The Amiga: Why did it fail so hard in the United States?

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

There was. I was technically inclined so opening an ST or Amiga was no trouble. Unscrewing the typical 6 screws on a PC was no trouble.

Opening my ST was not an issue, but I didn't trust myself with a soldering iron, so I wasn't going to attempt any update that required one.

 

Nor was I going to do any upgrade that required altering the case or ones that resulted in ribbon cables or bare electronics hanging out the back.  I had a friend who had upgrades that consisted of boards and ribbon cables strewn everywhere across the workspace.    To each their own, but that kind of thing was not for me.   I want all the clutter to be hidden away inside the case.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I could understand IDE drives and how the electronics were divvied up between the drive and the interface card. Very easy. But not for SCSI/SASI - that was one confusing mess to me. All the signaling types, cable connectors, differing protocols, and partial compatibility between it all. Not to mention drivers and various kinds of interface cards.. All of it.. All of it was headache-inducing and something I didn't wanna fuck with.

SCSI was definitely an adventure.   I mentioned I bought a second hand drive.   It came in a

 

 case big enough for two 5.25" full height hard drives, but only one was full, giving me another drive bay to play with.   This case also had an ICD ADSCSI adaptor and a Seagate SCSI<->MFM/RLL drive adaptor.   So quite a lot of electronics going on in there.   Learned a lot by adding a brand new MFM half-height drive to the case and later an integrated SCSI drive, so had 3 drives working at once.    I guessed and added/removed terminating resistors until it worked.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I got some sort of "kit" consisting of a few higher-speed generic glu logic parts and a 14MHz 68000 and a crystal. Must have spent $180 on this "double your speed" enhancement. Boy oh boy was I green. I discovered to my dismay I had to unsolder 4 chips from the "full of ground planes" motherboard, unsolder the crystal, but thankfully just swap the 68K.

 

None of it worked. And I hadn't had any digital troubleshooting training yet, so I just put everything back to the way it was, shak'n in ma'boots hoping I didn't blow anything out or anything. I didn't. And it continued working at 7MHz. What a lousy experience. And not only that, it would have been stuck at 14MHz had it worked. Games would be messed up for'shur. And I hadn't even though how the Amiga's custom chippery would've handled 2x speed.

yeah sounds like my nightmare scenario, which is what I worried about upgrading the 68000

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Not only that but I had been hearing stories how people were upgrading from 8086 - 286 - 386. And keeping their expensive software. Or getting it upgraded.

 

That was another thing. A software package could've been introduced in the 386 era, and have received several upgrades to keep it relevant and working on 486 and Pentium machines. I never noticed this about 16-bit Amiga/ST software. Stuff wasn't patched or revised often. You made a one-time purchase and that was that.

I saw that many apps in the ST App section of the Atarimania site have multiple versions, so I think the more expensive packages did receive upgrades.   

 

It was harder back then, you didn't have websites to distribute the upgrades or automatically update themselves.   Sometimes they charged money for upgrades.   Games for sure rarely received upgrades.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, Daedalus2097 said:

To be fair I was never a fan of Doom or bought into the hype, though I understand very well those who did. I found (and still find) graphics like that ugly, and 3D only really started to make sense for me in the late '90s (though I appreciate the evolution that went into getting it to that level).

I hadn't even heard of doom until I saw a small unassuming paper jewel-box like box with the 2 shareware floppies in it. I paid something like $5 or $10 for it. It was nice and colorful and the cardboard counter standee display said only something like "New Virtual Reality Game". And that was it. I was just curious and not expecting much. But I had extra $$$ on me. So what the hell. And I consider my discovery of Doom to have been as pure as possible.

 

I find the graphics rather appealing, even today. Especially knowing it's all CPU bound bitmap stuff with no special hardware requirements. Just a lowly bitmapped VGA chip.

 

The first 3D accelerated games IMHO didn't age well at all. They're still nostalgic but I don't miss them one iota. GL-Quake wasn't that bad and I still find it acceptable.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Keatah

[Bill Loguidice]

I was already pretty much converted from my Amiga 500 to the PC side of things when I got a modest 386 PC, but when I replaced that with a Gateway Pentium 90 with a Vivitron (Triinitron) monitor and ran Doom on it, I was well and truly blown away. Doom may look rather pixelated today, but there's no denying its impact when it was a new/newer release (and it certainly helps that it's still extraordinarily playable even by modern standards).

