17 March 2021, 19:05 | #281 |
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I produced a lot of professional documents, flyers, newsletters, brochures using PageStream way back in 1989-1993. While I didn’t like working in flickering High-res interlace I have to admit the Amiga was up to the job of outputting professional level business documents. You just had to wear sunglasses to minimize the flicker.
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17 March 2021, 19:42 | #282 |
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Yea, screenshots don't really do it because we're still looking at them from a modern monitor.
So I just took a picture of the screen and looking at it here I think "Hey that's not bad". This is Amiga WB 3.1 so better Topaz but if you see it on the actual screen it's a different story. The difference in quality between the 1084 and 1942 monitors is pretty big too. Here is Kind Words at 640x200 When looking at a screenshot on a modern screen everything is quite a bit more clear. That said, heck, one wonders if the Amiga had simply come with better fonts how much difference that would have made. The Amiga 1.1/1.2 Topaz was painful. Just for fun: |
17 March 2021, 19:43 | #283 | |
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And this beside i was able to save in dos disks vector drawings in eps and AI88 format readable by a mac (with some type/creator tinkering) - but this people never explored interoperability, was simply not in their head that different machines could communicate! |
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17 March 2021, 19:47 | #284 |
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I didn't have a 1084 monitor myself, but the computer shop I got my Amiga from had a few, and I used to like visiting the place, bringing my floppies and seeing my stuff from a better quality than I ever could from my bulky TV. Fun times!
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17 March 2021, 19:51 | #285 |
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Another thing the Amiga had going for it is how much better it looked.
Look how primitive the PC looked: 5.25 floppies. Heck, my C-64 went to a 1581 as soon as I could. Compare that to the Amiga: Last edited by Frogs; 17 March 2021 at 19:59. |
17 March 2021, 19:56 | #286 |
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17 March 2021, 19:57 | #287 |
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17 March 2021, 20:22 | #288 |
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17 March 2021, 21:06 | #289 |
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17 March 2021, 21:43 | #290 |
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I've left the thread alone a few weeks, because the title claim is false.
The Amiga was widely popular. You can check this objectively for yourself without needing various arguments. Compare units sold, year by year from the introduction of a model, per company. Commodore-Amiga compares favorably to its competitors - there are simply no figures to support the idea that it didn't sell well. It could do 80 columns. This takes care of arguments from the stuck-in-the-old crowd. These two together in my mind dispenses with the thread, even though many seem keen to not answer on-topic and to present various theories why "the PC" kept growing. This is the real mystery, although off-topic. |
17 March 2021, 21:53 | #291 | |
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Even MS didn't manage to develop a descent Office suite for Mac (don't know if today office for Mac is OK ? ). Actually even on PC a 'not too complicated' excel sheet containing multiple formulas has issues when you share it and open it with a PC having a different 'locale'... |
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17 March 2021, 22:28 | #292 | |
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I don't think anyone in this thread suggested that the Amiga couldn't do 80 columns. The fundamental point of discussion, to boil it down to its most basic elements: Given that in 1985 the Amiga had a big edge in: 1. Multitasking. 2. Audio 3. On-screen animation 4. Modern file system concepts 5. On-screen graphics capability (not just HAM mode but even 320x200 with 32 colors far beyond the 4 color CGA or monochrome of the Macs) 6. Modern 3.5 inch floppy drive that was quite fast 7. First modern GUI (better than Mac imo) Then WHY did the Amiga, rather than say the Mac, not thrive where thrive means ship millions of units annually and survive as a high volume production machine to this day? The community has come up with a number of hypothesis that we have debated/agreed on to varying degrees: A. Commodore management sucked and couldn't market it. B. The PC (x86) had already won and there was no room for an alternative. C. The Amiga's requirement to do color without high resolution prevented most classes of productivity software from being viable. D. Commodore failed to establish an effective sales channel (so even if it might have thrived as a high end home computer, you couldn't buy it at Sears or K-mart like you could the C-64). E. It was always meant as a video game machine / hobbyist computer and therefore its lifespan was tied to the lifespan of consoles and simply suffered the same fate as say the Sega dreamcast. F. Other. That's an oversimplification by far but that seems to be what we've been discussing back and forth. And I think most would agree it's not one single answer but rather a combination. |
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17 March 2021, 22:57 | #293 | |||
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17 March 2021, 23:34 | #294 |
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17 March 2021, 23:55 | #295 | |
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And that, I guess, is the point; programmable scanrates and the 28MHz pixel clock are ECS features, not AGA features. All AGA brought to the table was two extra bitplanes, more colour registers, wider sprites and the increased RAM bandwidth needed to run them. |
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18 March 2021, 01:11 | #296 | ||
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18 March 2021, 02:15 | #297 | ||||||||
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A gimmick. Certainly not worth giving up IBM compatibility for!
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Commodore did fall down in marketing the A1000, but they had some good reasons for that:- 1. The C64 was still selling very well, so promoting the Amiga as a gaming machine would have meant competing against themselves. 2. The A1000 was really only an introductory model to attract developers and early adopters, not a polished product suitable the masses. 3. They planned to have other models ready soon, so A1000 sales weren't that important. 4. The PC was squashing all the competition in the US. Commodore figured they would have to make inroads into that market, but they couldn't do it with what they had. Point C has been debunked numerous times. IBM and Mac users weren't going to switch to Amiga just because we had > 256 flicker free lines now (since 1988), and they didn't. Just like they didn't switch to the Atari ST which had it from day one. Point D is debatable. I don't know about the US market, but here in New Zealand selling computers through department stores rather than specialist computer shops did not turn out that well. Point E is a valid one - but only in hindsight. Amiga users were constantly complaining about why didn't Commodore do this or that to make the Amiga more attractive to business users, and unfortunately Commodore listened when they should have just concentrated on making a it an even better hobbyist computer. All that time and money wasted trying to make the Amiga somewhat IBM compatible (Sidecar for the A1000, bridgeboards and wasted ISA bus space in the A2000), their attempt to break into the Unix workstation market with the A3000, and a 'productivity' mode that nobody would use. If Commodore had ignored users consumed by PC envy and consulted a good crystal ball they might have seen that games and entertainment were the future. But they (and we) were not to know. If Commodore had pushed the Amiga as the ultimate hobbyist computer they might have done better - or then again they might not. I bet that if any one of us was put in charge we would have screwed up in one way or another. We like to think that we are all technological gurus and marketing geniuses, but in reality... |
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18 March 2021, 06:35 | #298 |
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@Bruce Abbott (post #297):
I hope to GOD you're being sarcastic in that first half? |
18 March 2021, 07:57 | #299 | |
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The ECS VGA-like screenmode of 640x480 was painfully slow at the maximum 4 colors, because there was not really enough bandwidth for bitplane data in the OCS/ECS chipset for such screenmodes. AGA made a 4 or 16 colors 640x480 VGA screen actually usable for the first time, thanks to the 4x increase in bitplane bandwidth. So no, the ECS was not good enough for professional users who wanted better screen resolution. |
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18 March 2021, 10:03 | #300 | ||
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And they simply wouldn't exist for the Amiga if Commodore hadn't aimed for high-margin sales with the A3000. After the A3000 flopped saleswise, Commodore continued to make ECS-Amigas again with only a 7 MHz 68000 for another two years. If they had believed that the Amiga games platform would benefit from faster CPUs, they would already have chosen the 68020 they eventually chose when AGA made a 32bit CPU inevitable. ECS with a 32bit bus of the A3000 as opposed to the 16bit bus of the A500+ and the A600 was a significant upgrade.
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