3 ms·

Macs seemed quite cool at the time, but I never looked at the price. Considering Amigas and Acorn Archimedes were available for a lot less, I now just can't see

Macs seemed quite cool at the time, but I never looked at the price. Considering Amigas and Acorn Archimedes were available for a lot less, I now just can't see what made people buy Macs then. The SE/30 was over US$4,000.00!

npunt 8y ago
Yeah they were super expensive at MSRP. They did get heavily discounted after launch though, unlike today's Apple products. And the software available for Macs was really what allowed them to price the way they did.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I suspect most of them were being bought by businesses. At the time I was selling QMS PostScript printers (for £5000+ each) into publishers and marketing agencies. They were all running Pagemaker and Illustrator.
Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
It's hard to remember exactly how far ahead the Mac UI was back then. I had a series of Amstrad 8-bits at home and had used Amigas and Arcs extensively at school, but on going to university in 1992, I was determined to buy my first Mac (a IIsi). It was just so much more enjoyable and creative to work with than anything else out there - not just the OS but the care taken over third-party software.
gaius 8y ago
The Archimedes never took off unfortunately. If it had been the “standard” PC we would be a decade ahead in computing now, maybe more
kilo_bravo_3 8y ago
The OS. I love Amigas. I still have two: a 1000 and a 2000HD. The OS, yes even System 6, was more user-friendly than Workbench. It also looked better. Workbench was made to be compatible with televisions and it shows. Being made with TV output in mind may have helped it find a niche in multimedia but niches are risky sectors to run businesses in. I don’t think native networking, of any kind whatsoever, was supplied with AmigaOS until version 3. By then Commodore was on its deathbed. In 1985 you could buy a few Macintoshes, a LaserWriter, some cables, and one large external hard disk drive and someone who had never, ever, touched a computer before could set up multiple desktop publishing workstations, a shared networked printer, and a file server. This was impossible on the Amiga, and PCs for that matter.

npunt 8y ago

Yeah they were super expensive at MSRP. They did get heavily discounted after launch though, unlike today's Apple products. And the software available for Macs was really what allowed them to price the way they did.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I suspect most of them were being bought by businesses. At the time I was selling QMS PostScript printers (for £5000+ each) into publishers and marketing agencies. They were all running Pagemaker and Illustrator.

Doctor_Fegg 8y ago

It's hard to remember exactly how far ahead the Mac UI was back then. I had a series of Amstrad 8-bits at home and had used Amigas and Arcs extensively at school, but on going to university in 1992, I was determined to buy my first Mac (a IIsi). It was just so much more enjoyable and creative to work with than anything else out there - not just the OS but the care taken over third-party software.

gaius 8y ago

The Archimedes never took off unfortunately. If it had been the “standard” PC we would be a decade ahead in computing now, maybe more

kilo_bravo_3 8y ago

The OS. I love Amigas. I still have two: a 1000 and a 2000HD. The OS, yes even System 6, was more user-friendly than Workbench. It also looked better. Workbench was made to be compatible with televisions and it shows. Being made with TV output in mind may have helped it find a niche in multimedia but niches are risky sectors to run businesses in. I don’t think native networking, of any kind whatsoever, was supplied with AmigaOS until version 3. By then Commodore was on its deathbed. In 1985 you could buy a few Macintoshes, a LaserWriter, some cables, and one large external hard disk drive and someone who had never, ever, touched a computer before could set up multiple desktop publishing workstations, a shared networked printer, and a file server. This was impossible on the Amiga, and PCs for that matter.