 

Again, though, at least in the US, it wasn't so much that the Amiga 1000/500/2000 "failed" - again, I can argue that they did just fine relative to other platforms - it was just that with PCs getting so inexpensive, so capable, and so well-supported, most of us simply couldn't justify moving onto the Amiga 1200. I know it was certainly more appealing to own in Europe, but it was never going to be a long-term thing versus the rapid growth/development on the PC side.

[Daedalus2097]

Yeah, in the US things were a bit different (and that is the topic to be fair...), Europe very much saw the low-end Amigas in the same sphere as games consoles.

 

Indeed, the rapid development of the PC killed off any chance the Amiga might have had later on, and pretty much every other platform too - the Mac was on the verge of extinction too only to be saved not least because Microsoft needed to have some sort of credible competition for Windows. Even if Commodore management had poured the money into R&D that they should have, at best it would only have been where the Mac was then, on the brink of bankruptcy.

 

Regarding 3D games, it took until the era of the Gamecube / Unreal Tournament for the graphics to feel enjoyable for me. And that class of PC in the late '90s wasn't cheap. I know the Pentium PC I had at the time didn't have a hope, and only the CAD workstations in my uni had enough CPU and GPU grunt to run it well...

[MrMaddog]

Looking back, I just think it's just eventual that computers would be standardized to use the Wintel PC hardware.  Yes, Microsoft was dominating the operating system market but there were alternatives to Windows like Linux and BeOS that a niche market can run on said hardware.  Plus the Amiga and ST/TT platforms had emulation starting to come out to run the PC's for those who were unable to get the post-Commodore/Atari machines made in Europe and/or needed to run Windows software.

 

Macs survived for a little while with the change to the PowerPC chip till Steve Jobs came back and revive Apple in a big way.  Plus game consoles serviced the low-end video gaming market that couldn't afford the more expensive PC's.

 

Of course Atari & Commodore couldn't make it in both the high end busniess computer sector that brought the PCs & Macs home, nor the video game market that was too crowded at the time during the transition to the 32/64-bit generation.

 

It's not really fair to call any company or computer a "failure" when technology matures and there's only room for 1st Place anyway...

[Osgeld]

I mean yea by the time Amiga was a thing cat's out of the bag on the PC, bios was the major tripping point otherwise one "could" actually go down to a radio shack and buy all the parts off the shelf and make a "PC" clone. BIOS issues sorted by Compaq, and good enough by Tandy, then by the likes of AMI and Award meant you had a FLOOOD of pc compatible "core system" components almost all at once then you just added whatever you wanted to make the machine you needed (which IBM tried to fight back with the MCA slots but they were too late and no one cared) 

 

back in high school a couple buddies and I advertised PC repair services in the town newspaper and were still getting XT class machines as late as 1995 where "jimmy's small engine shop" had used the same software since the 80's, an amiga was a hard sell for what advantage... it can play Turrican II? My dad was the same way we got a rather bitchin 486DX2/66 with sound and CD ROM and 15 inch VGA in 93? He didnt drop the Apple //e until we collectively learned how to dump all his biz data out of appleworks into something MS works could understand and hooked up the imagewriter so he could still print post cards reminding people of upcoming maintenance schedules 

 

Did I want an amiga, I dunno its hard to tell from the store kiosk at Toys-R-Us, dad was "you really want a toy computer", no I worked my butt off that summer, got a sega genesis for games and later that year picked up a turbo XT clone for like 50 bucks out of the local classifieds paper. Never gave the Amiga or ST a second thought till about 15-20 years ago, mainly from the demoscene 

[Keatah]

The Amiga has a place in my emulation hut because of nostalgia for early computer art and a few select games, and little else. Certainly not for any productive work and certainly not to spend summer nights mixing and matching Kickstart-WorkBench combos.

 

5 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Looking back, I just think it's just eventual that computers would be standardized to use the Wintel PC hardware.  Yes, Microsoft was dominating the operating system market but there were alternatives to Windows like Linux and BeOS that a niche market can run on said hardware.

