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I don't think we negotiate the same phenomenon. You seem to describe the harmless, almost romantic indulgences of nostalgics. I talk about the bizarre, often en

I don't think we negotiate the same phenomenon. You seem to describe the harmless, almost romantic indulgences of nostalgics. I talk about the bizarre, often enough toxic distorsions of a certain breed of user, who still fights, after all these years, their Platform War. The sort of fan who blames "the PC" for the "ills of the industry". Anyway, off to some specifics: > "The strength of the PC during this time was it's rapidly expanding library of business software applications and hardware expansion options in the form of add-in cards [...]". A standardized general-purpose computing platform "for the future". Exactly what spoke to me, as disseminated in the publications I read as a kid in 1991. > "Of course, this power balance was largely addressed by the mid-90s - which is why the PC juggernaut then extinguished the Amiga, Atari and (very nearly) the Mac." "Power balance"? I didn't think in such abstracts when I made my choice, and conducted the long and merciless attrition-lobbying campaign for financial support, to buy a PC. The Amigas and the Ataris were simply not a factor for a variety of different, but very tangible and practical reasons: Atari ST? I was not (on my way to become) a musician with the need for a precise and affordable backpack-portable computer instrument. Amigas? The big birds were seen, outside of some specialist-niches, as uneconomical compared to their IBM-compatible brethren. The vanilla home computers were seen as affordable, but extremely limited, racking-up (hidden) secondary costs to make them more usable. Often enough they carried a certain cultural stigma as well, being perceived by our financiers as gaming toys and therefore time wasters. And most importantly? No one I personally knew had an Amiga. Who to swap software with, where to find a mentor? Yeah... The Atari guys I befriended used their machines almost exclusively for dabbling in electronic music, later as part of the emerging East German EBM and hard techno scene. Games? The titles I was interested in either didn't exist on M68k platforms (flight simulations à la Aces of the Pacific, wargames such as the Harpoon series, or adventures like The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes), were practically unplayable (e. g. Red Baron), considered inferior (e. g. Wing Commander)... or just came out too late. By listening to stories of some Britons of my age, it only recently came to my attention how privileged I have actually been. Some of these people told me stories of buying their first A600s or A1200s only in 1993! At that time it was hard to separate me from my trusty, second-hand PC... a machine with a CPU-type nearing its eighth (!) birthday (386DX-25).

sien 1y ago
Your point totally stands. But in the late 1980s, oh my. An Amiga 500 in 1987 was really a lot better than a PC of the time for many things. It was also a lot cheaper. Maybe half the price. The Amiga and the Atari ST didn't improve enough by 1991. By then a PC was better. But by 1988 the PC was so far outselling everything else that the writing was on the wall. This article has a graph of market share by year. https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/ People who had Amigas and Atari STs couldn't quite understand how their machines, that they perceived as so much better, were being outclassed by PCs running MS-DOS. On an Amiga 500 in 1987 you had a decent GUI. Until Windows 3 PCs didn't. For example, Pro-Write on the Amiga having real time spell checking and being WYSIWYG in the late 1980s. It wasn't until Word 6 in 1993 that Word was really much better.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  Exactly. If youve only used a PC in the 90s then it’s easy to see the Atari and Amiga crowd as rose-tinted fanboys. But they’re comparing 90s IBM PCs with 80s competitors. Really, that says more about how IBM PCs were 10 years behind the competition than about how great IBM-compatibles were.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  > An Amiga 500 in 1987 was really a lot better than a PC of the time for many things. It was also a lot cheaper. Yes, the "bang for the buck" made all the difference. For a while.
- schlupa 1y ago
  The big advantage we had on Atari and Amiga was that the 68000 could address more than 640K without a sweat. PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.). In 87 when I was student at University, I managed to write all my sofware on the Mega ST2 and print my papers with Signum! on my 9 pin matrix printer in a quality that my PC colleagues were absolutely jealous of. As said, the advantage was then quickly lost even if I still could use my 1991 acquiered TT up until the mid 90. But by then, the PC was indeed already in another category (CD-ROM, SVGA, Soundcards, Win95 and/or NT or OS/2, beginning of Linux etc.). Our poor niches computer couldn't follow against the sheer mass of the market.

sien 1y ago

Your point totally stands. But in the late 1980s, oh my. An Amiga 500 in 1987 was really a lot better than a PC of the time for many things. It was also a lot cheaper. Maybe half the price. The Amiga and the Atari ST didn't improve enough by 1991. By then a PC was better. But by 1988 the PC was so far outselling everything else that the writing was on the wall. This article has a graph of market share by year. https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/ People who had Amigas and Atari STs couldn't quite understand how their machines, that they perceived as so much better, were being outclassed by PCs running MS-DOS. On an Amiga 500 in 1987 you had a decent GUI. Until Windows 3 PCs didn't. For example, Pro-Write on the Amiga having real time spell checking and being WYSIWYG in the late 1980s. It wasn't until Word 6 in 1993 that Word was really much better.

hnlmorg 1y ago
Exactly. If youve only used a PC in the 90s then it’s easy to see the Atari and Amiga crowd as rose-tinted fanboys. But they’re comparing 90s IBM PCs with 80s competitors. Really, that says more about how IBM PCs were 10 years behind the competition than about how great IBM-compatibles were.
spankibalt 1y ago
> An Amiga 500 in 1987 was really a lot better than a PC of the time for many things. It was also a lot cheaper. Yes, the "bang for the buck" made all the difference. For a while.
schlupa 1y ago
The big advantage we had on Atari and Amiga was that the 68000 could address more than 640K without a sweat. PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.). In 87 when I was student at University, I managed to write all my sofware on the Mega ST2 and print my papers with Signum! on my 9 pin matrix printer in a quality that my PC colleagues were absolutely jealous of. As said, the advantage was then quickly lost even if I still could use my 1991 acquiered TT up until the mid 90. But by then, the PC was indeed already in another category (CD-ROM, SVGA, Soundcards, Win95 and/or NT or OS/2, beginning of Linux etc.). Our poor niches computer couldn't follow against the sheer mass of the market.