Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Signman

A write off doesn’t make your computer free though just helps with overall tax assessment. Still got to write the check.

I don't know about the US, but in New Zealand it became an asset that was written off over 5 years - so provided you were making a profit it was free in the long run. If you got actual use out of it then it could be a net positive. I fired my manager and did the office work myself with a computer, and saved over $30,000 a year!

Originally Posted by Frogs

@Bruce, compatible in the sense that the Amiga's hardware was incapable of supporting such software. No one wants to run these programs at low resolution if they can run it at 640x480.

640x480 wasn't a thing until 1987 when IBM introduced VGA, but the PC had already become the 'only one' for business long before that.

Originally Posted by Frogs

I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. Users chose the PCs because of the software. We agree on that. But the software couldn't have been made for the Amiga because the Amiga's hardware didn't support the features the software needed.

We are not on the same page, because you refuse to admit the real problem with the Amiga's hardware - that it wasn't PC compatible. This problem was independent of any perceived failings in the graphics department. The Amiga was fundamentally incompatible because it didn't have an x86 CPU (and all the other hardware PC programmers hit that caused issues with machines that weren't "100% compatible").

Originally Posted by Frogs

That's one of the myths that seems to permeate this thread at times. The myth being that the Amiga was this universally superior piece of hardware...

I don't think anyone here believes that, but there is anther myth that tends to permeate threads like this - that the Amiga failed because it didn't have some hardware feature that PC's (eventually) did.

but the blind masses just picked the PC instead because they're lemmings or don't want to think. But that's not what happened.

Except it did. The mantra that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was well known even before they introduced the PC, and is the main reason for its success. By the time the Amiga arrived the question "but is it IBM compatible?" had become the death-knell for competing platforms.

The Amiga had the heart of the ultimate game machine with some additional cool features. But it did not have the hardware necessary to work well as a general productivity machine. In 1985 it was slightly behind in that area. By 1988 it was not in the same league.

By 1988 the Amiga had flicker-free 640x480 (A2000 with Microway flicker fixer), plus cool features like multiple screens that could be stacked and dragged, and a multitasking OS to make use of that feature. But it still couldn't run PC programs so...

The ATI VGA Wonder could do 256 colors at 640x480 and was $450 in 1987.

1988 according to Wikipedia - and an 8 bit ISA bus card. Can you imagine how slow that must have been?

In 1987 an Amiga 500 with monitor cost $850 for the whole thing.

Regular VGA cards were about half that.

Cheaper and crappier. I remember trying to run Windows 3.1 on early 'SuperVGA' cards, and they were almost unusable.

[Aladin]

All the "proprietary" computers have all disappeared (the mac remained on a drip because of the anti-thrust law).
In 2021, it is the turn of the software side that everything is blocked with 30 years old licenses which should have become free for the good of the amiga.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Aladin

In 2021, it is the turn of the software side that everything is blocked with 30 years old licenses which should have become free for the good of the amiga.

Amiga OS is still being developed commercially and sells for a reasonable price. Can't complain about that. Most Amiga titles are either abandonware, were distributed on free cover disks, or have been given to the community (which makes little difference - just means we don't have to feel guilty about pirating it now). Today there is far more open source software and a different attitude towards it. We can download just about anything we want off the Internet in seconds, even using our Amigas!

Those of us who stuck with our Amigas all these years are now reaping the rewards. People are making new motherboards, cases, keyboards, and soon perhaps complete machines with all new parts. Right now the Amiga is thriving!

[defor]

Originally Posted by Frogs

...But the software couldn't have been made for the Amiga because the Amiga's hardware didn't support the features the software needed.

This caught my attention. I certainly can't speak in general and I am pretty sure there were thousands of rich users running very high end machines in mid 80s, but I remember that even in early 90s a typical PC user was running MS-DOS and programs in text modes. Text editors, spreadsheets, accounting software -- these all run in a rough low-color text mode.
Evolution of (PC) word processors
"WordPerfect for DOS in 1989" look-alike was something I regularly saw even in 1992/1993.
This is WordPerfect on OCS Amiga.

MacWrite from 1984 looks quite similar to ProWrite for Amiga (also here).

This is how Windows looked like in 1985/1986.
This is Lotus 1-2-3 in mid 80s. And this and this is how spreadsheet program looks like on OCS Amiga.



I believe that the software support was the biggest problem. As it usually is for any new platform. Seems like Commodore was not able (or not willing?) to ensure that software producers would port their products to the Amiga.

