8 ms·

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

by 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.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  > PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.). Competent enough people on both ends, end-users and programmers alike, simply worked around that. In the end, it still allowed for a platform of industry-leading applications and games, many of them not available on Amigas or Ataris.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Not until the 90s. Again, you’re talking about 90s hardware and we are talking about 80s hardware.
    - spankibalt 1y ago
      EDIT: Integrated from above: > I’m not talking about personal preference. You very much do. It's like 3D-workstations and other pro-applications were not a competitive thing for PCs in the Eighties. > If you were in East Germany at the time, then you wouldn’t have had an accurate view of what was happening in the industry. You need to connect the dots for a change, friend. I only brought it up to illustrate that you Westerners had a significant headstart; the tech I and most of my peers were fumbling around with beginning in the Nineties was already, parse this slowly please, available to YOU in the Eighties! Geddit? See, in Central Europe, the Amiga 500 came out only in May '87. In October, the US and UK followed suit. The first reliable Amiga for the pro market, the A2000, made its debut in March 1987. What does that mean? First comparison timepoints: Christmas sales 1987 as well as 1988 (these two numbers are part of what we call "the Eighties"). With the A1000 and the STs, as well as all the 8-bitters, one needs to dial back to Christmas '85 (520) and '86 (1040), not accounting for more affluent early adopters buying systems closer to the release date. So! What is really possible at these timepoints in the PC world (e. g. 386DX, VGA, Adlib, MT-32, ...), what in the Atari- and Amiga-eco systems? What would be economically sound for what type of customer, in what markets? What software was available? Nah, I think my point stands. As great as the Atari and Amiga home computers and pro models were, these eco-systems, as such, definitely did not have the massive advantage in "all-inclusive" capabilities that is so often ascribed to them.

by sien 1y ago

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.

spankibalt 1y ago
> PC's had this annoying limit up until the 90s and the complexity that it introduced was mind blowing (EMM, EMS, XMS etc.). Competent enough people on both ends, end-users and programmers alike, simply worked around that. In the end, it still allowed for a platform of industry-leading applications and games, many of them not available on Amigas or Ataris.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  Not until the 90s. Again, you’re talking about 90s hardware and we are talking about 80s hardware.
  - spankibalt 1y ago
    EDIT: Integrated from above: > I’m not talking about personal preference. You very much do. It's like 3D-workstations and other pro-applications were not a competitive thing for PCs in the Eighties. > If you were in East Germany at the time, then you wouldn’t have had an accurate view of what was happening in the industry. You need to connect the dots for a change, friend. I only brought it up to illustrate that you Westerners had a significant headstart; the tech I and most of my peers were fumbling around with beginning in the Nineties was already, parse this slowly please, available to YOU in the Eighties! Geddit? See, in Central Europe, the Amiga 500 came out only in May '87. In October, the US and UK followed suit. The first reliable Amiga for the pro market, the A2000, made its debut in March 1987. What does that mean? First comparison timepoints: Christmas sales 1987 as well as 1988 (these two numbers are part of what we call "the Eighties"). With the A1000 and the STs, as well as all the 8-bitters, one needs to dial back to Christmas '85 (520) and '86 (1040), not accounting for more affluent early adopters buying systems closer to the release date. So! What is really possible at these timepoints in the PC world (e. g. 386DX, VGA, Adlib, MT-32, ...), what in the Atari- and Amiga-eco systems? What would be economically sound for what type of customer, in what markets? What software was available? Nah, I think my point stands. As great as the Atari and Amiga home computers and pro models were, these eco-systems, as such, definitely did not have the massive advantage in "all-inclusive" capabilities that is so often ascribed to them.