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I became an Amiga user starting in the mid-1980s and my recollection was that even by the time of the introduction of the 500 and 2000 (my Amiga 2000 is still s

I became an Amiga user starting in the mid-1980s and my recollection was that even by the time of the introduction of the 500 and 2000 (my Amiga 2000 is still sitting downstairs in the basement on a shelf next to my 1000) Amiga was already well behind the PC and Macintosh in terms of users by the mid-to-late 80s. It was a hobby programmer's platform because it had become a hobby. Like the Saab of computers (I also owned a Saab). Somewhere to play games and write demos in the evening after having spent all day at work in MPW or Turbo Pascal. It is impossible to know, due to obfuscation and (honestly) lying, how many Amigas were ever sold but it was somewhere between 3-7 million in total for all models worldwide from birth to death. Ahoy tried to figure it out- Nobody Knows How Many Amigas Commodore Sold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXCWYKSjHnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXCWYKSjHnI The Amiga's adoring fans were/are extremely vocal, but comparatively few in numbers. Users often also had to become hobby programmers because the market was so small and they had to write their own programs to implement software that was unavailable on the platform- this was the case with me. In the US, at least. Europe, Germany in particular, was probably a different story. I imagine BeOS (Damn, I'm a winner in picking niche OSes) had the highest ever percentage of hobby programmers because EVERYBODY other than GoBe was a hobbyist on that platform.

sillywalk 2y ago
> EVERYBODY other than GoBe was a hobbyist on that platform. Actually, there is one company still around called Tune Tracker Systems[0]. They make radio-automation software, starting out on BeOS and are now on Haiku. [0] https://www.tunetrackersystems.com https://www.tunetrackersystems.com
compsciphd 2y ago
3-7 million is somewhat proportional to the # of TI 99/4a (my first computer) which sold 2.5Million or so, but many of those were probably on the fire sale, and at least some of them probably went to backup parts for people that already had it. While the 99/4a is remembered somewhat fondly by those who had it (speech synthesizer, expansion modules for p-code, forth and others), it wasn't a system that had a huge amount of development done for it, and died a pretty quick death.
bradac56 1y ago
"In the US, at least. Europe, Germany in particular, was probably a different story." Not really I was in the army back then stationed in Germany and had a buddy that was clinically insane over his Amiga's. Yes I agree the graphics was forking amazing at least a decade maybe two ahead of it's time but you couldn't play Warlord or Wizardry on it so he used my beige PC clone running Dr. Doss They had the same problem in Europe not enough sales but the owners was bat-shit crazy and wrote a lot of crazy little programs to make them semi-functional. Amiga died When Commodore bought it for the Lorraine/Sage IV code base.

sillywalk 2y ago

> EVERYBODY other than GoBe was a hobbyist on that platform. Actually, there is one company still around called Tune Tracker Systems[0]. They make radio-automation software, starting out on BeOS and are now on Haiku. [0] https://www.tunetrackersystems.com https://www.tunetrackersystems.com

compsciphd 2y ago

3-7 million is somewhat proportional to the # of TI 99/4a (my first computer) which sold 2.5Million or so, but many of those were probably on the fire sale, and at least some of them probably went to backup parts for people that already had it. While the 99/4a is remembered somewhat fondly by those who had it (speech synthesizer, expansion modules for p-code, forth and others), it wasn't a system that had a huge amount of development done for it, and died a pretty quick death.

bradac56 1y ago

"In the US, at least. Europe, Germany in particular, was probably a different story." Not really I was in the army back then stationed in Germany and had a buddy that was clinically insane over his Amiga's. Yes I agree the graphics was forking amazing at least a decade maybe two ahead of it's time but you couldn't play Warlord or Wizardry on it so he used my beige PC clone running Dr. Doss They had the same problem in Europe not enough sales but the owners was bat-shit crazy and wrote a lot of crazy little programs to make them semi-functional. Amiga died When Commodore bought it for the Lorraine/Sage IV code base.