What if Commodore and Atari had buried the hatch and worked together?

[Pyromania]

@AmigaHope

Great summary of the Jack & Irving thought processes.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Of course then Jack (and then his son) ran Atari partly out of spite (though he did get some of the engineers back in the 90's -- far too late),.

well - Tramiel managed to take a group of gifted engineers from commodore with him.
That is the reason Atari managed to develop the ST in "record time" ... these people already started way earlier to plan a 68k computer...

EDIT: For instance Tramiel didn't understand the need for compatibility w/enhancement at all. In his eyes, a computer was a product just like a wristwatch or calculator. You bought it for your needs and it didn't matter if it was different as long as it functioned similarly. That's why we got crap like the PLUS/4 (zero compatibility) and the C-128,

mostly true - under Jack Tramiel C= released a new incompatible computer almost every year (the PET, the B series, VIC20, C64, C16, Plus4 ..)

But the C128 has nothing to do with Tramiel, or only with the fact that he left the company and no one was supervising new projects anymore - as pointed out by Bill Herd several times, they just could do what they wanted albeit with minimal funding - so this Frankenstein-computer came into existence.

[LongLifeA1200]

The question is looking at it from the wrong end. "What if" Amiga didn't need Atari's or Commodore's money... etc. etc.

[Gorf]

some additional thoughts:

While Tramiel and Gould (and Ali) had certainly no clue about computers and the importance of software and compatibility, they were not the only ones back then.

Apple released the incompatible Apple III series (and failed of course), followed by the ill-fated Lisa, until they finally landed a hit with the also entirely incompatible Mac ...
which did not stop them to release the Apple IIGS, with outsold the Mac in the first year
(al least ist was mostly compatible to the II line ... but is in many ways similar to the C128)

Sinclair did not pay attention to compatibility as well (ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum, QL) and Acorn thought it would be a good idea to release the incompatible Electron...

Actually IBM and Microsoft were probably the first to understand, that compatibility is the key - that a computer for consumers has to be treated like the mainframes before that: programs needs to be able to run an a newer version without modification.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

The question is looking at it from the wrong end. "What if" Amiga didn't need Atari's or Commodore's money... etc. etc.

Dave Needle and R. J. Mical from the original Amiga team tried again in the 90s with the 3DO - licensing the design to several manufacturers...

sadly it was only a modest success (2 million units sold)

(by the way, the OS of the 3DO is in many ways very similar to ours as far as I can see ...)

It is hard to say if this concept would have worked for a computer in the 80s ... on the other hand: the MSX was such a platform and did in some countries better than the Amiga. But still it did not evolve into a lasting global standard.