Something had to eventually come out that would become a standard. With all the shit being thrown against wall something would stick.

 

I didn't comprehend or recognize it at the time, but "standards" enabled me to successfully use a PC and transition away from Amiga. I never really gave up Apple II though. Remain semi-active with scanning and preservation activities today. I didn't care if wintel dominated. I was just happy to be able to exchange data with other users and school and not worry about conversion programs. Had I understood standards earlier on I'd have totally skipped Amiga.

 

BeOS was rather niche. I don't know much about it, but I hear that it doesn't run on all hardware. Certain mobos and CPUs were required? That's something that doesn't sit well with me because I like continuity and migration. And while it could do some interesting VR and MultiMedia stuff, none of it was done in a style that captured my fancy.

 

In places like CompUSA and BestBuy there was no BeOS software on the shelves. No games. No fractal stuff. No astronomical skycharting things.. On PC I'd be overloaded with the stuff if I didn't pick'n'choose. A memorable proggie was RedShift. Today I use Stellarium and Cartes du Ceil.

 

Unix back then was full of snobs. I didn't like that. And so I never bothered to get into it. Linux the same. Full of scripterkiddies.

 

5 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Macs survived for a little while with the change to the PowerPC chip till Steve Jobs came back and revive Apple in a big way.  Plus game consoles serviced the low-end video gaming market that couldn't afford the more expensive PC's.

 

Of course Atari & Commodore couldn't make it in both the high end busniess computer sector that brought the PCs & Macs home, nor the video game market that was too crowded at the time during the transition to the 32/64-bit generation.

Too bad Atari and Commodore didn't market their PC compatibles more aggressively. Surely they could have found some added value to include..? I wouldn'tve minded having an Atari or C= badge on a professional computer back then.

 

5 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

It's not really fair to call any company or computer a "failure" when technology matures and there's only room for 1st Place anyway...

C= and Atari didn't exactly fail. Right. They more or less faded away.

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, Osgeld said:

back in high school a couple buddies and I advertised PC repair services in the town newspaper and were still getting XT class machines as late as 1995 where "jimmy's small engine shop" had used the same software since the 80's, an amiga was a hard sell for what advantage... it can play Turrican II? My dad was the same way we got a rather bitchin 486DX2/66 with sound and CD ROM and 15 inch VGA in 93? He didnt drop the Apple //e until we collectively learned how to dump all his biz data out of appleworks into something MS works could understand and hooked up the imagewriter so he could still print post cards reminding people of upcoming maintenance schedules

Was in similar situation. Had disks full of manuscripts and papers and no way in hell was I switching the Apple II to sentimental status until I had them transferred to PC. It was rather easy since they were all text documents. MS Word 2.0 on Windows 3.1 accepted them without drama, at worst I had to touch up the formatting here and there.

 

I remember transferring them to Amiga too. But working with them there wasn't practical for a number of reasons. Software wasn't sharp and crisp, in display output, in keyboard feel, in word processor lag. Not like Apple II or PC text modes.

 

3 hours ago, Osgeld said:

Did I want an amiga, I dunno its hard to tell from the store kiosk at Toys-R-Us, dad was "you really want a toy computer", no I worked my butt off that summer, got a sega genesis for games and later that year picked up a turbo XT clone for like 50 bucks out of the local classifieds paper. Never gave the Amiga or ST a second thought till about 15-20 years ago, mainly from the demoscene 

When the Amiga came out I gave it full credit for being a professional graphics workstation. But by 1987 I was seeing that wasn't totally true. That's when the wanting and waiting started. It just wasn't advancing like I had hoped. Like publications like AmigaWorld made you believe it would. Took me about 3 years to fully realize that.

 

There was this gray area from 1988 through 1991 where I wasn't sure what Commodore was doing. I was still on the sidelines with PC, watching progress from 286 to 386 to 486. Enviously at times. It was around the early-1990's that I began thinking of the Amiga as a toy computer. After I experienced the full professionalism of IBM and PC, then suddenly all computers that came before were toys, with exception of Apple II and Mac. I didn't do Trash-80 or PET, so I can't speak for those, but they seemed to have more professional proggies than games, so there's that.