Originally Posted by Frogs

The PC got the software people wanted because the Amiga was physically incapable of running that software. There is no chicken/egg situation by 1988. Word processing, spread sheets, CAD, desktop publishing, graphics design, etc. These things did better at higher resolutions and the Amiga's hardware wasn't capable of competing.

See above. Certainly all these programs would look better on a higher resolution display and it would be much more comfortable to use. However I believe it can be demonstrated that the majority was run on a much lower spec machines in mid 80s (or even late 80s).
I agree with Bruce Abbott that the Amiga was physically incapable of running that software because it didn't have x86, ISA, BIOS, MS-DOS -- it just wasn't a PC :-(

[grond]

Originally Posted by Minuous

I don't follow your logic: not bothering with ECS would have meant the CPU couldn't be upgraded? How so?

Because the high-resolution and VGA compatibility that ECS and the flickerfixer offered targeted the high-margin productivity market and only that needed a faster CPU. Without these better screenmodes there wouldn't have been any need at all for a faster CPU because games weren't going to make any use of it anyway and few people would have wanted to office work with the small vertical resolution that pure OCS offered.

And I fail to see what the A4000 has to do with anything, it has AGA which was a much more worthwhile upgrade than ECS.

AGA is a tiny add-on to ECS. Yes, it does all that ECS does so I understand your argument that AGA is somehow better. My original point was that ECS was a more significant sequential upgrade step for productivity while AGA was more significant for games. Business software doesn't care how many colours you can have on the screen at the same time, 4 colours is enough for most of it. It doesn't care either whether you can select from a 12bit palette or from a 24bit palette. All the stuff that AGA brought was only useful for leasure type software.

If ECS had never happened, AGA would have offered 15kHz modes only but with more colours. There wouldn't have been any point to put a faster CPU in such a machine (unless you had anticipated chunky pixel type games and had added such graphics modes to AGA). Hence, no need for an A4000-type machine if you had already decided against ECS and the A3000.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by defor

This caught my attention. I certainly can't speak in general and I am pretty sure there were thousands of rich users running very high end machines in mid 80s, but I remember that even in early 90s a typical PC user was running MS-DOS and programs in text modes. Text editors, spreadsheets, accounting software -- these all run in a rough low-color text mode.
Evolution of (PC) word processors
"WordPerfect for DOS in 1989" look-alike was something I regularly saw even in 1992/1993.
This is WordPerfect on OCS Amiga.

I was not rich by any means and in 1989 I had a 286-10 with VGA. My dad had Word Perfect for his Amiga and there was no way someone would, given any alternative, use it for any length of time.

MacWrite from 1984 looks quite similar to ProWrite for Amiga (also here).

This is how Windows looked like in 1985/1986.
This is Lotus 1-2-3 in mid 80s. And this and this is how spreadsheet program looks like on OCS Amiga.

I know how they look because I have an Amiga 1000 right now and can go look.

The 123 screenshot you show has been scaled up with a lot of blur. The Amiga screenshot you show is 640x512. I am not sure what Amiga that came from. I will say that if the Amiga in 1985 could have done 640x512 non-interlaced I think the Amiga would be with us today in a big way.

I believe that the software support was the biggest problem. As it usually is for any new platform. Seems like Commodore was not able (or not willing?) to ensure that software producers would port their products to the Amiga.

There were word processors, spread sheets and even desktop publishing packages for the Amiga. The problem was few people wanted to use them on an Amiga because it unpleasant to use them.

This is a limitation of color and 15khz displays of the day. The Mac got around this by not doing color. The PCs of 1985 had MDA.

It wasn't until VGA came out that you could get sharp color and sharp text by giving you 640x480. The Amiga got this ability too but not until 1990 when it was far too late.

See above. Certainly all these programs would look better on a higher resolution display and it would be much more comfortable to use. However I believe it can be demonstrated that the majority was run on a much lower spec machines in mid 80s (or even late 80s).
I agree with Bruce Abbott that the Amiga was physically incapable of running that software because it didn't have x86, ISA, BIOS, MS-DOS -- it just wasn't a PC :-(

In the mid 80s they were mostly doing their work on MDA devices which sacrificed color for clarity.

But by the late 80s, you still had MDAs and now there was VGA for doing high end graphics work.


The Amiga was just physically incapable of running this software because the Denise chip couldn't do 640x480 until 1990 and that turned out to be the "magic" minimum resolution for doing graphical work on. And ECS could only do 4 colors at that resolution to boot.

What would be the business case in 1989 for an Amiga for doing any type of work outside of work that explicitly needed NTSC or PAL signals?

