5 ms·

Amiga – The Deathbed Vigil (1994) [video]

40 points by bane 11y ago

keithgabryelski 11y ago
Shameless comment: i'm in that video: https://youtu.be/jvJjFYHGTnU?t=34m29s https://youtu.be/jvJjFYHGTnU?t=34m29s The Amiga was a good product, the engineering team was solid: the love for the product did not translate into success.
- pavlov 11y ago
  The product found deserved success in Europe, where it was the #1 home computer for quite some time... If only the management at the American parent company hadn't been so clueless, they could have built on that.
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  Superior technology alone does not a successful product make. Plenty of inferior technologies have been wildly successful. Those are the lessons of the computer age. Hype, marketing, advertising, business savvy, and anti-competitive practices are often far more important.
makmanalp 11y ago
If you liked the video, looks like you can buy the video to support the author here, albeit a disc: https://www.createspace.com/358043 https://www.createspace.com/358043
orionblastar 11y ago
I had owned an Amiga 1000 and 500. It was better than the other computers at the time. Commodore made blunders in marketing and other things and the other companies had caught up once IBM made VGA and Creative Labs had that Sound Blaster card.
Paul_S 11y ago
It's amazing how something that is in the end just a computer company can be so uniformly loved (contrast with apple with equal parts of love & hate). I've never heard anyone rag on Amiga (other than to criticize its mismanagement). And I was an Atari owner and I still wish I hadn't missed out on what turned out to be such a landmark system.
- setpatchaddress 11y ago
  You don't get a lot of hate for any of the classic systems now. But, there were, and still are, valid criticisms of the Amiga. Bil Herd is on record in the first edition of the Bagnall book as being unimpressed with the Amiga hardware. I think there's still widespread agreement that they really fucked up Amiga's OS layer with AmigaDOS. And the initial Amiga UI has got to win the prize for ugliest 1.0 GUI ever. The Mac looked better, even though it was limited to B&W. Etc. All classic systems had their weak points.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "I think there's still widespread agreement that they really fucked up Amiga's OS layer with AmigaDOS." That's because it was a rush job. http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html > "And the initial Amiga UI has got to win the prize for ugliest 1.0 GUI ever." That's highly subjective. Many users (myself included) see that early 1.x interface as iconic. Here's another example of someone who probably liked it (as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery): https://www.chromeexperiments.com/experiment/chiptunecom-gui https://www.chromeexperiments.com/experiment/chiptunecom-gui One design issue with Amigas was lack of support for chunky graphics modes. I remember reading an interview with Jay Miner where he implied he'd have supported chunky graphics (alongside planar graphics) if he'd considered how much cheaper RAM would become.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Meanwhile, people wanting a mix of nostalgia and pragmatism still have MorphOS to enjoy: http://www.morphos-team.net/intro http://www.morphos-team.net/intro I wasn't an Amiga owner but still might get a hold of it. Looks nice.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Yeah, MorphOS is meant to be pretty decent, it's definitely worth a go, especially if you've got a compatible PPC Mac lying around (IIRC the demo version of MorphOS is free).
SwellJoe 11y ago
I'm confused by some of the model discussion in the text overlays in this. It mentions the A3000 and A4000 and describes them in ways that don't seem to match the actual products. It describes the A3000 as the first AA-based (AA was called AGA by the time it went to market) machine that was never released, but the Amiga 3000 was actually an ECS-based machine with a 68020 or 68030 CPU, a hard disk, and a built-in flicker fixer for solid VGA output. It did reach market and sold modestly. I owned one. It could be described as slapped together from Amiga 2000 parts, I guess. The A4000 is described as slapped together from A3000 parts, but it was actually the first AGA-based machine (followed by the 1200), with the whole new chipset and architecture, and a 68030 or 68040 CPU. On another front, the CD32, at the time, seemed like such a ridiculous distraction to me, and stories at the time seemed to indicated Commodore lost money on the massive bet they made on it. But, in everything I've read, the company really bet hard on it, and many folks who tell the story from inside seem to believe the CD32 was a great idea and maybe should have been pushed even harder. I don't know what to think of it. I loved my Amigas, and it was really heartbreaking to see Commodore fail so spectacularly, and seemingly because of extremely poor management. Reading the article yesterday about the various post-Tramiel CEOs was really interesting, and a story I'd never seen in its entirety. I mostly knew about the failures. Gould was well-known and well-hated at the time, the others and their various failings were less famous/infamous.
- relaxitup 11y ago
  Can you provide a link to the article about the post-Tramiel Commodore CEO's? Thanks.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock-lobster/ http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock-lob... It's pretty good, and definitely had a lot of business details I didn't know, like the fact that Rattigan actually had the company on a recovery path before Gould ousted him.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "I'm confused by some of the model discussion in the text overlays in this. It mentions the A3000 and A4000 and describes them in ways that don't seem to match the actual products." Knowing about the unreleased A3000+ may help clear up the confusion: http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/prototypes/a3000plus.html http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/prototypes/a3000plus.html Regarding the CD32, it was basically an A1200 with a CD drive. I think it had one CD32-only custom chip, I forget what it was called. In any case, it was possible to convert a CD32 into an A1200. The A1200 was a popular machine, I'm sure the CD32 would've lasted a little longer if Commodore didn't close, even if it was just lived on as a living room version of a desktop Amiga rather than as a pure games machine. As an aside, I believe the first GTA game was originally being developed for the Amiga, but the Amiga version was dropped after Commodore went bust. If the CD32 needed a 'killer app', it may have found it in GTA. That said, both the CD32 and the A1200 were a couple of years late IMO. I remember reading something from Dave Haynie saying that AGA could've been ready in 1990. If the CD32 was competing with the SNES and MegaDrive instead of the Saturn and PlayStation, I suspect it would've been a lot more successful. EDIT: My memory may have mangled this Haynie quote (different chipset, different year: http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/acutiator.html http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/acutiator.html I messed up on the quote, but considering OCS was released in 1985, 1990 for AGA doesn't seem too much of a stretch.
redcalx 11y ago
Still got three A500s in the garage. One was recently saved from going into landfill and is in pristine condition. Still got the original 'Simpsons' packaging and discs.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
justanother 11y ago
The beating that we Apple IIgs owners took in the BBS scene from the Amigans in the early 1990s was downright brutal. It gives me no particular pleasure to note that the Amigans suffered approximately the same fate as we did (horrible marketing, unnecessary obsolescence). Either one of our machines would have been more fun than what we ended up with, no?
- takeda 11y ago
  True, although you must agree, that Amigas were slightly better. ducks

