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[Phantom206]

The best: Superb hardware of Amiga.
The worst: Commodore didn't gave licenses to third group companies to produce Amigas (Amiga Compatibles)

[Siggy]

Phantom206 wrote:
The best: Superb hardware of Amiga.
The worst: Commodore didn't gave licenses to third group companies to produce Amigas (Amiga Compatibles)

Technically C= had very little (if anything) to do with the original hardware. So I'd have to say the best thing C= did was work with Amiga so they could release the machine to the public (as opposed to harvesting the technology for other things).

The worst - after doing that, letting that hardware 'fall behind the curve' .

They made some bad business decisions, and they eventually paid the price for it (shrug) hindsight is always 20/20.

Siggy.

[downix]

I agree with Siggy.

Rather than persue the AAA when first proposed ('87) they let it
languish for years on the shelves. If they had kept pace with how the
market evolved, AAA would have arrived in '91 and made the Amiga the
top dog for quite awhile.

Of course Hombre is when they learned these lessons, but they were on
life support at that point. If completed, Hombre would have
revolutionized Commodore's business, as well as open up new markets
for them.

[Psy]

Best: Preventing the Amiga from falling into Atari's hands.

Worst: Poor book keep that lead to the downfall of Commodore and diverted funds away from the Amiga.

[B00tDisk]

Phantom206 wrote:
The best: Superb hardware of Amiga.
The worst: Commodore didn't gave licenses to third group companies to produce Amigas (Amiga Compatibles)

Good question.

Firstly, in reference to your answer(s), the superb Amiga hardware had nothing to do with Commodore - it was an outgrowth of the Lorraine/Hi-TORO/Amiga hardware. C= had the devils' luck in that they had people like Haynie et.al. who could take said stuff and improve on it. C= corporate's mistakes are legendary, and their shorting the engineering people is the stuff of corporate horror stories.

WRT Amiga "clones", this would have killed the Amiga faster. The Amiga was, after 1987, a niche computer in a shrinking niche. Look at the divisiveness (some call it "competitiveness", I call it stupidity) just over the A1 and the Pegasus. Sheesh!

Now, as to what I think Commodore did, best and worst, for the Amiga?

Best:

When they marketed, believe it or not, they did it well. Look at the Amiga's premier. WOW. I recall reading multi-page ads in U.S. magazines (Time, Newsweek etc.) talking about what the Amiga could do, with people from the Mayo clinic talking about it's superior displays and how it helped them in medical research, with BB King talking about the Amiga as an invaluable music tool...

However...

They never marketed enough. I saw those ads in like two or three magazines, ever. Buying ad space in AmigaWorld, Antic's Amiga, .info and so on was USELESS. It's like calling me up and asking me if I want to buy a 1997 Honda Civic. I ALREADY HAVE ONE!

Those ads should've been in Computer Shopper, newspapers, oh the list goes on.

Those two things. Marketing.

[chipper701]

Best was purchasing Amiga and giving it to us.

Worse was not keeping up with technology and expanding the Amiga AND bad book keeping...

BTW I wonder what Gould and Ali are doing now. How about we all pay them a little visit!

[Aegis]

Best: releasing a cut-down, low-cost home/hobbyist Amiga (A500) which got the platform widely adopted on the strength of its market for games.

Worst: releasing a cut-down, low-cost home/hobbyist Amiga games machine (A500) which decimated the Amiga's reputation as a professional hardware platform.

Oh, and spending all that moolah on setting up a PC division when they could have been finishing AA/AAA was sheer madness...

[xeron]

The reason AAA was left to languish is simple; Commodore originally made their money in the computer industry in an era where you could make a computer and keep selling it year after year with little or no changes, like the C64.

The late 80's were a totally different market place; the PC world being flooded with clones meant that every few months something faster came along. You just couldn't compete if you kept releasing the same thing year after year.

But Commodore thought they could just follow the C64 approach; cost reduce and refine the same basic design. A500, A500+, A600.

[JurassicCamper]

Phantom206 wrote:
The best: Superb hardware of Amiga.
The worst: Commodore didn't gave licenses to third group companies to produce Amigas (Amiga Compatibles)

Best.... A4000T but i could never afford one.

Worst.... Poor Marketing & PC Clones

I just hope Amiga Market the A1 & OS4.X properly.

I want to walk into dixons / PC world and see it onsale. A1 Needs an official case.

No point in putting adverts in Amiga Mags / Websites as we know about it already.

I'd love to see a huge billboards with a picture of an A500 and KS1.3 and next to it an A1 in a realy snazzy case TFT and a gorgeous OS4 WB.

