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Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

My main explanation in 2024 is that Microsoft is Microsoft, no matter what they sell

… My main explanation in 2024 is that Microsoft is Microsoft, no matter what they sell. Microsoft is a business machine like nobody have seen before, they fail at zillions of projects and acquisitions but they continue to exist and growth! Think that Apple found their way very late on so business wise Commodore was doomed, it is not about the hardware. I remember in the late 80s joking to my friends spending money on a Sound Blaster and a CGA... VGA.... SuperVGA. I developed in assembler for the 68x line and just after I learnt some x86 I couldn't believe you need to know about offsets for pointers. But Microsoft is Microsoft and Intel was Intel. The 386 line changed everything. It is documented in the Andy Groove book. This is not personal with your comment but I think several times in HN the community doesn't understand the complexity about going to market and touching the really complex business reality. This goes far from using fancy programming languages, frameworks, etc. Even receiving huge investments.

Original discussionAmiga's final days as chronicled by the Village Voice 30 years ago77 source comments · at import
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SN

The Amiga was dead the second they put all of those whiz-bang chips in them that allowed them to do things that the PC and Mac couldn't do. One company cannot out-innovate thousands for long-- so everything the Amiga could do in 1985, the PC could do better by 1987 with ISA cards from thousands of different manufacturers. HAM in 1985 was great. VGA in 1987 was better. 2x 8-bit stereo channels in 1985 was great. SoundBlaster CMS in 1987 wasn't better, but it didn't take long before 16-bit audio hit the PC. Video overlay with the A2000 was great, and carved out a niche in AV production for decades. But again, VGA was better, ubiquitous GUI accelerators like the Mach32 made windows fly so fast the Amiga could only dream, and frankensteining accelerators into a closed "complete" system was not the answer people were looking for. Hell I had, and still have, my A2000 and remember the torturous…

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In my view it is entirely about the hardware. By the time the Amiga 1200 came out, PC makers could sell you a 33 MHz 486 with <10 cycle multiply, and VESA graphics card with convenient 1 byte/pixel graphics memory arrangement. Against this, muh blitter and HAM and dual playfield mode means nothing. Your dad's bitplane games might be smoother on the Amiga, meanwhile Wing Commander looks like nothing you have ever seen before and let's not even get on to Wolfenstein 3D. (As a kindness to Amiga fans, I am not even going to mention Doom or Syndicate.) The PC games ended up better, and RIP Amiga.

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SN

>The 386 line changed everything. The i386 was first offered for sale approximately 12 months after the Amiga launched.

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