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Unknown_K · 10 November 2010, 06:12

The good and bad thing about the Amiga 1000 was the chip integration. At the start the system was better then anything out there at the price. The thing is every system evolves and the more tightly you integrate things the harder it is to change them with later designs and keep things working and compatible. Commodre pretty much sold the same system from the A1000 to the last A4000 with little change. There would have been no way to compete with 100's of individual companies making hardware for the PC anyway (same for advertising dollars).

I don't think the Amiga could have been a platform like the Mac just because few companies bothered doing hardware and software for the Amiga to keep it usefull. The difference between a platform that lives and dies isn't realy the hardware itself, but the software and hardware support it gets from the industry. And industry supports whatever is easy to work with (getting help from the maker is a big plus both in hardware and software specs) and sells in enough units to make any product profitable.

I lived through the DOS and Windows 3.1 days and to be honest they were not that bad. Once a system was setup they were pretty reliable. Most people tasked switched back then anyway so running multiple apps at the same time was not something you absolutely had to have (and if so desqview allowed that). Microsoft was pretty good at getting developers what they needed which is what got Windows 3.1 to take off (that and pirating).

10 November 2010, 06:12	#12
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	The good and bad thing about the Amiga 1000 was the chip integration. At the start the system was better then anything out there at the price. The thing is every system evolves and the more tightly you integrate things the harder it is to change them with later designs and keep things working and compatible. Commodre pretty much sold the same system from the A1000 to the last A4000 with little change. There would have been no way to compete with 100's of individual companies making hardware for the PC anyway (same for advertising dollars). I don't think the Amiga could have been a platform like the Mac just because few companies bothered doing hardware and software for the Amiga to keep it usefull. The difference between a platform that lives and dies isn't realy the hardware itself, but the software and hardware support it gets from the industry. And industry supports whatever is easy to work with (getting help from the maker is a big plus both in hardware and software specs) and sells in enough units to make any product profitable. I lived through the DOS and Windows 3.1 days and to be honest they were not that bad. Once a system was setup they were pretty reliable. Most people tasked switched back then anyway so running multiple apps at the same time was not something you absolutely had to have (and if so desqview allowed that). Microsoft was pretty good at getting developers what they needed which is what got Windows 3.1 to take off (that and pirating).