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[amigadave]

I recently heard a rumor that I would like confirmed if possible.

"During the months that Gateway owned Amiga IP and trademarks, Microsoft pressured Gateway to kill any and all future development plans for the Amiga platform and OS."

Could it be true that Microsoft was still concerned that the Amiga might be able to make a comeback of some kind with the backing of Gateway dollars and engineering? Did Microsoft make it financially unacceptable for Gateway to continue to support an Amiga comeback via increased Windows OS OEM pricing?

I would dearly like to know the facts behind this rumor and know if it is true.

[AmigaHeretic]

No fiction or opinions here.

I'm pretty sure Gateway heard the "SLAP" of the rubber glove being put on and got out of the Amiga business quick. Wouldn't you?

[img align=left]http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/sports.aol.com/fanhouse/media/2007/05/rectal-exams.jpg[/img]

[Terse]

Gateway did not want Amiga. They were researching set top PC technologies and did not want any patents owned by Amiga and pertaining to television video interfacing to become property of competitors. Some companies have patents that can be of strategic value even while the company is no longer viable, and Commodore-Amiga was thought to be such a company.

[coldfish]

Yup, its all M$'s fault the Amiga died. Nothing to do with C='s inability to arrange a shag in a brothel, with a fist full of $50's.

Like most closed architectures of the 80's, the Amiga was expensive to upgrade and the parent Co' slow to improve the tech.

If the computer industry had followed the C=/Amiga path, we'd still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines.

[countzero]

coldfish wrote:

If the computer industry had followed the C=/Amiga path, we'd still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines.

hey, we still are !

[uncharted]

amigadave wrote:
I recently heard a rumor that I would like confirmed if possible.

I don't think what actually happened during that time will ever be publically known. There were several rumblings that MS were unhappy with Gateway playing with Linux as part of their Amiga experiment. It wouldn't been the first time that MS had leaned on a company. But, whether or not it actually happened, is something I couldn't tell you.

The other main (more probable) explanation was that Gateway simply baulked at the kind of investment Jim Collas was asking for.

[dammy]

Quote:


coldfish wrote:

If the computer industry had followed the C=/Amiga path, we'd still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines.



hey, we still are !

Not all of us are. :devildance:

Dammy

[AmigaHeretic]

hey, we still are !

Hey that's not true of Efika!!

For around a $1000.00 I could Super Glue 10 of them together and break the 1gb RAM barrier at least! He he! :-D

[weirdami]

I don't think there's any reason to want a rumor like that to be confirmed. Wanting to confirm whether or not it is true, sure, because it's fun to have the real facts about the past. The only rumors that I'd like to be confirmed are good news rumors of the present and future. Confirmation of past rumors doesn't really help even if they are good news.

[amigadave]

Thanks for all the opinions instead of the requested facts.

I didn't really expect a gush of accurate information, but thought someone may have a small bit of what actually happened. The person I talked to seemed pretty confident that his information was true and he has the contacts to know some of the key people in this question 2nd, or 3rd hand.

As for why, yes, it does not serve some grand purpose, but I think a lot of us would like to know what really happened in the inner workings of Gateway that led to the turn around and abandonment of the Amiga project. I for one (of many others) was very excited when Gateway purchased Amiga and looked forward to something different and better than Windows.

[Matt_H]

Yeah, no facts here, sorry, but consider this: If Gateway really didn't want to do anything with the Amiga when they bought it, why did they not only reestablish Amiga Technologies GmbH as Amiga International, but also create the Amiga, Inc. US subsidiary? OS3.5 was also released on their watch. The fact that things came to such an immediate halt in late 1999 (especially after sinking all that cash into R&D for the MCC) suggests that something happened very abruptly.

Threat from the Redmond Beast? Who knows, but even without direct interference from Microsoft, I do think the stranglehold that Windows has had on the market since the late 90s has made it harder for the Amiga to regain a foothold even so far as to product recognition, if not sales. Remember that many 1200s and some 4000Ts were still available at this time, so the supply/availability problems we have now weren't an issue. It was also before phase5 blew up, so plenty of accelerators were around, too.

I think the reason this is interesting is because I seem to recall that Gateway didn't sell the Amiga to Amiga, Inc. (nee Amino), but granted them a very liberal license. Thus, it seems like the possibility may exist for Gateway to come in, cancel Amiga, Inc.'s contract and clean up this whole mess we're in now. Gateway's market position is a lot weaker than it was a decade ago, so if they're smart, they'll consider picking the Amiga back up as another potential revenue source (wishful thinking, yes). Even if Microsoft does threaten them (more difficult now that the US Antitrust lawsuit has sort of concluded), with PC hardware prices falling by the day, even bundling a non-OEM version of Windows with their regular systems probably wouldn't affect the cost too much.

[Floid]

Gateway was going to be the OEM for America Online (and/or AOLTW)'s foray into the set-top-box market.

Microsoft had acquired WebTV, which was still a going concern around then, and AOL itself had a pretty take-it-or-leave-it attitude with its side projects (see also: Mozilla), equally happy to use them as leverage with MS as to leverage the products themselves.

So... in the end, AOL managed to continue to be bundled as an 'Online Service' with every Windows installation, especially as Microsoft was attempting to 'crack down' on the crap installed by individual OEMs, in exchange for dropping all these 'threatening' projects, accepting IE as the basis for the AOL browser, etc.

Frankly, this was where the big money was, and Gateway took a gamble (or was optimistic) and wound up screwed. I expect they viewed their Amiga Inc. as the R&D arm for this and future 'media' projects, and when it became clear they weren't going to be viable (and that all 1,000 Amiga users left were only going to spit on the Linux-based, x86 system anyway), they cut their losses, dragged the rapidly obsolescing and underdeveloped Amiga carcass out back to be shot, and bought eMachines, who were essentially producing what had already proved to be the real media terminal of the decade: the cheap commodity PC.*

Reference:
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_49/b3658159.htm
AOL Anywhere, anyone?

*[size=small]'PC' in the generic sense of 'personal computer,' and despite the dreams, AInc's MCC wasn't looking to come out particularly cheap per dollar of revenue generated, or, depending who was deciding what the system would look like that day, particularly 'computery' -- Amino's console/royalty-model idea had to have come from somewhere. The Mac Mini I happen to be typing this on also fulfills that role, but ignoring all the marketing hand-waving, the only functional difference between a boutique design like that and an eMachine the customer was never going to open anyway is the amount of air in the case.[/size]

[coldfish]

@Floid,

Nice post!

[Matt_H]

(and that all 1,000 Amiga users left were only going to spit on the Linux-based, x86 system anyway)

I would have. It would have just been a watered-down exploitation of the brand name to sell unrelated products. Hey, wait, that sounds familiar.

[Dandy]

coldfish wrote:

...
Like most closed architectures of the 80's, the Amiga was expensive to upgrade and the parent Co' slow to improve the tech.

If the computer industry had followed the C=/Amiga path, we'd still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines.

Hmmmmmm - "still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines" - back in Jan 1989 I bought my first A500 in basic configuration (7.14 mHz; 512 kB RAM, 4 channel stereo sound, 4096 colours, mouse-operatable, graphical OS with preemptive Multitasking) for 1200 DM, while the 80386-PC's in basic configuration (that just had come out) were around 6000 DM (28 mHz; 640 kB RAM, only "beep" sound in mono, only monochrome graphics, no mouse support, MS-DOS).

Given this price/performance ratio advantage of the Amiga, would you still say "we'd still be paying $$$ for sub Ghz machines", "if the computer industry had followed the C=/Amiga path"?