That's why I think that, given the benefit of hindsight, the lowest hanging fruit that the Amiga team could have done to increase the Amiga's chances of becoming a major, long-term player in the computing market would have been for OCS to have supported "Productivity mode" out of the box (640x480 with 4 colors in 1985).

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Except it did. The mantra that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was well known even before they introduced the PC, and is the main reason for its success. By the time the Amiga arrived the question "but is it IBM compatible?" had become the death-knell for competing platforms.

I'm not sure where you get that.



When the Amiga shipped in 1985, the Commodore was the world's top selling computer with a market share not much smaller than all of the clones combined.

Note that the Mac has essentially no market share in 1985.

The Amiga in 1985 had a window of opportunity that closed around 1988.

By 1988 the Amiga had flicker-free 640x480 (A2000 with Microway flicker fixer), plus cool features like multiple screens that could be stacked and dragged, and a multitasking OS to make use of that feature. But it still couldn't run PC programs so...

This is like one of those arguments that point out that the Amiga could have had 2 button joysticks. The existence of a kludgy third-party solution, 3 years after the fact, is academic. Not to mention, if memory serves there were various artifacts and weirdness with flicker fixers at time. There is no magic bullet for 15khz monitors.

1988 according to Wikipedia - and an 8 bit ISA bus card. Can you imagine how slow that must have been?

I had a VGA card in 1989. I'm not sure how fast it needde to be to sharply display text and desktop publishing. I was using Corel Draw, Page Maker, Word Perfect (text mode but with great clarity) very well.

It wasn't great a games. My dad's Amiga was much better in that area. But I remember playing Balance of Power on Windows 2.1 versus the Amiga and it was a night and day difference.

In 1987 an Amiga 500 with monitor cost $850 for the whole thing.

And a Commodore 64 was even cheaper. I'm not sure what the point here is.

If I wanted to do word processing, spreadsheets, graphics design or desktop publishing the Amiga wasn't viable because the software physically couldn't do the resolutions because the Denise ship of the time couldn't handle displays > 15khz.

Cheaper and crappier. I remember trying to run Windows 3.1 on early 'SuperVGA' cards, and they were almost unusable.

I don't know. By 1993 I was running OS/2.

[Signman]

Yes Bruce, the Amiga is thriving today but only as a retro hobby. Some even add silly scan lines for 1980s realism. I have a Vampire and it brings my Amiga up to the level of maybe a 1995 windows machine. Fun but not forward looking.

Frogs, I used to often try using interlace mode and convince myself the flicker wasn’t that noticeable but to no avail.

[chb]

Originally Posted by Frogs

The Amiga screenshot you show is 640x512

Only the Prowrite one seems to be in that resolution, the spreadsheets are normal HiRes (look at the pixel size), just doubled in y for viewing in the browser.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Frogs

The Amiga screenshot you show is 640x512. I am not sure what Amiga that came from. I will say that if the Amiga in 1985 could have done 640x512 non-interlaced I think the Amiga would be with us today in a big way.

I would assume that lines were doubled vertically to maintain aspect ratio on today's monitors.

[Foebane]

I'm wondering what's with these threads about the PC vs Amiga and how PC operations are better, in the last six months?

There was that guy a couple of months ago who had the fancy name who kept saying the PC was just as capable as the Amiga back in the mid-'80s, who was ultimately banned for being trollish, and soon after, this Frogs guy joins up and starts another such debate.

Something's mighty suspicious here.

[Pyromania]

@Frogs

I want a Denise ship, was that a 1988 yacht? It sounds like fun with the exception of the diesel exhaust that must have been prevalent back then.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I'm wondering what's with these threads about the PC vs Amiga and how PC operations are better, in the last six months?

There was that guy a couple of months ago who had the fancy name who kept saying the PC was just as capable as the Amiga back in the mid-'80s, who was ultimately banned for being trollish, and soon after, this Frogs guy joins up and starts another such debate.

Something's mighty suspicious here.

That's a pretty ugly inference. Have I written something trollish? Do you have a link to one of these other threads?

I've certainly not suggested that the PC was even in the same league let alone just as capable as the Amiga in any universal sense. Only in the area for productivity software.

As a reminder, I have literally posted pictures of my Amigas in this thread.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

@Frogs

I want a Denise ship, was that a 1988 yacht? It sounds like fun with the exception of the diesel exhaust that must have been prevalent back then.

;-D I think it was a coal burner in those days!