[Osgeld]

19 hours ago, Keatah said:

Was in similar situation. Had disks full of manuscripts and papers and no way in hell was I switching the Apple II to sentimental status until I had them transferred to PC. It was rather easy since they were all text documents. MS Word 2.0 on Windows 3.1 accepted them without drama, at worst I had to touch up the formatting here and there.

yea the appleworks stuff wasnt bad to transfer over but I was hardly a freshmen in high school and my dad's electronics / computer skills kind of died off by then so we asked around and it was mostly text - csv files over serial port, there was a couple converter utilities we used for his customer database that put everything in a structure MS Works could use (which eventually turned into an access thing) 

 

19 hours ago, Keatah said:

When the Amiga came out I gave it full credit for being a professional graphics workstation. But by 1987 I was seeing that wasn't totally true. That's when the wanting and waiting started. It just wasn't advancing like I had hoped. Like publications like AmigaWorld made you believe it would. Took me about 3 years to fully realize that.

It could be at the time and the price but other systems caught up in both really quick, and there was not much of a killer app for "Timmy Toys R US". If you needed a fairly professional graphics workstation yea it made since in its early days, just like the onboard MIDI of the ST was a fan favorite of music nerds (Live in Nashville TN, dad worked recording studios either as a instrument tech or a musician, got dragged to many studio's in my life)

 

19 hours ago, Keatah said:

There was this gray area from 1988 through 1991 where I wasn't sure what Commodore was doing. I was still on the sidelines with PC, watching progress from 286 to 386 to 486. Enviously at times. It was around the early-1990's that I began thinking of the Amiga as a toy computer. After I experienced the full professionalism of IBM and PC, then suddenly all computers that came before were toys, with exception of Apple II and Mac. I didn't do Trash-80 or PET, so I can't speak for those, but they seemed to have more professional proggies than games, so there's that

Yea that's about the same time period I started looking, and likewise started to envy what was going on in PC land, especially when they are posting easy financing ad's, like mmmm 386-SX/20 with VGA and a 8 bit mono sound card, only 50 bucks a month (for 259 months only 46% interest, never fell for them, but mmmm). I was just old enough (12yo)  for the laws of the day and land, to spend like 20 something hours in the family biz, so I would sit out in the shop disassembling piano's or doing grunt work, re-wiring busted PA systems, replacing speakers, working on old Hammond organs, rewiring old electric guitars etc.

 

By the end of the summer I am 13, sitting on what might as well be a million bucks saying to myself, Gee I got access to an apple II and dad's old colecovision, I would like better... bought a Genesis for games and a little while later got a 10Mhz XT machine with a meg of ram, Hercules graphics, with 3.5 AND 5.25 disk drives, along with a 20MB hard disk for a pitiful 100 bucks, monochrome monitor and keyboard included. 

 

I learned how to write pascal and C on that machine along with how to interface a computer to the physical world, I currently work as a electronics / systems / automation engineer making pc's do complicated actions in the real world

 

Meanwhile the Amiga ... its biggest claim to fame was the video Toaster, which by 1999 was replicated with a 100$ USB capture device and 100$ software available at the local best buy ... My buddies and I converted a lot of video tapes to DVD in that era  (and thanks to the amiga we had at high school I learned all that!)

Edited July 11, 2022 by Osgeld

[Daedalus2097]

On 7/10/2022 at 7:49 AM, Keatah said:

The Amiga has a place in my emulation hut because of nostalgia for early computer art and a few select games, and little else. Certainly not for any productive work and certainly not to spend summer nights mixing and matching Kickstart-WorkBench combos.

Heh, it just shows how different people's ideas can be. For me, the OS was one of the key things about the Amiga that set it apart from everything else. Both in terms of using it and coding for it, it was so much nicer to me than Windows 3 and MS-DOS, and why I used it for serious stuff long after most others had ditched their stock, floppy-only systems. And of course there's no arguing that modern systems are exponentially more useful, powerful and capable, but hardly a day goes by using Windows and Linux without lamenting not having some particular feature of Amiga OS.

 

On 7/10/2022 at 7:49 AM, Keatah said:

Unix back then was full of snobs. I didn't like that. And so I never bothered to get into it. Linux the same. Full of scripterkiddies.

Indeed, and to a certain degree there's still a bit of that in Linux and FOSS communities these days.

