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346 points BirAdam | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.445s | source
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tombert ◴[] No.39944744[source]
There's a few cases in the history of computers where it feels like the world just "chose wrong". One example is the Amiga; the Amiga really was better than anything Apple or Microsoft/IBM was doing at the time, but for market-force reasons that depress me, Commodore isn't the "Apple" of today.

Similarly, it feels like Silicon Graphics is a case where they really should have become more standard. Now, unlike Amiga, they were too expensive to catch on with regular consumers, but I feel like they should have become and stayed the "standard" for workstation computers.

Irix was a really cool OS, and 4Dwm was pretty nice to use and play with. It makes me sad that they beaten by Apple.

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epcoa ◴[] No.39944939[source]
> the Amiga really was better than anything Apple or Microsoft/IBM was doing at the time

At the time. A brief moment in time, and then they had no path forward and were rapidly steamrolled. Nothing was "chosen wrong" in this aspect.

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1. logicprog ◴[] No.39945759[source]
> they had no path forward

This is I think the premise that you and people like me who think Amiga could have gone on to do great things disagree on, I think. Most Amiga fans would say that it totally had a path forward, or at least there is no evidence that it didn't, and the failure to follow that path therefore it wasn't an inherent technical problem, but a problem of politics and management. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

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2. ◴[] No.39946173[source]
3. ◴[] No.39946379[source]