History of the Amiga
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The history of the Amiga home computer product line has been very eventful from the middle 1980s up to today.
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[edit] Amiga Corporation
The Amiga's chipset was designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation during the end of the first home video game boom. Wary of industrial espionage, the chipset was codenamed Lorraine during development. Amiga Corp. funded the development of the Lorraine by manufacturing joysticks while seeking investors. The chipset was to be used in a video game machine, but following the video game crash of 1983, the Lorraine was repurposed to be a personal computer. Steve Jobs was shown the original prototype for the first Amiga and said there was "too much hardware". He was starting work on the Macintosh at the time and was reportably worried that the Amiga would surpass his plans.
However, before Amiga Corp. could bring the machine to market, the company encountered financial difficulties. It was purchased by Commodore in August 1984, after unsuccessful negotiations with the former Atari corporation.
[edit] Commodore
[edit] 1985-87, The early years
The first Amiga computer, simply called the Amiga (devoid of references to Commodore), was released in 1985 by Commodore. Commodore marketed it both as their intended successor to the Commodore 64 and as their competitor against the Apple Macintosh. It was later renamed the Commodore Amiga 1000.
At a relatively affordable base price of $1295 the Amiga could display up to 4096 colors and produce 8-bit stereo audio (crude by today's standards, but very impressive at the time) and run several applications concurrently. These qualities gave the Amiga 1000 a significant technical lead on its three main competitors (the Atari ST, the Macintosh and the IBM PC) that was not matched until after the Amiga faded from the mainstream market.
Poorly marketed, the Amiga 1000 was not an instant success. Commodore confounded the problem by marketing the Commodore 128 and later the Commodore PC line, CDTV, Amiga Unix and Amiga CD32 alongside the Amiga. This resulted in the general public being confused about what Commodore and the Amiga was all about.[citation needed] This marketing confusion would plague the Amiga throughout its lifetime, even as it changed hands between Escom, Gateway and other owners.
[edit] 1987-90, Cost reduced and high end models
In 1987, faced with strong competition from Atari ST in the lower end of the segment, Commodore released the cost reduced Amiga 500 and the high end Amiga 2000 for the respective prices of US $595.95 and $2395 (this price included 1 MB RAM and a monitor).
With its lowered price, the Amiga 500 went on to become a successful home computer and eventually outsold its main rival, the Atari ST. The Amiga 2000, thanks to its Genlock and internal expansion slots, managed to carve out a market niche within graphics and video. This market was not as large as the office and publishing markets dominated by the IBM PC, and Apple Macintosh and as a result the Amiga 2000 lagged these systems in sales.
[edit] 1990-93, Height of popularity
In 1990, Commodore released the first true update of the Amiga platform, in the shape of the Amiga 3000 featuring an enhanced chipset (ECS) and the second release of its operating system, commonly referred to as Workbench 2.0.
Many users had criticised Commodore for letting the Amiga platform languish since its introduction five years earlier, this criticism did not diminish with the Amiga 3000. Users complained that the ECS chipset failed to match the features of the PC and Mac display hardware at the time, and that the operating system (Workbench 2.0) only featured improvements taken from the user community.
On the flip-side many users considered the Amiga 3000 the most well engineered Amiga model, and the Amiga 3000's integrated flicker filter made it painless to use cheap PC-style VGA monitors. This may in part be the reason Commodore went on to sell one million Amigas in just one year, which is equal to a third of all Amigas sold up to that time.
In the same year as the Amiga 3000, Commodore released the US $895 CDTV, aimed to move the Amiga platform to the living room and a competitor to devices such as Philips CD Interactive (CD-I). Commodore believed that there was a market for a system that could display animations, pictures and offer educational software and games on a television, and many game developers thought that interactive CD-based video games would become a popular market. The end result was a system that could be described as an Amiga 500 with a remote control replacing the keyboard and a CD-ROM replacing the floppy drive.
Considering that the Amiga 500 was cheaper, more versatile and had the promise of a future CDTV expansion few Amiga users saw any interest in the Amiga CDTV. At the same time the general public preferred cheaper game consoles over both the CDTV and CD-I, and was not aware of or interested in the multimedia capabilities offered by these CD-ROM based systems.
Both Commodore and Philips tried to tempt users with promise of an MPEG-1 module capable of playing video from a CD-ROM. These Video CDs can be considers lower-resolution versions of today's Digital Video Disks (DVDs), but without scene selection, additional features and with the inconvenience of having to change the disks during a full length movie.
