500 owners were too cheap to buy new machines and pirated all their software?

[bdb]

That is one opinion, and it's mine.

TL;DR

I have always lived in small towns in the States, had no access to computer clubs, limited Internet access, and never heard of "car boot swap meets" until I read about them in forums like this one. I copied my disks, so I could use the back-ups later, if needed, and was never much of a gamer. When I was 27, I bought my first Amiga (it was 1986 - a year late), I was already working full-time with little time free (I was still paying for catalog items with a mailed in check). I didn't pirate games, since no one I knew had a home computer, unless they were rich (and I didn't know any rich people). One friend, a corporate lawyer, only has a C128. So, this has always been a moot point to me.

 

[YouKnowWho]

The oddity in that 5M is that generally US is patriotic to US products [look at Apple] but I could never understand WHY Commodore didn't make it big, they were in such a good position...

You make a lot of good points @Karlosjackel. First, that whole patriotic thing...I am looking at Apple, and I'm wondering what happened here with Commodore Amiga. I mean, we have this Toaster - and it's a hell of a solution. With flyer, it's already basically digital back in 1993, with exception of speed of video content transfer that DV/FireWire allowed for FinalCut/iMovie - which is a difference maker to usability. Consumer cameras becoming digital video (DV/FireWire) helps video editing become the killer app consumers want. What is a G4/G5/iMac but a Toaster setup in Pro/Consumer form? That's what many users were buying Apples for. Education, Marketing houses, content creators - suddenly it became a must have to do video. It became THE killer app for Apple. Toaster/LightWave was that exact same thing on the Commodore years earlier, yet as you note and as we know, it doesn't make it big and Commodore fails. So...my point, was it all just too early for the market? Was the market not ready for it just yet? The consumer didn't yet realize this was what they wanted and needed? Did Apple just ride the Amiga coattails by repackaging this for broader consumption?

So, piracy saved the Amiga.... In the end

So maybe it did for a while! Software/Hardware is always a balance. Again, let's look at Apple. They had the corporate/creative customers who were locked into compliance to buy expensive apps like PhotoShop, etc. And so let's look at Apple...initially they are clearly a hardware company, then they take a lot of content creating apps in-house and start to control the software side. Now they are very much a software company, and their control of the software allows them to sell the hardware. Certainly the goal is to balance revenue between the two. But they understand that the killer app is needed, people buy the hardware for it - boom! Trick is to balance and cover costs and present a value to the consumer. Apple certainly does that.

Personally, I'm reflecting on the Amiga even today...like many of us...like @bdb. It is a very impactful computer historically. I think even today it is making a significant impact to the computing community and getting no revenue reward - as it doesn't exist. (Who was first to FPGA cores?) Look at how strongly the Amiga community feels about it even today. Oh sure, there were only 5M original sold, and many of us bought the computer twice...I had the 500, then I had the 2000. As a sidebar, I've looked at the 1200 and 4000 at the time and just couldn't justify it after having the 2000. Event the amazing tower systems. At that point my 2000 had a GVP 040, a Retina, A2320 flicker fixer, A2091, MegaChip, 286 Bridge...what exactly couldn't I really do that a 1200 could...AGA games? 4000 was nice, but what was I going to do...save a second or two on a transfer or render? So that was certainly an issue for upgrading. I wasn't looking for a 2000, but a 2500 in need of serious cosmetic TLC with a spotless 6.2 just landed in my lap, and I'm looking at it closely today and thinking about it and...well, the 2000 is a heck of a machine. Video slot doesn't take up a Zorro. It has 5 Zorro slots like towers, plus ISA slots, CPU slot - it's a really smart machine. In a bunch of ways the 3000/4000 go backwards and only tower versions of those really offer what the 2000 offered. And recently I got into the DE-10 Nano and the FPGA thing, and when it comes to retro, wasn't Amiga core the driver of this FPGA retro hardware accurate concept that has become such a killer retro experience today? Even as far as Vampire. But back to reflecting on the state of compute today.

Amiga is about to turn 40 years next year, where is compute? Is it better? Every damn time I slide in a 880KB floppy into am Amiga and boot up a multitasking operating system I think to myself...'how did this crap bloat up to 20GB needed for Windows 11?

