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.... on July 23, 1985 technology genuinely changed forever. At New York's Lincoln Center, as a full orchestra scored the evening and all its employees appeared in tuxedos, Commodore unveiled the work of its newly acquired Amiga subsidiary for the first time. The world finally saw a real Amiga 1000 and all its features. A baboon's face at 640x400 resolution felt life-changing, and icons like Blondie's Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol came onstage to demo state-of-the-art technology like a paint program.
Today, Amiga—specifically its initial Amiga 1000 computer—officially turns 30. The Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, CA will commemorate the event this weekend (July 25 and 26) with firsthand hardware exhibits, speakers, and a banquet where the Viva Amiga documentary will be shown. It's merely the most high-profile event among dozens of Amiga commemorative ceremonies across the world, from Australia to Germany to Cleveland.
What's the big deal? While things like the Apple II and TRS-80 Model 100 preceded it, the Amiga 1000 was the first true PC for creatives. As the CHM describes it, the Amiga 1000 was "a radical multimedia machine from a group of thinkers, tinkerers, and visionaries which delivered affordable graphics, animation, music, and multitasking interaction the personal computer world hadn't even dreamt of." It pioneered desktop video and introduced PCs to countless new users, rocketing Amiga and Commodore to the top for a brief moment in the sun.
Amiga fans, assemble!
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by ese002 on Monday July 27 2015, @06:43AM
Really a shame, too... Their IIgs could have posed a very serious challenge to the Amiga and IBM-PC computers if they'd given it the support it deserved/needed.
I don't think so unless you take a rather broad view of what "support" means.
While the Apple IIgs was a big step up from the Apple IIe, it was too little and too late. The hardware was outclassed in every way by the Amiga and Atari ST. In compute power it was outclassed by the IBM PC AT and clones of the day too.
It could have and should have been introduced in 1983. Then it would have kicked butt. But on introduction in 1986 it was an 8/16 bit machine running at 2.8Mhz trying to keep pace with 16/32 bit competitors running at 8Mhz.
1986 should have been about time for a second generation upgrade. WDC never introduced a follow on to the 65816 but I think they would have if Apple was on board.
Of course, an Amiga class Apple IIgs would have been a threat to the Macintosh and that is something Apple would not allow.