Don't know if you remember, but Commodore was investigated by congress. Seemed that the Amiga (and Commodore) was purposely sabotaged into foreclosure. One of the big investors (from Saudi-Arabia) was supposedly killing the company for MicroSoft, in which he also had a big share in. Don't know where it went from there, kind of just magically "went away" along with Commodore.
-Tinman57
I had heard that there was some investigation into whether or not Commodore had been acting in a fiscally irresponsible manner prior to their bankruptcy. But that complaint was supposedly initiated by a group of shareholders - and that sort of thing is looked at automatically during a bankruptcy proceeding anyway. I hadn't heard of anybody (Saudi or otherwise) in collusion with Microsoft to kill the Amiga. Not that they needed to. Amiga never successfully penetrated the corporate business environment. It was too...
weird and innovative for the era. The IBM-PC was already out and making major inroads on corporate desktops - more because of the name IBM behind it than anything else. And it was an obvious and visually understandable "business" machine.
I personally always believed the Amiga was just a bit too ahead of its time when it came out. Very few people really understood what it was about beyond the oo-ahs of the bouncing ball and Betty Boop animations. And it was also much too expensive to be justifiably affordable for most people who were interested in it. It was supposedly targeted at business, yet it had virtually no productivity software available for it. And Commodore itself was also indelibly linked with the VIC-20 and the C64 in the minds of most corporate buyers -
and those were game machines! You could find them at Toys'R'Us and the other big discount stores. (Usually either in the hobby or toy department.)
An IBM PC, however, was sold through
professional office equipment stores, where it took its place among the more familiar accouterments of business life such as photocopiers, adding machines, and electric typewriters. Guys wearing neckties and wingtips would come out to discuss them with you. There were
never any kids in those stores. And anybody that didn't look "business" (or was an obvious 'tire kicker' who came in hoping to play with the machines for an hour or two) was very politely eased out the door after a very brief conversation about PCs and prices. (
This ain't a playground folks!)
Sure the IBM was boring. It was freekin' beige! "Pacific Basin Beige" to be precise. It used commodity components. It lacked the pizzaz of the Amiga's engineering and graphics.
But it
could run Lotus 1-2-3...
And DBase II/III.
And you could get a version of IBM's DisplayWrite wordprocessor for it.
And you could get a card that turned it into an IBM 5250 terminal - which could then connect directly to a "real computer" such as an IBM System/360 mainframe.
Two guesses which PC looked like a better deal for business buyers? And besides..."Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" as common IT wisdom used to put it back then. (And
that much was completely true BTW.)
So no...I can't buy the Saudi/Microsoft conspiracy theory. The Amiga had already missed the boat as a product since it didn't really fit the market niche (i.e. business offices) it was supposedly going after. And that would have been a fatal flaw even if the Amiga hadn't been torpedoed by Commodore's near legendary internal power struggles plus their track record for poor operational judgment and fiscal management.
I really think it was just a case of the wrong product, for the wrong market, at the wrong price, by the wrong company, at the wrong time.
Such a shame. It truly
was a lovely and unique machine.
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