40 points by bane 11y ago

Shameless comment: i'm in that video: https://youtu.be/jvJjFYHGTnU?t=34m29s https://youtu.be/jvJjFYHGTnU?t=34m29s The Amiga was a good product, the engineering team was solid: the love for the product did not translate into success.

pavlov 11y ago
The product found deserved success in Europe, where it was the #1 home computer for quite some time... If only the management at the American parent company hadn't been so clueless, they could have built on that.
pmoriarty 11y ago
Superior technology alone does not a successful product make. Plenty of inferior technologies have been wildly successful. Those are the lessons of the computer age. Hype, marketing, advertising, business savvy, and anti-competitive practices are often far more important.

makmanalp 11y ago

If you liked the video, looks like you can buy the video to support the author here, albeit a disc: https://www.createspace.com/358043 https://www.createspace.com/358043

orionblastar 11y ago

I had owned an Amiga 1000 and 500. It was better than the other computers at the time. Commodore made blunders in marketing and other things and the other companies had caught up once IBM made VGA and Creative Labs had that Sound Blaster card.

Paul_S 11y ago

It's amazing how something that is in the end just a computer company can be so uniformly loved (contrast with apple with equal parts of love & hate). I've never heard anyone rag on Amiga (other than to criticize its mismanagement). And I was an Atari owner and I still wish I hadn't missed out on what turned out to be such a landmark system.

