The 68000 Wars, Part 3: We Made Amiga, They Fucked It Up

Obligitory links as they are not on the page...<p><pre><code> Part 1: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.filfre.net&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;the-68000-wars-part-1-lorraine&#x2F; Part 2: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.filfre.net&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;the-68000-wars-part-2-jack-is-back&#x2F;</code></pre>

I sometimes like to escape into a fantasy daydream world when I&#x27;m at work, where the British government of the 80s realized the importance of controlling your own destiny, and just bought a million Acorn Archimedes for the entire civil service, military, universities etc, enough that it became a no-brainer for everyone else in the UK. We could be 10-20 years ahead of where we are now. Same if the Germans and Dutch had just bought Commmodore and Atari outright and moved their production over.<p>Of course if they had they would probably have been tricked into buying Amstrad shit.

This is a great series. I can also really recommend the book the author wrote, which presents a more technical view of the Amiga:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mitpress.mit.edu&#x2F;books&#x2F;future-was-here" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mitpress.mit.edu&#x2F;books&#x2F;future-was-here</a>

I&#x27;m still wondering why the Amiga didn&#x27;t become ubiquitous. I had one and I kept getting called a liar about its price - for the performance compared to PCs of the time, surely I omitted a zero.

My favourite computers of all time were my A500 and A1200. I learned the most about how a computer works and how to program it. I learned how to create and control sound and graphics and how these are represented inside the machine. I made my own games in a mix of high-level languages ( Amos! ) and 68000 assembly. I made 3D animations assembled frame by frame onto a VHS tape deck. I even used the Amiga to VJ at clubs and student parties.<p>Really loved those machines.

The Deathbed Vigil: The Last Day At Commodore <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;jvJjFYHGTnU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;jvJjFYHGTnU</a>

I just realized that the Amiga story is exactly what would have happened to Apple in an alternative timeline where the company had filed for bankruptcy without Jobs. Or the other way around, if they had succeeded we all may be wearing Amiga Watches on our wrists right now.<p>It&#x27;s very interesting to see how good&#x2F;bad managerial decisions or tiny details can totally sink an advanced technology and change the course of the future. Can we imagine a present with a current technology without the advances that, for example, Apple has brought? Maybe we&#x27;ll all be still using Nokia phones or Palm PDAs.

The Sharp X68000 was more successful and powerful than any other machine in the &quot;68000 wars.&quot; It came a few years later, but outsold both Atari and Amiga (the number I heard was 15 million units sold). However it sold only in Japan, and really only for games -- despite having higher spec&#x27;d multimedia and even having video input that could have made a &quot;video toaster&quot; type app like the Amiga possible. Just shows you how massive the Japanese gaming market was in the 80s&#x2F;early 90s that that niche machine sold only there could outsell them.

My favorite 68k machine is the 3b1. It had a windowing system with mouse, but never any apps that would be interesting for the desktop user. Funny that Apple switched to UNIX fifteen years later. If they had started with it, instead of that stupid system where half the OS was in ROM, it would have been so far ahead.

I had an Amiga for a while. You couldn&#x27;t hook up standard keyboards and monitors to it, everything was just different enough to be incompatible. It didn&#x27;t bode well for Amiga&#x27;s future.