrate all of that.

Applixware would have offered that... but realistically only for the A3000 or equally equipped Amigas.

[Leo42]

I don't think the problem was the wordprocessors: Amiga had capable apps.

The problem was the lack of hardware support: printer drivers sucked, then we lacked scanning software, etc...

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Leo42

printer drivers sucked

Did they really though? Maybe I was lucky but I never had any problems producing decent output with PageStream.

And Windows printer drivers today still suck

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Did they really though? Maybe I was lucky but I never had any problems producing decent output with PageStream.

And Windows printer drivers today still suck

I think PageStream had its own drivers - at least for postscript.

No the standard printer drivers were terrible ... stuck in the 80s.
But there was TurboPrint, that got more printers, was faster and had better quality - Commodore should have licensed it.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Leo42

I don't think the problem was the wordprocessors: Amiga had capable apps.

The problem was that word processing on a 1084 would turn you blind.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by idrougge

The problem was that word processing on a 1084 would turn you blind.

...and when I say something like this than I am [troll], [crazy], [____] :P

[idrougge]

I never said that, did I?

[EugeneNine]

I did most of my college work on a 1084, worked fine for me.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by idrougge

The problem was that word processing on a 1084 would turn you blind.

Millions people used to look at CRTs with 50Hz interlaced for period of over 50 years every day - only very few got blind

Some 1084 even had 60 Hz - pure luxury!

[idrougge]

As soon as millions started looking at CRTs every day, low-emission and flicker regulations were introduced.

[CodyJarrett]

The radiation from my 1084 burned images on my retina. Even today, I still see Lemmings everywhere I look.

Originally Posted by dethrattle

I can't speak for the European market, but for the US market I do have some insight since I was working for a computer store that sold PC clones and also sold Commodore (Amiga and even C64) computers.

A very nice summary from a great perspective - thanks!

[amiga_Forever]

I think Commodore did fine right up till the CD32 launch.. At least in Jan-1994 Amiga magazines "Amiga User Intentional" Commodore was already in trouble.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by amiga_Forever

I think Commodore did fine right up till the CD32 launch.. At least in Jan-1994 Amiga magazines "Amiga User Intentional" Commodore was already in trouble.

There you misunderstand cause and effect.

Commodore was already in big troubles and the CD32 was the last desperate attempt to fix that. But as always with new new Amiga products since the A500 the CD32 came too late.

And a stupid patent lawsuit forbid Commodore the import of it into the US. They could not even pay 10 million $ to settle.

Before that, they also lost a lot of money because of the stupid decision to move fabrication from Hongkong to the Philippines without real need. A volcano eruption on the Philippines slowed down the A1200 - so they could not deliver enough for christmas in 1992.

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Before that, they also lost a lot of money because of the stupid decision to move fabrication from Hongkong to the Philippines without real need. A volcano eruption on the Philippines slowed down the A1200 - so they could not deliver enough for christmas in 1992.

Did that actually happen, or are you confusing it with how they couldn't deliver enough A1200s for christmas in 1993:

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid...0&cid=16864964

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Did that actually happen, or are you confusing it with how they couldn't deliver enough A1200s for christmas in 1993:

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid...0&cid=16864964

The story in your the link can not be true: the A600 was discontinued in early 1993. Maybe they were talking abut the year 1992?

I can not find a link to back my story up, but I am very sure I read it somewhere.
To spread even more rumors: A member of commodores management had a mistress in the Philippines, and thats why this location was chosen...

However: Commodore had more than enough manufacturing capacities in US, Scotland, Honking and Germany - especially without the PCs. Philippines was millions of wasted money.

( At least a link for the devastating eruption.)

[Leffmann]

The post I linked to is written by Randell Jesup who was working at Commodore at the time, on the AmigaOS development team, so I just assumed what he wrote was what actually happened.

[Octopus66]

Hi Leffmann - I am sure Randell Jesup is right about the events in question, he just got his year wrong. He means 1992. You can read about the A600 xmas 1992 disaster in Amiga Shopper Tapes - Issue 38, June 94 (http://amr.abime.net/issue_1132). As they were clearly obsolete they were heavily discounted to £99 and sold a fair few for xmas. Disaster for Commodore though. And lots of new 1Meg Amiga owners reading AF and the other mags lol (why wont my coverdisk run on my 1 meg machine?!!!!)

Edit: Actually I am getting confused... the Amiga Shopper mentions A600s for sale at £99 for xmas 1993. So maybe Randell is right..!?