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The Amiga lost the war for completely different reasons. The competition at the time was MS-DOS 4 or 5, windows 2 (and 3.0) were still a toy — and they had comp
by beagle3 6y ago
The Amiga lost the war for completely different reasons. The competition at the time was MS-DOS 4 or 5, windows 2 (and 3.0) were still a toy — and they had compatibility problems.
BeOS had no chance to be evaluated on its own merits because by that time Microsoft had already applied anticompetitive and illegal leverage on PC vendors - for which they were convicted and paid a hefty fine (which was likely a calculated and very successful investment, all things considered).
The Amiga wasn’t even expensive for what it gave: it was significantly cheaper than a PC or Mac with comparable performance, and even had decently fast PC emulation and ran Mac software faster than the Mac.
It did not have a cheap “entry level” model, though, which was one big problem. The other (not unrelated) problem was incredible incompetence among Commodore management.
- icedchai 6y agoDo you not consider the A500 cheap? I believe you they were going for around $600 in late 80’s money, at least in the US. This wasn’t Atari ST cheap but still not a bad deal.
- beagle3 6y agoA starter no-brand beige box was always cheaper. And iirc, for a long time you couldn’t get an el-cheapo monochrome monitor for the Amiga - only color or TV, which was ok for the C64-upgraders but not for the PC competition.
- icedchai 6y agoTrue. PC clones were always cheaper. You could use a composite monitor on the A500/2000. It was only in monochrome. I did that for the first couple months I had my A500.
- beagle3 6y agoAround me, they still cost twice as much as a CGA or Hercules (or even dual) monochrome monitor. The starter Amiga cost twice the starter PC until 1993 or so, and by then the war was lost. It was too expensive for a middle class family where I lived.