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Frogs

That's a pretty ugly inference. Have I written something trollish? Do you have a link to one of these other threads?

I've certainly not suggested that the PC was even in the same league let alone just as capable as the Amiga in any universal sense. Only in the area for productivity software.

As a reminder, I have literally posted pictures of my Amigas in this thread.

Here's the link to the thread that caused problems, although it started off innocent enough: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=104213

Frogs, I'm not saying you're a troll, you're very civil, in fact, but this thread has been going on and on like the one I linked to did, and there was no need for it. In the end, this Vascillious guy started throwing his PC weight around and in the end, he got banned, then joined again as someone else who was quickly rumbled, and the thread had to be locked.

I just don't want that sort of unpleasantness to happen again.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Here's the link to the thread that caused problems, although it started off innocent enough: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=104213

Frogs, I'm not saying you're a troll, you're very civil, in fact, but this thread has been going on and on like the one I linked to did, and there was no need for it. In the end, this Vascillious guy started throwing his PC weight around and in the end, he got banned, then joined again as someone else who was quickly rumbled, and the thread had to be locked.

I just don't want that sort of unpleasantness to happen again.

If you don't want to participate in this thread, no one is forcing you. If you're not finding this discussion interesting, then just don't participate.

I really enjoy these kinds of discussions and I think others in this thread do as well.


Sure, it's about as practical as discussing whether Kirk was a better captain than Picard but at least here we can bring up lots of interesting history. Look at all the interesting insights Bruce and TEG and others have brought up.

I'll check out the thread you mentioned. But it would be absurd for someone to suggest that a PC, in 1985, was comparable to an Amiga in most areas when the Amiga had multitasking, a modern GUI, a modern file system, excellent audio, fast graphics performance, etc.

That's the origin of the thread after all, when the Amiga had everything I just mentioned, why didn't it dominate? I had always believed it was marketing. My Dad (and others in this thread) have made a pretty solid case that the situation was a lot more complicated.

But if you're getting worked, up just take a break from the thread.


Edit: Read that thread Foebane posted. Ick. The problem I see there is you have a thread where people are just trying to talk about the things the Amiga did uniquely well at the time and then have some guy come in and start crapping on the Amiga and making a bunch of pretty opinionated claims presented as facts and then insulting everyone. Not a good time.

Edit 2: I'm not sure how many people in this thread are running the Amiga via emulation versus what was available in 1985 so I took this screenshot.


My "main" Amiga is the 2000 (it's got a HD and accelerator and GoTek) and I keep the 1000 essentially unmodified. But the point of contention is whether the Amiga didn't take off as a compuer useful in business simply because it wasn't IBM compatible (mainly) or because the Amiga's Denise chipset didn't allow for sufficiently high resolution color to do productivity work (i.e. color + 15khz = lack of clarity). This picture doesn't really convey how low resolution/blurry the Amiga was compared to the Mac (which was monochrome) or an MDA (also monochrome) of the time. T

[Ernst Blofeld]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Have I written something trollish?

You have certainly passed beyond the limits of polite conversation with me.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Ernst Blofeld

You have certainly passed beyond the limits of polite conversation with me.

Ditto.

[Ernst Blofeld]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Ditto.

There is an entire thread here where you have deliberately misread, misinterpreted, misquoted, to suit your obvious agenda.

I regret getting sucked in.

[grond]

I have enjoyed this thread and didn't find it trollish. I found the "evidence" of the contemporary word processors and spreadsheet programs posted above very interesting. It sure shows that the Amiga could do or rather could have done what the PC could do at that time. The MacWriter looked quite good even though it wasted an awful lot of screen estate for other things than text.

I do remember quite well that in the 90s I found it very frustrating that you simply couldn't overcome the file format barrier across platforms. You could send people plain ASCII files and they probably could open it on their PC but too often people were even too computer-illiterate to manage to open a .txt in Word and not in the Windows editor. So they would reply "can you please send it to me as a .doc?" When this file format barrier was finally overcome, it was decades too late for any alternative platform.

I agree that by the time the A500/A2000 arrived and the Amiga really took off, OCS was already a limitation and the PC would soon progress beyond that point in the mass market (from the point of view of text editing, not 2D games). But looking at the example screenshots I do not believe that the screemode limitation was a major point in 1985-1987. It seems more plausible that the biggest single problem really was software incompatibility. If we had been able to open and save Word and Excel files using equivalent programs that offered the same set of features, the Amiga platform would have done much better and may have been sustainable at least for a few more years. The Mac could exchange files with DOS/Windows PCs and thus could survive.