HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Could a less ambitious Amiga have saved Commodore from bankruptcy?


In particular, an Amiga with capabilities similar to a 1984 Mac but with color would have been cheaper and easier to program for.

Maybe such a machine could have even been aimed at the education market.


  👤 ilkke Accepted Answer ✓
Sorry, I am not really answering the question, but just my 2 cents on the topic. Who cares about saving Commodore? The best thing about the Amiga was that it was years ahead of its time. It played a big part in shaping things to come, especially in Europe, particularly in game development, music, graphic design, and what I'll just call the culture of sharing. Personally I can't imagine who I would be without having the Amiga in my youth - what I would like, how I would perceive the world. As heartbreaking as it was to see it die with a whimper, I wouldn't trade that just to see a Commodore logo on a PC equivalent today. [edit: typo]

👤 PaulHoule
Didn't Motorola give up on the 68k?

Every other vendor that made 68k based machines (Apple, Sun Microsystems, Atari, ...) either switched to another architecture or went out of business. Treading water might have been good enough to survive if a platform shift wasn't necessary but it was.

I remember the Macintosh 2 machines having a color GUI that was head and shoulders refined over competitors but they were crazy expensive. Amiga had much better game and multimedia capability but not as refined desktop at a much lower price.