Slogans something like

In 1989 you thought this was $#!+ hot

Relive your childhood

Retro...... this ain't retro.

Somethings never die...... Amiga

[Floid]

Thinking about it, some of the more specific/less-obvious 'worsts' that come to light, after the fact... though as I scrape my brain, I'll just drop the one concrete event.

-Botching the deal with Sun. I *still* haven't seen Deathbed Vigil, but done right, this would've solved many credibility issues, whether it was a cloning license or a way to shift 3000UXen.

The 'most ambiguous' awards go to:

-~640x200. From what I gather, chipset support for 'delaced' resolution was a possibility early on in the game, while the chipset was still being finalized, but Commodore nixed it based on CRT (and RAM) prices, and, I'd imagine, their existing inventory. Had the option been demoable- even if not affordable- at launch, or perhaps included for the 2000, would things have been taken more seriously by the DTP market?

-The 900. The A1000, as shipped, was most definitely a 'Personal Computer,' albeit mindblowingly advanced; the 900 was most definitely a 'Workstation.' Could focusing on a multitiered strategy- 900 for corporates, Amiga for the 'midrange,' and legacy inventory/terminals for the low-end have prevented the death spiral later in life? Or would it've just created a mess worse than the menagerie of almost-compatible 8-bits?

-All-In-One casings. A boon to the users who could get a capable machine cheap, but a surprisingly lasting image problem (which, coupled with the default NTSC resolution and WB1.3 color scheme, led a friend to remark that his garage-sale 500 appeared 'more primitive' than a IIgs.) Would Commodore have crumbled without the (-or with a delayed, e.g. OCS at the launch of ECS) 500, or would holding off have forced the community into sync with the normal world's disdain for 'little boxes?'

-CAOS. What if, somehow, some way, the vision was fulfilled? Would it have meant nirvana, pricing out of the market, or performance/memory issues that would've been crippling in 1985?

-Telecom. Online services were outrageously expensive in the day, but from my memory, they could really put lipstick on a pig. Had the Amiga been stronger in this point (through the dealer network- Radio Shack certainly played a role in selling us an unaffordable Compuserve account back in the day with our 1000SX), and/or if, say, some effort had been made to lure Steve Case back to the fold near the endgame, could things have somehow been made to pull through? At least any of the later STB ventures might've been left with an obvious partner.

(I seem to remember reading Compuserve access was part of the demo at the launch... but through the early-'90s era, was there any sustained initiative on the order put forth by clone dealers? What if they'd offered a promo with the CDTV?)

[Agafaster]

The Best: have to agree- hardware (and OS) years ahead of its time
The Worst: marketing, and trying to do PCs at the same time. (ie: marketing years behind its time !)

the PC thing: CBM tried to get into the PC market as that was what was percieved as what the business community wanted. IIRC the PCs were (to put it succinctly) crap.

They could have pushed their one true gem (Amiga) into that market, and perhaps Commisioned a half-decent office suite to be put in a business orientated package.

at the time, a well kitted A3000/4000 was as good as the concurrent Macs, which were running M$ Orifice.
:-D
IMO an A3000 probably could have done as good a job with well written office products (not necessarily M$) as the Apple's equivalent offering the Mac II (ie: the IIci/vi/fx/etc)

[KingTutt]

There are so many what if stories with regard to Amiga. To the avid fan, its sheer heart ache reliving the what if scenarios. What if Amiga got marketed right. What if they released AAA and then Hombre. What if C= was more profitable and never went under. What if this and what if that.

Well times change, sure these what if cases, really did matter at some point. But right now Amiga should focus on the here and now. It finds itself in interesting times. On the one hand, one might say that in a time when pc sales are at its lowest and the IT industry is again suffering a slump, why would you launch another platform? Others might argue, with Palladium around the corner, and free computing being encroached more and more... why not? 64bit computing is just around the corner and Amiga would be wise to jump onto the PPC 970 chipset as soon as it can. OS5 should also be Amigas primary focus after the OS4.xx finish their run.

True 64 is the way to go for the long run. In a time when Intel and AMD are painfully trying to make the transition to 64bit chips, Amiga has the advantage of coming into the fray unhindered by legacy support issues.

[T_Bone]

Best: They tried to market the Amiga.

Worst: They tried to market the Amiga.

[Roj]

@T_Bone

Yes. You've hit the head on the nail. :-D

[boglo]

Best: Hire Dave Hayne
Worst: Hire Medhi Ali