I am really starting to think that the tech industry is just creating bloatware to make us need new CPUs, GPUs, storage, etc. As in software becoming the pusher of new hardware. I just started using an old iPhone 4s for beach music, and each time I look at it I reflect on how it isn't really that big of a step back from whatever is out there today. In fact, it is better and more focused product in many ways.

With chatbots really staring around 2016, and now all this crypto, metaverse and now LLM/AI crap - it all feels like a push to use more compute and sell us new hardware. But is it really delivering to a need? Do we really need it? It's all trying to be the killer solution, but is it really? And now the whole Dead Internet Theory...I really think there is truth to it. These large companies have so much revenue riding on these stupid ads, it would make sense for them to develop tools that imitate humans and generate more ad impressions for them so they can report traffic/views and collect from the companies who advertise with them. Tech is no longer tech, it is informercials because when your revenue stream comes from pushing ads, what are you? Is this what we want?

Could we perhaps eventually go back to the simpler, more efficient, less intrusive, not personal data-collecting, no-advertising ways of the Amiga days? Is it already happening with social media and site traffic shrinking?

 

[bdb]

Could we perhaps eventually go back to the simpler, more efficient, less intrusive, not personal data-collecting, no-advertising ways of the Amiga days? Is it already happening with social media and site traffic shrinking?

No.

I see it like this: My PC crap is always 2 generations - or two Moore's Law cycles - old (or more, since I use a GTX 1080). But being the planet Earth when the interstellar highway comes through (Douglas Adams), is not a good thing; some of us have to be planted in two worlds at the same time, the vintage (Amiga), and the modern - as I type this on a PC with an AMD 3800.
Even the Amish use cell phones, sneakers, and buy groceries at my local supermarket.

 

[YouKnowWho]

@bdb - how modern does it need to be? I regularly see people with 10 year old MacBooks, and what is it exactly that they can't do? I'd argue that they actually CAN do more than they can't. For example, up to a certain OS you can still have software locally before the companies stopped offering locally installed/owned software for subscriptions to their software. It is a pathetic step backwards that you cannot just buy and install their software. How the hell are we tolerating that crap, and is THAT a step forward? Is this push to be always online a good one? Can't you be off-line and maintain productivity? Increasingly, these products don't allow it. Is that a good thing?

 

[bdb]

Modern enough to get on the net and argue over the death and partial resurrection of the Amiga, use PlayOn to capture my streaming movies and TV shows, fast enough to use HandBrake to compress my media that will then be saved on my server, and connected enough to be screwed over on *Bay and Paypal .

Can't do it all on my Amiga, but that's where I type up all my documents and cruise through Aminet each day.

 

[YouKnowWho]

So...something from 10 or 15 years ago is sufficient for you too?

I mean...if you "froze" at Windows 7 or 8 where you didn't have to have updates forced upon you like 10/11 or some new recall feature that tracks everything you do and see - would you be unable to do all the things you note?

I hear you that there are certain things we've gotten used to now, like this GUI forum we're on that wasn't possible with a BBS. But, is the Amiga THAT far from it all? I remember the first email I sent was through the Amiga via a BBS that allowed emails to be setup and messages sent for buy&sell posts. Sure, it's not a complete machine, but it's already oh so close to capabilities of today's machines, and considering that it is essentially from 1985...that's a heck of a statement to make. Perhaps in that context we can see that same basic tech has been swirling round and round...just...faster.

Funny thing...I picked up a book about the future from one of those little libraries by a couple of experts on forecasting. Book was 2003ish, so I've lived the future to be able to audit the writings. In that book a section on transistors and computers already at that time concludes that Moore's law has held up for 35 years and even at that time the performance of transistors was increasing 60% annually for a few years while the utilization of that processing speed growth by application was growing at only 20% or less. Another words we weren't using the power we had. A use case had to be developed to use all that CPU power being made, and so software became big and inefficient. Then the stupid crypto proof of compute work done scam came along for a few years to eat up GPUs, then the VR nonsense no one cared about and now we have the AI/LLM huge code to try to eat up all that compute power for the foreseeable future . Yet none of these things are very useful in solving human problems that matter, and not very well either. In fact, all of them are actually contributing to the problem via significant power inefficiencies and complete deceptions of "green" claims by the big tech companies. I mean...they surely know this, but pretend they don't. How can growth happen with these claims not being broken? Did you see this recent news?

Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

Data center emissions likely 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official figures

www.theguardian.com

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions jump 48% in five years Google's 2030 "Net zero" target looks increasingly doubtful as AI use soars.

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions jump 48% in five years

Google's 2030 "Net zero" target looks increasingly doubtful as AI use soars.

arstechnica.com

 

[YouKnowWho]

So, piracy saved the Amiga.... In the end

So let's make some assumptions to figure out the wedge sales. I'll round.

So 5M Amiga sold.
Germany 1.7M - 80% 500, 500+, 600 = 1.36M
Let's say US 2M - 66% 500/600 = 1.32M
Let's say the remaining 1.3M covers rest of world with 75% 500, 500+, 600 = 975K

Of the 5M, 3.66M were 500/500+/600, add the 1200 and we're probably at 4M - 80% of Amiga were wedges.

Maybe what happened here is that free/cheap/easy to get games/software were perhaps an initial selling point for the Amiga for young buyers who couldn't afford the cost of legit software, and then when the quality of that software didn't meet the expectations or couldn't keep up with trends - Amiga languished and died as @qz3fwd notes off the top.

Actually wait a minute...maybe piracy didn't save the Amiga and piracy didn't kill it but maybe even free software was not enough to entice sufficient user base because those games simply weren't good enough? Or...cool enough?

 

[bdb]

So...something from 10 or 15 years ago is sufficient for you too?

I think we are off-topic; rather than attacking me over my modern and vintage computers, and how I use them, the discussion was whether Commodore/Amiga was damaged and went out of business do to piracy. I believe that Ali and Gould killed the company, but currently the freely available software collections are bringing new users to the table to play vintage games. Further, I believe that we are experiencing a new period of excitement from 68-year-olds, such as myself, and users new to the Amiga due to the new hardware and software.

It doesn't matter how many Amigas were sold in the past, but those that have survived are now being refurbished and being used with the new hardware and software.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

I mean...if you "froze" at Windows 7 or 8 where you didn't have to have updates forced upon you like 10/11 or some new recall feature that tracks everything you do and see - would you be unable to do all the things you note?

I'm still on windows 7, works for me, sure I'm ready to go to Windows 12, if it ever gets there.
But a new PC would mainly be for gaming, and the main reason would be Assetto Corsa.

Funny thing...I picked up a book about the future from one of those little libraries by a couple of experts on forecasting. Book was 2003ish, so I've lived the future to be able to audit the writings. In that book a section on transistors and computers already at that time concludes that Moore's law has held up for 35 years and even at that time the performance of transistors was increasing 60% annually for a few years while the utilization of that processing speed growth by application was growing at only 20% or less. Another words we weren't using the power we had. A use case had to be developed to use all that CPU power being made, and so software became big and inefficient. Then the stupid crypto proof of compute work done scam came along for a few years to eat up GPUs, then the VR nonsense no one cared about and now we have the AI/LLM huge code to try to eat up all that compute power for the foreseeable future . Yet none of these things are very useful in solving human problems that matter, and not very well either. In fact, all of them are actually contributing to the problem via significant power inefficiencies and complete deceptions of "green" claims by the big tech companies. I mean...they surely know this, but pretend they don't. How can growth happen with these claims being broken? Did you see this recent news?

I work on meters for the main power grid here in the Netherlands, and power consumption is huge in every way, from the small data centers to the biggest ones, you can innovate all you want, but you still have a lot of heat that needs to be cooled.
And yeah crypto farms are the same, lot of heat that requires cooling.

And here in the Netherlands our powergrid is over congested in every way, even solar parks are shut down if needed and negative price is also a factor, so paying the power company to return energy to the grid.
That's how far we are here.

We haven't really thought about it all in the world on how we are doing things.
Yeah I have battery powered car, but that car is hooked up to a charger and that is connected to the power grid.
Even diesel generators hooked up to fast chargers to provide power
And a bunch of fast chargers are always directly connected to a big transformer, and that is all going to produce more heat.