setpatchaddress 11y ago
You don't get a lot of hate for any of the classic systems now. But, there were, and still are, valid criticisms of the Amiga. Bil Herd is on record in the first edition of the Bagnall book as being unimpressed with the Amiga hardware. I think there's still widespread agreement that they really fucked up Amiga's OS layer with AmigaDOS. And the initial Amiga UI has got to win the prize for ugliest 1.0 GUI ever. The Mac looked better, even though it was limited to B&W. Etc. All classic systems had their weak points.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "I think there's still widespread agreement that they really fucked up Amiga's OS layer with AmigaDOS." That's because it was a rush job. http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html > "And the initial Amiga UI has got to win the prize for ugliest 1.0 GUI ever." That's highly subjective. Many users (myself included) see that early 1.x interface as iconic. Here's another example of someone who probably liked it (as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery): https://www.chromeexperiments.com/experiment/chiptunecom-gui https://www.chromeexperiments.com/experiment/chiptunecom-gui One design issue with Amigas was lack of support for chunky graphics modes. I remember reading an interview with Jay Miner where he implied he'd have supported chunky graphics (alongside planar graphics) if he'd considered how much cheaper RAM would become.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Meanwhile, people wanting a mix of nostalgia and pragmatism still have MorphOS to enjoy: http://www.morphos-team.net/intro http://www.morphos-team.net/intro I wasn't an Amiga owner but still might get a hold of it. Looks nice.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Yeah, MorphOS is meant to be pretty decent, it's definitely worth a go, especially if you've got a compatible PPC Mac lying around (IIRC the demo version of MorphOS is free).

SwellJoe 11y ago

I'm confused by some of the model discussion in the text overlays in this. It mentions the A3000 and A4000 and describes them in ways that don't seem to match the actual products. It describes the A3000 as the first AA-based (AA was called AGA by the time it went to market) machine that was never released, but the Amiga 3000 was actually an ECS-based machine with a 68020 or 68030 CPU, a hard disk, and a built-in flicker fixer for solid VGA output. It did reach market and sold modestly. I owned one. It could be described as slapped together from Amiga 2000 parts, I guess. The A4000 is described as slapped together from A3000 parts, but it was actually the first AGA-based machine (followed by the 1200), with the whole new chipset and architecture, and a 68030 or 68040 CPU. On another front, the CD32, at the time, seemed like such a ridiculous distraction to me, and stories at the time seemed to indicated Commodore lost money on the massive bet they made on it. But, in everything I've read, the company really bet hard on it, and many folks who tell the story from inside seem to believe the CD32 was a great idea and maybe should have been pushed even harder. I don't know what to think of it. I loved my Amigas, and it was really heartbreaking to see Commodore fail so spectacularly, and seemingly because of extremely poor management. Reading the article yesterday about the various post-Tramiel CEOs was really interesting, and a story I'd never seen in its entirety. I mostly knew about the failures. Gould was well-known and well-hated at the time, the others and their various failings were less famous/infamous.

relaxitup 11y ago
Can you provide a link to the article about the post-Tramiel Commodore CEO's? Thanks.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock-lobster/ http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock-lob... It's pretty good, and definitely had a lot of business details I didn't know, like the fact that Rattigan actually had the company on a recovery path before Gould ousted him.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "I'm confused by some of the model discussion in the text overlays in this. It mentions the A3000 and A4000 and describes them in ways that don't seem to match the actual products." Knowing about the unreleased A3000+ may help clear up the confusion: http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/prototypes/a3000plus.html http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/prototypes/a3000plus.html Regarding the CD32, it was basically an A1200 with a CD drive. I think it had one CD32-only custom chip, I forget what it was called. In any case, it was possible to convert a CD32 into an A1200. The A1200 was a popular machine, I'm sure the CD32 would've lasted a little longer if Commodore didn't close, even if it was just lived on as a living room version of a desktop Amiga rather than as a pure games machine. As an aside, I believe the first GTA game was originally being developed for the Amiga, but the Amiga version was dropped after Commodore went bust. If the CD32 needed a 'killer app', it may have found it in GTA. That said, both the CD32 and the A1200 were a couple of years late IMO. I remember reading something from Dave Haynie saying that AGA could've been ready in 1990. If the CD32 was competing with the SNES and MegaDrive instead of the Saturn and PlayStation, I suspect it would've been a lot more successful. EDIT: My memory may have mangled this Haynie quote (different chipset, different year: http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/acutiator.html http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/acutiator.html I messed up on the quote, but considering OCS was released in 1985, 1990 for AGA doesn't seem too much of a stretch.

redcalx 11y ago

Still got three A500s in the garage. One was recently saved from going into landfill and is in pristine condition. Still got the original 'Simpsons' packaging and discs.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

justanother 11y ago

The beating that we Apple IIgs owners took in the BBS scene from the Amigans in the early 1990s was downright brutal. It gives me no particular pleasure to note that the Amigans suffered approximately the same fate as we did (horrible marketing, unnecessary obsolescence). Either one of our machines would have been more fun than what we ended up with, no?

takeda 11y ago
True, although you must agree, that Amigas were slightly better. ducks