Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive

[Pyromania]

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.

[Frogs]

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:

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by grond

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.

Preach it! I remember in 1992/93 proposing my services as freelance illustrator to some print services and they told me if i had no mac no way to work with them!
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!

[Foebane]

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!

[Frogs]

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:

[Signman]

Originally Posted by Ernst Blofeld

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

I would hate to see how you handle political or religious observations in your life. Echo chambers are boring.

[Signman]

Originally Posted by Frogs

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:

Timeless.

[Ernst Blofeld]

Originally Posted by Signman

I would hate to see how you handle political or religious observations in your life. Echo chambers are boring.

What the hell are you on about?

[Signman]

Originally Posted by Ernst Blofeld

What the hell are you on about?

English not your first language? Seriously.

[Photon]

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.

[malko]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Preach it! I remember in 1992/93 proposing my services as freelance illustrator to some print services and they told me if i had no mac no way to work with them!
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!

I always saw it as made on purpose. You know: regions for DVD, regions for consoles/games, thus PC data format for PC, Mac data format for Mac. As the saying goes : divide and conquer.
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'...

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Photon

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.

Widely popular / thriving / etc. are all subjective judgements.

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.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by grond

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.

No, there are lots of games that benefit from a faster CPU.

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.

4 colours is not even useful for many business purposes, let alone much else. Eg. most pie charts have more colours than that.

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.

I'm not saying AGA shouldn't have included the ECS features, I'm saying ECS itself, as a standalone thing, was not a worthwhile upgrade. Productivity mode could certainly have been omitted from AGA though, as there is no reason for anyone to want to use it on an AGA system.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Minuous

4 colours is not even useful for many business purposes, let alone much else. Eg. most pie charts have more colours than that.

That's what stipple and dither patterns are for, to simulate other colours. Ever seen those?

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Productivity mode could certainly have been omitted from AGA though, as there is no reason for anyone to want to use it on an AGA system.

Productivity mode isn't a distinct feature that can be included or removed in isolation - it's just a monitor driver that uses the programmable scanrates to create a VGA-like 640x480 screenmode. They could certainly have omitted the monitor driver but that wouldn't have saved any silicon!


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.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Minuous

4 colours is not even useful for many business purposes, let alone much else. Eg. most pie charts have more colours than that.

Agreed, look at the screenshots of NextStep on toastytech, it really is a work of class but it cost $$$$,

Originally Posted by Minuous

I'm not saying AGA shouldn't have included the ECS features, I'm saying ECS itself, as a standalone thing, was not a worthwhile upgrade. Productivity mode could certainly have been omitted from AGA though, as there is no reason for anyone to want to use it on an AGA system.

When I do plug in my A1200 I now use the productivity modes because I don't have a Scan doubler for the LCD screens or a 1942 monitor so I use DBLNTSC Mode, I find 640x400 easier on the eyes then Productivity 640x480.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Given that in 1985 the Amiga had a big edge in:

1. Multitasking.

A gimmick. Certainly not worth giving up IBM compatibility for!

2. Audio

4 channels of PCM sound? Total overkill. Other computers have enough audio to do the job (the occasional beep to tell you something is happening).

3. On-screen animation

What, we are all supposed to be cartoonists now?

4. Modern file system concepts

Nobody needs more than 8 letters plus a 3 letter extension. "You MUST insert volume xxx"? Don't tell me what to do! And what's with this '/' as a separator? They should have used the standard '\'!

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)

CGA colors should be enough for anyone. Graphics are much sharper in monochrome on a tiny 9 inch screen!

6. Modern 3.5 inch floppy drive that was quite fast

What, no 5-1/4" floppy? And I heard they use a strange format too!

7. First modern GUI (better than Mac imo)

GUI? GUI??? We don't have any GUI. We don't need any stinking GUI!

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?

Mac sales paled in comparison to PCs, and Apple nearly went bankrupt in 1996. Modern Macs have virtually nothing in common with the original Mac, which really didn't survive.

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.

Yes various factors were involved, but it didn't take all of them to seal the Amiga's fate. Just B by itself was enough, and would have needed a herculean effort by Commodore to overcome. But when Commodore bought Amiga Inc. they were not in good shape financially or organizationally. Considering their handicaps and the unfinished state of the Amiga when they acquired it, I think they did quite well to get it out within a year. They then took 2 years to finish the OS, which is line with industry expectations (average time for Microsoft to produce a new version of Windows was 2-3 years).

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...

[Foebane]

@Bruce Abbott (post #297):

I hope to GOD you're being sarcastic in that first half?

[coder76]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

Productivity mode isn't a distinct feature that can be included or removed in isolation - it's just a monitor driver that uses the programmable scanrates to create a VGA-like 640x480 screenmode. They could certainly have omitted the monitor driver but that wouldn't have saved any silicon!


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.

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.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Minuous

No, there are lots of games that benefit from a faster CPU.

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.

4 colours is not even useful for many business purposes, let alone much else. Eg. most pie charts have more colours than that.

Have a look at the examples for contemporary PC programs above. No problem making a pie chart with just four colours. Even more so since with an Amiga you could easily switch to a 15 kHz mode for displaying the pie chart. You don't usually stare at a pie chart for hours but you probably do so while editing the underlying spreadsheet.

I'm not saying AGA shouldn't have included the ECS features, I'm saying ECS itself, as a standalone thing, was not a worthwhile upgrade. Productivity mode could certainly have been omitted from AGA though, as there is no reason for anyone to want to use it on an AGA system.

Well, if that is your point of view, I disagree with it. Flickerfree albeit low-colour hires modes certainly were a very valuable thing even if we low-end hobbyist users didn't ever use them.