We should learn from history. And one of the basic premises of war history says: "Choose your battle." And that's not only because you need to the place and time so you aren't facing the sun. It's also about more moral things, like who you are going to fight and the reasons behind you fighting.
Don't get into a unfavorable fight just because the enemy wants to fight. Think about the reasons behind the conflict and whether a fight is even needed. It the one your gonna fight really an enemy?
One of the most interesting showcases of "how important it is to choose your fight" from the tech industry is the conflict between Atari and Commodore in the years 1985 - 1994. Neither of the companies wanted to fight originally - they just wanted to bring a cheap 16-bit computer and they wanted to compete mainly with PCs and Macintosh. Specially Atari ST was designed as a cheap computer for work.
It's really strange, both the companies had a great position to fight for the non-PC market but instead they started to compete with all the markets, including PCs, consoles and professional work stations in the end resulting in a collapse of the companies and eventual bankruptcy in the middle of the nineties.
The "war" begins
A probable reasons why the war began was the year 1983 when the arcade market fell and Atari almost went bankrupt. At the same time was Jack Tramiel "forced" to leave Commodore which he started. And it was Atari who lent money to Amiga and just before the loan was the end the Atari was to get all the technology, Commodore stepped in and payed out the whole loan.
Doing that essentially meant that swept the chipset right under Atari nose which created a lot of bad blood and lead to a lot of legal disputes.
Atari 1040ST Source: Wikimedia Commons
So. Now a situation where Commodore had a powerful chipset, but was sort of unsure of what to do with it, has arisen. The first Amiga - Amiga 1000 - was pretty expensive, it cost 1600 USD. Commodore didn't want to destroy the successful business of "home" 8-bit Commodores because those were selling really well. So the marketing department decided to pit Amiga against PCs and Macintosh as more of an professional platform
At the same time Atari wasn't really sleeping and doing nothing. They managed to developed their own 16-bit computer in just six months. It used a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 8 MHz in the ST version. Actually the ST was so simple that David Hynie, creator of many Amiga's, called it "a bad copy of a graphical terminal".
The most famous part of the "war" between Amiga and Atari ST come when a cheaper version came to the market - the Amiga 500 - that was meant to compete with Atari 520STF and 1040STF. At this time the companies were obviously fighting each other. Amiga was successful with professionals who edited video and Atari was successful with music professionals and DTP.
Amiga 500Source: Wikimedia Commons
Somewhere around this point the problems started to accumulate. On one hand both companies had cheap home models that were about being simple and cheap and then they had professional models that were very expensive and were pretty much crashing into PCs that were getting cheaper. That was the beginning of the end.
The sad end
On of the big things that were a problem for both of the companies were the limits of the architecture. Both computers were hard to upgrade. Specially the fact that the GPU wasn't upgradeable was an issue (it was possible with a few professional models, but those were really expensive and out of reach of normal customers).
While Amiga started as a multimedia device, Commodore never really managed to change to CD-ROMs and Atari didn't even really attempt to try CDs out.
And then in 1993 it happened. You could buy a cheap PC with 386SX CPUs, a CD-ROM drive, harddisk, upgradable graphics and it was all in a decent looking midi-tower. The OS still needed a bit of work, but you could play DOOM on it. Everybody wanted to play DOOM. And when you bought a PC you could run the same software as in school or work. Nobody wanted two platforms, nobody wanted to work with a device that cost almost the same as a PC but instead of DOOM you could play only the much worse GLOOM. What a fitting name for a game that ended the war between Atari and Commodore and their stupid, unnecessary war.
I own all those old retro computers. Resteemed
Atari and Amiga should be "Amigos" (Friends in Spanish)
Haha - they missed their chance ages ago. I'm just very happy we can still play these classic systems when emulated on a PC...The very same system that brought about their demise.
This was a great piece - nice effort. I'm not sad about the end - that's progress, plain and simple. I played on so many systems from Atari, Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amiga (not to mention Sega and Nintendo consoles and portables) and I think it's great that the PC is where it is today. It stands on the shoulders of giants.
great thinking
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My first computer was an Amiga 2000 ;)
Choose your battles wisely, indeed!
I had an Amiga 500+. Nice article. Like you say a very sad end.
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I seen a video on youtube about atari's new gaming console. I Hope it rocks and rivals the xbox and playstation too
The good old days! I currently started a new blog about preserving amiga classics for the future..