 

On 7/10/2022 at 7:49 AM, Keatah said:

Too bad Atari and Commodore didn't market their PC compatibles more aggressively. Surely they could have found some added value to include..? I wouldn'tve minded having an Atari or C= badge on a professional computer back then.

They did try, and were reasonably successful at it (well, Commodore at least) but by the early '90s the market was too cutthroat to sustain that sort of business for Commodore. I had a Commodore 386 PC back then. It was utterly unremarkable compared to any number of other clunky, sluggish 386 boxes available aside from the Commodore badge and one other feature: it had audio as standard (unusual for 386 boxes), and the audio output was through phono connectors like the Amiga instead of 3.5mm jacks like every other sound card.

[zzip]

On 7/8/2022 at 3:15 PM, Daedalus2097 said:

To be fair I was never a fan of Doom or bought into the hype, though I understand very well those who did. I found (and still find) graphics like that ugly, and 3D only really started to make sense for me in the late '90s (though I appreciate the evolution that went into getting it to that level).

The graphics didn't age well for sure,    but prior to Doom/Wolfenstein, the typical "3D" game was a bunch of bland geometric shapes that you had to imagine were buildings/ trees, etc.   The texture mapping, as pixelated as it was, really added something.   And the Doom engine gave lots of flexibility in world design, even though it wasn't true 3D and had limits in what you could do.

 

On the other hand, I was actually never much of a fan of late 90s hardware-assisted 3D.    It created lots of blobby looking things.  My computer never seemed up to spec to run it, but I was never impressed enough by what I saw to invest in a proper 3D accelerator.

[Hwlngmad]

On 7/9/2022 at 5:16 PM, MrMaddog said:

It's not really fair to call any company or computer a "failure" when technology matures and there's only room for 1st Place anyway...

 

On 7/8/2022 at 4:39 PM, Bill Loguidice said:

Again, though, at least in the US, it wasn't so much that the Amiga 1000/500/2000 "failed" - again, I can argue that they did just fine relative to other platforms - it was just that with PCs getting so inexpensive, so capable, and so well-supported, most of us simply couldn't justify moving onto the Amiga 1200. I know it was certainly more appealing to own in Europe, but it was never going to be a long-term thing versus the rapid growth/development on the PC side.

In terms of the Amiga across its line, I also agree that "failure" is a bit strong considering it did achieve success(es) in parts of the United States, the UK, and in other parts of the world.  However, I think it is fair to say that Commodore with the Amiga didn't "achieve" a significant enough market share and secure a big enough niche like Apple was able to do with the Mac due to the fact that the Amiga line just didn't evolve fast enough and/or remaining cutting edge allowing itself to be surpassed by PC compatibles and the Mac.

[zzip]

On 7/8/2022 at 5:39 PM, Bill Loguidice said:

Again, though, at least in the US, it wasn't so much that the Amiga 1000/500/2000 "failed" - again, I can argue that they did just fine relative to other platforms -

Yeah, I think it could be argued that the original Amigas and STs were successful.   But I think where the "failure" comes in is they failed to launch a long-term successful line.

 

For instance the Mac and PC are still going strong after many iterations, but Amiga and ST subsequent models sold less and less until they became niche

[empsolo]

3 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

 

In terms of the Amiga across its line, I also agree that "failure" is a bit strong considering it did achieve success(es) in parts of the United States, the UK, and in other parts of the world.  However, I think it is fair to say that Commodore with the Amiga didn't "achieve" a significant enough market share and secure a big enough niche like Apple was able to do with the Mac due to the fact that the Amiga line just didn't evolve fast enough and/or remaining cutting edge allowing itself to be surpassed by PC compatibles and the Mac.

Remember, I used the term failure to describe the state of the Amiga at the end of its life. Both it and the ST were bitterly fighting over the combined 3% market share they had over the US market. When I say failed, I mean it was barely in anybody’s home while everyone else who had computer were using either a PC, Apple or an older 8 bit micro.

Edited July 11, 2022 by empsolo

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Heh, it just shows how different people's ideas can be. For me, the OS was one of the key things about the Amiga that set it apart from everything else. Both in terms of using it and coding for it, it was so much nicer to me than Windows 3 and MS-DOS, and why I used it for serious stuff long after most others had ditched their stock, floppy-only systems.