My Amiga gets warm, but not as much as my old core I7 975 Extreme, the Amiga usess about 20W including monitor, my PC about ten times that in idle and about 30 times that on full load.
So go figure ....

 

[YouKnowWho]

I think we are off-topic; rather than attacking me over my modern and vintage computers, and how I use them, the discussion was whether Commodore/Amiga was damaged and went out of business do to piracy.

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES am I attacking you or is my intention to attack you or anyone. Please forgive if it came across that way. I am simply asking how much compute do "we" need really. The Amiga was relatively the same, and many computers have had very long useful lives. It seems like today the goals of the industry are to shorten that useful life or force us into some updates we don't need. For example, look at latest Apple iPhones and the AI features - instantly making all previous devices not have access to it. As if AI is not web accessible or if some dude didn't bring ChatGPT to an IBM XT PC. See what is being done there by Apple? How many of these types of choices are made by the industry without any real technical reason to force us into new hardware?

 

[qz3fwd]

I am just happy I got into Amigas ~4 years ago with all the recreations avaliable nowadays. I've built a brand new A4000D including mobo, DB, case, aluminum front panel, RTG/zorro/accel cards. It is a good time for the platform.

I agree modern software is bloated, internet protocols are inefficient, and we only utilize a fraction of the compute power in our modern devices and crap like AI/VR/etc I have little use for, and yearn for simpler times.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

The Amiga software is much simpler in every way compared to today's stuff.
And if someone really creates a good thing that I can use, then I'll buy it.

But I see a similar thing happening here, a few games got made around the 68080, so Vampire / IceDrake related.
That is targeting a very specific and small user group.

In these days I'm for simple things, it's great to see cards do speeds beyond the 68060 71E41J, but it isn't really needed.
Yeah a PiStorm can run all things, play a full HD video and MP3 music on the background, but that is not what I turn my Amiga on for.
I turn my Amiga on, to play the simple games because it's fun.

Sure, your modern pc will run Assetto Corsa and multiple monitors and a decent steering wheel setup, shifter and pedals will have you feeling you are almost driving on the real Nürburgring Nordschleife.
Yeah, I admit, that would be fun also, but definitely not simple.

And besides, if you have a driving license and a good car, then head out to the real Nordschleife and send it.
If you fear crashing your car, then let Misha Charoudin drive it or just let him 'taxi' you around the Nordschleife.

 

[YouKnowWho]

We haven't really thought about it all in the world on how we are doing things.
Yeah I have battery powered car, but that car is hooked up to a charger and that is connected to the power grid.

Boy - have you nailed it with that point @Buzzfuzz. 100% bullseye. It's really starting to get annoying and now painfully obvious that they say one thing and do exactly the opposite. It is why I no longer listen to anything they have to say and just pay attention to the actions - hence, their ads and marketing are a total waste and I wonder - who's watching this and who's approving this wasted spend?

Anyhow, on the power grid issue - it is serious and of course we know big tech is lying to us. They say they're green, and then they do the exact opposite. Because bottom line green means less consumption, and less consumption is not good for revenues, ever. But big tech is not the only liars in the room.

I always wondered about EVs you bring up, and how no one was up-front about the up-front manufacturing environmental footprint of all these EVs everyone was pushing on the public. Then a bunch of data points started to come out about average price of EV being twice that of petrol car. About bloated weight of EVs. 10,000lbs Hummer EV anyone? About what it takes to make the lithium batteries. About the rare earth materials. About tires required for these heavy cars. About the fact that EVs damage the roads twice as quickly as petrol cars due to weight and torque. No company has been transparent about the up-front manufacturing impact of their EV. As far as I know only Volvo/Polestar did a detailed audit and actually published a report that spells what we knew in our gut - it takes twice the CO2e footprint up front to make an EV vs equivalent 100% petrol car, and on average mixed grid it takes more than 1/2 the distance of a useful battery life driven before these two vehicles are on par on environmental impact, because the EV is so front loaded in CO2e emissions and so far behing a 100% petrol car before it even drives off the lot - all oil extraction and refinement costs included, just like all power grid environmental costs are included. This is the environmentally friendly solution we're pushing on the world? Not with these batteries and battery technology. Not at this weight. LINK to report: https://www.polestar.com/dato-assets/11286/1630409045-polestarlcarapportprintkorr11210831.pdf

I guess I'm just tired. I'm tired of all the deceptions and nonsense. I'm tired of all the crap being pushed upon us with little to no benefit. Amiga like you note reminds me of the simpler time, simpler and functional software and games, none of this crap. Why like just today...my iPhone is telling me to download some "occ" crap which is being pushed by news websites world wide to spy/creep/gather info on users by installing something made by Oracle apparently. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255762946.