The CDTV became Commodore's first Amiga based failure, a failure that allegedly cost them a significant amount of resources. Commodore made a last ditch effort in saving the system with the CDTV 2, but dropped that design in favor of the much more capable Amiga CD32.
[edit] 1992-94, Trouble ahead
Commodore began 1992 early by introducing the Amiga 500+, a slightly updated and cost reduced Amiga 500, officially. This model had actually been introduced the year before to meet good sales of the Amiga 500. Viewed as a game machine, especially in Europe, this model was criticized for not being able to run a few Amiga 500 games, instead of praised for the numerous improvements to the system software.
By this time the Amiga 500 and 500+ were showing signs of obsolescence, even as a game machine. Instead of discontinuing the product Commodore envisioned it taking the place of the Commodore 64 in the low-cost segment. To make that possible Commodore set out to design the Amiga 300, a system intended to be much cheaper than the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 itself would be replaced by Amiga 1200, also under development.
When the Amiga 300 was finally realized it turned out that due to manufacturing issues the model would be more expensive to assemble than the arguably superior Amiga 500+. This did not discourage Commodore from beginning manufacture, expecting the issues to be worked out over time, but with the result that they had to price the Amiga 300 higher than originally intended.
To reflect this they re-branded the Amiga 300 into the Amiga 600 and marketed it as a compacted and improved Amiga 500, emphasizing its built in hard drive controller and PCMCIA expansion port. This caused problems, as some users came to believe the Amiga 600 was Commodore's intended upgrade for the now five year old Amiga 500, and Commodore received criticism from both users and software developers.
Shortly after releasing the Amiga 600 Commodore announced that two new super Amigas would be released at the end of the year. In classical Osborne style, consumers decided to wait for the new Amigas and Commodore had to close their Australian office in face of plummeting sales. At the same time, Commodore's foray into the highly competitive PC market failed to bear fruit and Commodore was forced to bring it to a halt. This contributed to Commodore's 1992 profits falling to an unimpressive $28 million dollars[1], and made the need for a successful new Amiga launch all that more critical.
In October 1992, Commodore released the A1200 and the A4000: Each featured the new AGA chipset and the third release of AmigaOS.
In 1993, menaced by console giants Sega and Nintendo, Commodore marketed the CD32 in a desperate attempt to save their business. The CD32 was one of the earliest CD-based consoles and was also the world's first 32-bit game machine, with specifications similar to the A1200.
The last Amiga released by Commodore was the A4000T, in 1994.
[edit] Amiga in the United States
Mass-market Amigas were then considerably cheaper than PCs and Macs at the time. This factor helped to boost sales in the more price-conscious European markets, but it also led to Commodore being viewed in U.S. markets as a producer of cheap "game machines". This perception was furthered by the fact that most Commodore retail outlets were toy stores, and marketing campaigns were woefully mismatched with the status-conscious American public. Overall, the Amiga was very successful in Europe, but it sold less than a million units in the U.S..
Other people argue that in the U.S. market, the IBM PC was already the dominant market force, especially in the workplace. Potential buyers first question was often, "Is it IBM compatible?", allowing the user to "take work home" or more often take software home to install on their own machines. As a result, the U.S. market tended to be technophiles enamored of the Amiga's software/hardware, iconoclasts who disliked IBM, and video or graphic arts users.
[edit] Bankruptcy
In 1994, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and its assets were purchased by Escom, a German PC manufacturer, who created the subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. They re-released the A1200 and A4000T, and introduced a new 68060 version of the A4000T.
However, Escom in turn went bankrupt in 1997. The Amiga brand was then sold to another PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000, which had announced grand plans for it. However, in 2000, Gateway dropped the Amiga brand.
[edit] Amiga, Inc.
The current owner of the trademark, Amiga, Inc., has licensed the rights to make hardware using the Amiga brand to a UK computer vendor, Eyetech Group, Ltd, which was founded by some former UK employees of Commodore International. They are currently selling the AmigaOne via an international dealer network. The AmigaOne is a PowerPC computer designed to run the last remnants of AmigaOS, which was itself licensed to a Belgian-German company, Hyperion Entertainment.
Only a very few Amiga clones were ever produced, as both Commodore and subsequent owners of the trademark refused to license the Amiga technology to third-party manufacturers.
Today, Amigas running AmigaOS version 3.9 and earlier are now considered "Classic" Amigas, as opposed to the new Amiga Inc./Eyetech/Hyperion models. Due to its popularity as a gaming platform, many people incorrectly refer to the Amiga as a games console (even though it is a fully-featured computer). However, there are many "Classic" Amigas still in use around the world. A popular use for the classic Amiga is as an automated readerboard for local community-access TV stations.