I never coded for anything Amiga. Strictly a user I am. When I got DOS 5 and Windows 3, I was totally blown away at the depth and "complexity/versatility" of even something seemingly simple like Microsoft Word 2. And the lowly PaintShopPro v3.12 (which I still use today!) eclipsed everything I used on the Amiga. All that in 1992/1993.

 

I do of course wonder if my Amiga experience would've been better had I had a hard drive for it? Or not? It may have delayed my entry in the PC platform by a year or two maybe. Then I'd have missed out on the tail-end of the MS-DOS era. Perhaps skipping over Windows 3.1 entirely. I'm happy that I didn't, because there was much knowledge to gleaned by tweaking DOS.

 

Win 3.1 was totally professional and no nonsense to me. Within days I was a billion times more productive. Some of which was directly attributable to having standardized hardware that everyone else had. No need to upload files to a BBS and then download them to PC for use there. No need to convert between formats either.

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

I had a Commodore 386 PC back then. It was utterly unremarkable compared to any number of other clunky, sluggish 386 boxes available aside from the Commodore badge and one other feature: it had audio as standard (unusual for 386 boxes), and the audio output was through phono connectors like the Amiga instead of 3.5mm jacks like every other sound card.

It's little things like that which sometimes get spread around by word of mouth. A system with that type connector would need a simple $2.00 adapter to use the standard "Multimedia" speakers of the day. And when 2 users are talking about this, one might bring up the topic. The other would say he doesn't want to go messing with adapters and just look at a system with standard connectors.

 

Sometimes it's a fine line between innovating with new features and remaining compatible. It's like with keyboards.. I just want the standard classic PC-style stuff. No RGB, no special functions, no contorted ergonomic crap.

 

Incidentally my SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold has RCA outputs. And I had to buy that adapter to use it with my RadioShack bookshelf speakers. Whoot!

Edited July 11, 2022 by Keatah

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, empsolo said:

Remember, I used the term failure to describe the state of the Amiga at the end of its life. Both it and the ST were bitterly fighting over the combined 3% market share they had over the US market. When I say failed, I mean it was barely in anybody’s home while everyone else who had computer were using either a PC, Apple or an older 8 bit micro.

This hurts.  I used my Amigas as serious computers up into the 2000s, and when I can get my 4000D stable, thanks to a short list of dedicated developers, I can, again.

[Hwlngmad]

1 hour ago, empsolo said:

Remember, I used the term failure to describe the state of the Amiga at the end of its life. Both it and the ST were bitterly fighting over the combined 3% market share they had over the US market. When I say failed, I mean it was barely in anybody’s home while everyone else who had computer were using either a PC, Apple or an older 8 bit micro.

Well, the absence of achievement is, more or less, failure.  I wouldn't say that the Amiga was a "failure", but definitely I would classify it as a "under achiever".  When it was released in 1985, there really wasn't a machine that could touch it technology wise.  However, the PC (and Mac) quickly caught up to it in most ways and/or surpassed in a few years and at least by the end of the decade.  A damn shame for sure.  Then again, not everything can be winners no matter how many benefits something has.  Just ask Sony with the Betamax with it being technologically superior to VHS, but the lower entry price, superior tape length, and more 3rd party adaptation it had helped to seal Betamax's doom in the long run.

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

Yeah, I think it could be argued that the original Amigas and STs were successful.   But I think where the "failure" comes in is they failed to launch a long-term successful line.

Yes. An important point.

 

The machines didn't fail at what they were designed to do. They just never gathered long-term momentum. I would say the Apple /// and ///+ were bigger fails. Genuine fails. They didn't do what they were advertised for. They weren't even remotely reliable, had to reseat the chips by picking up the machine and dropping it - an official Apple solution no less!

 

I so badly wanted an Apple ///. But knowing what I know about it today I'd have been horribly disappointed. To 12-yr old me the Apple /// was something to work toward. Something to look up to. A status symbol. A superhero of sorts. Nice to read about and dream about. Reading the catalogs accomplished that.

[The Brew that is True]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Yes. An important point.