The fact that Amiga was so clean, so simple, so efficient on power, functionality, and even today that balance of what it delivers touches us, makes us long for those times, makes us preserve the machines that delivered that experience - it all says something. Oh sure, we're here and they make us keep buying crap - but somehow they can't capture that innocence and simplicity. 40 years later...we still truly feel something about a computer and we want to still use it and enjoy that experience.

Amiga failed, and maybe it was the 80% of wedge buyers who weren't paying for the software. But if Amiga would have lived on, would we have liked what it became? Look at any tech company today - do you like what they've become? Data collecting money extracting leeches who push rapid obsolescence and marketing upon us as a key revenue stream. Earth endangering AI datacenter builders who make us believe this bloated LLM software is the future, as if we want to chat with a piece of dumb hallucinating software. Hey, new o1 OpenAI model - how many "r"s in "strawberry" - your own name? 2? You dumb billion dollar model you.

Amiga could talk from the very start, and was that the killer app for us, even when an actual human was providing the words it spoke to us on the other end? Google "do no evil" directive removed. Surveillance Capitalism - this is where we have arrived? Maybe Ali did us a favour - he made the Amiga a legend, a martyr by sparing it what it would have had to become to survive today. We never had to see it become the creepy hardware we are forced to live with today. I leave you with this...

So, why does this keep happening? Why have we had movement after movement — cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and now generative AI — that doesn’t seem like it was actually made for a real person?

Well, it’s the natural result of a tech industry that’s become entirely focused on making each customer more valuable rather than providing more value to the customer. Or, for that matter, actually understand who their customers are and what they need.

The Subprime AI Crisis

None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom

www.wheresyoured.at

 

[YouKnowWho]

I swear, I wasn't drinking yesterday. I'm just tired of he B.S. and yearn for a simpler time. I'm also quite appreciative that I was there at the peak Amiga. Am I just being nostalgic?

 

[AmigaPete]

I swear, I wasn't drinking yesterday. I'm just tired of he B.S. and yearn for a simpler time. I'm also quite appreciative that I was there at the peak Amiga. Am I just being nostalgic?

Nothing wrong with that. I lived through it as well. When I saw Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video I got physically nauseated* at the realization that Commodore had such a great technology and they wasted it. *Seriously, I couldn't watch it for years after that. Something about us Amiga users getting emotional about a piece of hardware. It's hard to explain if you didn't live through it.

 

[Tchucolate]

I don't think piracy killed the Amiga at all. I think piracy WAS an issue for software of course, but personally I used to pirate stuff I could not afford.

What does that mean?

Well, if I had £15 - £20 then I would buy a game. Then I would pirate the rest.... Lets say each month there were 10 game releases, I might buy 1 and pirate 9. If any of those were great, then I would buy them. I was a kid, money was short. If I had richer parents, more software would have been bought. But Id have honestly pirated stuff anyway, JUST to try it out. Some hidden gems were found via piracy. Think of that as the ultimate "cover disk". Try it and if you like it but it!

From my viewpoint VERY few lost sales for games/apps companies. For example, I pirated a copy of Real 3D a 3D rendering app, then I bought it for £400, yep, £400 that was a LOT in those days. Later, I pirated other 3D apps, to try them out, but did not buy any others, as I was happy with Real 3D.

Now, thats me, thats how I rocked in my Dragon 32 days, Commodore 64 days etc. I ALWAYS bought a lot of games, and pirated the rest. But I can imagine there were some people out there, who literally pirated EVERYTHING. And thats sad. Surely they had SOME money to buy games. But there we are.