3 ms·

so I've got a (maybe silly, but still) question: why Amiga wasn't successful to this day as a solid competitor to PCs and Macs?

ubermonkey 9y ago
Bad marketing is a big part of it. Amiga fans will also cite poor management choices in general, though I don't know anything about that. By the time they were introduced, though, the PC and Mac were already in the market. The PC was being adopted into offices by then, so it's also possible that the ironclad rep (at the time!) of IBM meant that the PC was already locked into a path to dominance, but that leaves open the question of why the Amiga didn't manage to survive in homes or education.
- amiga-workbench 9y ago
  >but that leaves open the question of why the Amiga didn't manage to survive in homes or education. Compatibility mainly, being able to take your work home and continue doing it. There were a few software 8086 emulators for the Amiga that could run DOS and a few productivity applications, and there was a sidecar for the A1000 which had a full blown PC & 5.25" floppy drive in it for compatibility.
  - _mrmnmly 9y ago
    thank You all for Your responses - it turned out an interesting question for me which I plan to dive deeper into during following weekend :)
bobochan 9y ago
This is my memory of it, albeit from a long time ago. The retail market for personal computers was very different in the mid to late 80s. I remember going to Ferranti-Dege, a camera store in Harvard Square, to buy an Apple ][+ when they first came out, and then upgraded to an Apple //e a few years later at the Harvard Coop. Buying computers and accessories like floppy disks meant going to specialized, usually small retailers. Commodore saw an opportunity to market their very inexpensive VIC-20, and then Commodore 64, through a much broader range of stores. You started seeing VIC-20s at Toys R Us and other big chain stores. The mom & pop computer stores could not compete on price with the bigger stores, so they stopped selling Commodore machines. The Amiga was a serious computer when it came out, and it was too high end for toy stores, etc. to carry. With the bridges burned to the other distribution channels (at least in the US) the average shopper never saw an Amiga on the shelf. Mind you, this was still in an era when Texas Instruments was selling the TI-99/4A and Atari was selling the 400 and 800, so there were other options on the shelves.

ubermonkey 9y ago

Bad marketing is a big part of it. Amiga fans will also cite poor management choices in general, though I don't know anything about that. By the time they were introduced, though, the PC and Mac were already in the market. The PC was being adopted into offices by then, so it's also possible that the ironclad rep (at the time!) of IBM meant that the PC was already locked into a path to dominance, but that leaves open the question of why the Amiga didn't manage to survive in homes or education.

amiga-workbench 9y ago
>but that leaves open the question of why the Amiga didn't manage to survive in homes or education. Compatibility mainly, being able to take your work home and continue doing it. There were a few software 8086 emulators for the Amiga that could run DOS and a few productivity applications, and there was a sidecar for the A1000 which had a full blown PC & 5.25" floppy drive in it for compatibility.
- _mrmnmly 9y ago
  thank You all for Your responses - it turned out an interesting question for me which I plan to dive deeper into during following weekend :)

bobochan 9y ago

This is my memory of it, albeit from a long time ago. The retail market for personal computers was very different in the mid to late 80s. I remember going to Ferranti-Dege, a camera store in Harvard Square, to buy an Apple ][+ when they first came out, and then upgraded to an Apple //e a few years later at the Harvard Coop. Buying computers and accessories like floppy disks meant going to specialized, usually small retailers. Commodore saw an opportunity to market their very inexpensive VIC-20, and then Commodore 64, through a much broader range of stores. You started seeing VIC-20s at Toys R Us and other big chain stores. The mom & pop computer stores could not compete on price with the bigger stores, so they stopped selling Commodore machines. The Amiga was a serious computer when it came out, and it was too high end for toy stores, etc. to carry. With the bridges burned to the other distribution channels (at least in the US) the average shopper never saw an Amiga on the shelf. Mind you, this was still in an era when Texas Instruments was selling the TI-99/4A and Atari was selling the 400 and 800, so there were other options on the shelves.