arstechnica.com— The second installment of our series on the history of the Amiga picks up with the birth of the company and the appearance of the first Amiga PC.
Aug 13, 2007View in Crawl 4
It is true Jack was (by all pubic accounts) not a saint but (IMHO) he at least had a better vision for the home computer market than Gould? and company.Case in point the infamous Plus 4. According to an interview with Bill Herd the Plus 4 was commissioned by Jack to be a low cost competitor with the Sinclair (which had quite a bit of market share in the low end computer market) and as such it was supposed to be priced around.... 60-70 USD. However after Jack (and took a bunch of key people with him) the remaining staff at Commodore got a hold of the project and the price point jumped to around 200-300 USD (which placed in in competition with the Commodore 64s market). The result.... the Plus 4 did horribly and eventually Commodore killed it. Ironically when the remaining inventory of Plus 4s were liquidated (at 60-70 USD a unit... which was the original price point and market they were supposed to sell too) they sold very well.
I had an Amiga 500+ and it was a dream machine. I used to knock up animations in Deluxe Paint II, and splice them together with music made in Octamed to form my own cruddy demos on bootable disc. For old skool jungle ravers in the UK, did you know that Mickey Finn and Aphrodite created the classic track Some Justice on an Amiga? Great games too, F15 Strike Eagle 2, Geoff Crammonds F1 GP.
pixelvisionAug 13, 2007
Amiga fanboys have integrity
damndjAug 13, 2007
Always wondered where the heck Guru Meditation came from. Love these articles. Can't wait for the next one.
antdudeAug 13, 2007
I wished I had an Amiga or access to one back in those days.
kaffieneAug 13, 2007
GF2 Rocked! And it was a shareware game! Man I miss the Amiga so much - the machine and the community was the best.
andywebb95Aug 14, 2007
It is true Jack was (by all pubic accounts) not a saint but (IMHO) he at least had a better vision for the home computer market than Gould? and company.Case in point the infamous Plus 4. According to an interview with Bill Herd the Plus 4 was commissioned by Jack to be a low cost competitor with the Sinclair (which had quite a bit of market share in the low end computer market) and as such it was supposed to be priced around.... 60-70 USD. However after Jack (and took a bunch of key people with him) the remaining staff at Commodore got a hold of the project and the price point jumped to around 200-300 USD (which placed in in competition with the Commodore 64s market). The result.... the Plus 4 did horribly and eventually Commodore killed it. Ironically when the remaining inventory of Plus 4s were liquidated (at 60-70 USD a unit... which was the original price point and market they were supposed to sell too) they sold very well.
craftsmarcosAug 18, 2007
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
butchersboyAug 21, 2007
I had an Amiga 500+ and it was a dream machine. I used to knock up animations in Deluxe Paint II, and splice them together with music made in Octamed to form my own cruddy demos on bootable disc. For old skool jungle ravers in the UK, did you know that Mickey Finn and Aphrodite created the classic track Some Justice on an Amiga? Great games too, F15 Strike Eagle 2, Geoff Crammonds F1 GP.
westworldviewerFeb 12, 2008
What a great piece of journalism! Many a writer out there could use a slice of that!