 

The machines didn't fail at what they were designed to do. They just never gathered long-term momentum. I would say the Apple /// and ///+ were bigger fails. Genuine fails. They didn't do what they were advertised for. They weren't even remotely reliable, had to reseat the chips by picking up the machine and dropping it - an official Apple solution no less!

 

I so badly wanted an Apple ///. But knowing what I know about it today I'd have been horribly disappointed. To 12-yr old me the Apple /// was something to work toward. Something to look up to. A status symbol. A superhero of sorts. Nice to read about and dream about. Reading the catalogs accomplished that.

I used an Apple /// on a summer job, onsite beta-testing of a hotel management software that ran on it. Thanks for the memories, I had forgotten all about it.

[atarian1]

10 hours ago, Keatah said:

Yes. An important point.

 

The machines didn't fail at what they were designed to do. They just never gathered long-term momentum. I would say the Apple /// and ///+ were bigger fails. Genuine fails. They didn't do what they were advertised for. They weren't even remotely reliable, had to reseat the chips by picking up the machine and dropping it - an official Apple solution no less!

 

I so badly wanted an Apple ///. But knowing what I know about it today I'd have been horribly disappointed. To 12-yr old me the Apple /// was something to work toward. Something to look up to. A status symbol. A superhero of sorts. Nice to read about and dream about. Reading the catalogs accomplished that.

Not to mention the Apple /// didn't last very long on the market. According to Wikipedia, 1981-1984 (3 years) with 120,000 sold. That's pretty dismal.

 

At least the Amiga and ST had an 8-9 year run with multiple models being released and 2+ million machines sold over their lifetimes. I find that hard to consider a "failure".

Edited July 12, 2022 by atarian1

[Keatah]

And about 65,000 for the ///+.

[Hwlngmad]

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

Yes. An important point.

 

The machines didn't fail at what they were designed to do. They just never gathered long-term momentum. I would say the Apple /// and ///+ were bigger fails. Genuine fails. They didn't do what they were advertised for. They weren't even remotely reliable, had to reseat the chips by picking up the machine and dropping it - an official Apple solution no less!

 

I so badly wanted an Apple ///. But knowing what I know about it today I'd have been horribly disappointed. To 12-yr old me the Apple /// was something to work toward. Something to look up to. A status symbol. A superhero of sorts. Nice to read about and dream about. Reading the catalogs accomplished that.

The Apple /// was a big time failure for sure.  Same goes for the Apple Lisa / Mac XL.  That also was another big time failure for Apple.

[Keatah]

I don't know much about the MacXL.

 

I always viewed the Lisa as a prototype, even the production models. The whole Lisa sphere seemed like an experiment to me. And I don't consider it a failure because so many Mac "concepts and ideas) arose from its trials and tribulations.

[Matt_B]

The concept for the Lisa might have been somewhat similar to the Mac but they were distinct products, developed in parallel over the course of 4-5 years by different teams, with a lot of duplication of effort and in-fighting for resources.

 

I don't think the early Macs were that much better than the Lisa either; they were just a heck of a lot cheaper and had more development potential.

[Keatah]

When I was learning more about hardware in other systems in the beginning of the 16-bit era, I read up on the IIgs, Amiga, AtariST, and the Mac. I really believed the Mac was the epitome of sophistication and elegance. The tiny b/w display seemed to exude a precision that eluded other micros of the time. I so wanted one, but $$$ was of course the main barrier.

 

And it was similar for the IIgs. Costly. And a little confusing. Why have two separate computers in one? But it would have been my choice had I the $$$.

 

I even considered the ST, but decking it out the way I wanted was also costly, and then there was no Copper/Blitter so that was a factor too. I was a little "afraid" of software availability too.

 

So I ended up with the Amiga for better or worse. It seemed to be the most for the cheapest out of the box. And I was a flunky for custom hardware designs. For a few weeks I felt like a god. On top of the world. Then my buddies started asking what I could do with it. Came up empty handed. Oh sure the hardware was visionary for the time. But.. Little did I know software availability would be rather sparse and hard to come by.

 

For a while I ignored the Apple II. But as the Amiga's limitations in practical applications became apparent I put the //e back into service for a few more years till I got into PC for real. An overtold sob story? I don't give a rat's ass! I'm gonna tell it again'n'again!

Edited July 13, 2022 by Keatah