A Thorough History Of The Amiga

July 23rd, 2005 · No Comments

Reading on Slashdot that the Amiga is 20 years old today, I decided to link to a very thorough history of it that someone wrote. A random excerpt:

While Commodore were focussing their resources into the Amiga, the Tramiel-owned Atari had not abandoned their goal of 16-bit domination. Through the use of off-the-shelf hardware and software the company constructed their own 16-bit platform - the Atari ST - in record time. This used a 68k port of the CP/M operating system, which was integrated with the GEM user interface. The result was a single tasking OS that required a love of the colour green to be used over a long period. However, its quick design made it significantly cheaper and easier to manufacture, appearing several months before the Commodore AMIGA. In spite of their initial defeat, Jack Tramiel demonstrated a willingness to dominate his former company in the market place.

Just 11 months after Commodore had bought the ailing Amiga Inc, they unveiled the product of that union. The Commodore Amiga (the initial name of the Amiga 1000) was unveiled at the Lincoln Centre in New York on July 23rd in a media frenzy. For the launch Commodore had hired Andy Warhol & Debbie Harry (lead singer of Blondie) to demonstrate the Amiga’s graphics capabilities using Island Graphics Graphicraft. This was accompanied by a full score synthesized by Roger Powell and Mike Boom, author of Musicraft.

The Commodore Amiga was officially launched in September 1985 for £1,500. The world’s first Amiga magazine - Amiga World - was launched soon after. At the time this price was a major detractor that placed it in the high-end region occupied by the Apple Macintosh. In comparison, the Atari ST was selling for less than half the price. It was later recognized that this was Commodores’ first mistake. Rather than promoting the Amiga as a professional machine, they sought to replicate the success of the Atari ST. However, the Atari ST had built a steady market since its launch that made it a difficult adversary, with the Amiga playing second fiddle to the ST regarding game releases.

It is difficult to indicate just how advanced the Amiga was compared to other systems. Apple had a graphical interface but was largely restricted to the black and white monitor display, whilst PCs were still horrible text based systems. The Amiga also had an ace up its sleeve by the fact that it was TV compatible and could be used for editing footage. A task that even now the Mac and PC cannot do as standard. The Juggler demo, consisting of a character juggling reflective balls in a 3D environment, attracted customers to the graphical capabilities. This spurred Electronic Arts to rewrite their IBM PC package, Prism (which was an enhanced port of Doodle for Xerox machines) and release it for the Amiga during September. The rewrite was christened Deluxe Paint and the rest is history.

Believe me when I say that this is an extremely thorough and detailed history that will make many remeniss on the good old days. When I was growing up I always wanted an Amiga 500 since I first saw it in all its glory in a newspaper ad. However my mother never got one for me , probably to help make sure I was an adjusted 8 year old . On the plus side she did get me a PC when I was older which became my new obsession quite quickly