We could’ve had Amigas, but Commodore was run by morons

I’ll die on this hill: if Commodore had half a clue, we’d all be using Amigas today.

Mockup of modern Amiga OS

Not Windows. Not Mac. Not Linux duct-taped together by a guy in a basement somewhere named Doug.

Amigas.

Got my start on a VIC-20 back in ’83 ... my dad won it in a damn raffle, because of course he did. That beige little toaster was my gateway drug. I was 11, and suddenly this weird, blinking chunk of plastic and silicon wasn’t just a machine, it was my machine. I could make it do things. Real things. It cracked my brain wide open and rewired it.

Then came the C64 — the king. That thing had soul. SID chip sound, smooth-ass scrolling, color. At the time, it made IBM PCs look like beige typewriters with delusions of grandeur.

Then came the C128. And honestly? Whatever. It was like putting a spoiler on a lawn mower. More buttons, fancy case, more memory but same grind.

But then... the Amiga 500.

That machine was the future wrapped in molded plastic. Fat Agnus, Super Denise, Paula... those weren’t just chips. They were goddamn wizardry. Custom silicon that could multitask, animate, and make actual music while IBM was still busy farting out beeps through a case fan. It could do things no one else could touch. And it did them fast. Smooth. Gracefully.

And Commodore? They took this miracle and flushed it.

Because they didn’t know what they had. Or maybe they did, and just didn’t care. Hard to say which is worse.

Let’s break it down, since apparently no one in Commodore’s boardroom ever did:

The Marketing Was Embarrassing

They never got over being “the C64 company.” Which, okay, the C64 was great. But they kept trying to sell the Amiga like it was just another toy. Cheap plastic keyboard, kiddie fonts, bundled games. No real messaging for professionals, creators, or power users.

And in the US? Forget it. Their marketing was basically "Hey kids, look — colors!" Meanwhile, Apple was out here selling a lifestyle.

You couldn’t price the thing like a high-end machine and also pitch it like it came out of a cereal box.

The Chipset Was Brilliant, Then Left to Rot

The custom chips — Fat Agnus, Super Denise, Paula (Just to name a few) — were mind-blowing for the time. But Commodore got lazy. The architecture didn’t evolve fast enough. Graphics moved on. Sound moved on. 3D hit the scene and the Amiga shrugged and said “meh.”

Instead of building the next-gen AAA chipset, they gutted R&D and watched the PC clone market eat their lunch.

The PC world standardized, scaled, got cheaper and faster. Amiga stayed niche, weird, and underfunded.

Management Was a Tire Fire

You want to know who killed the Amiga? Start with the guys in suits.

They cut R&D. They slashed future development. They ignored what developers needed. They killed the momentum with boneheaded decisions. And the whole time, they acted like the tech would sell itself.

Spoiler: it didn’t.

They Never Figured Out Software or Serious Use

Amiga had great software ... if you were into graphics, music, or gaming. But the big productivity stuff? Spotty. Ports were hard because of the custom hardware. Compatibility was a nightmare.

And Commodore didn’t help. They leaned into gaming, which was fun for a while... until the world moved on and they were still stuck selling Amigas as “those computers you play Lemmings on.”

They had Video Toaster. They had NewTek. They had artists and animators singing their praises. And instead of doubling down on that market, they just... did nothing.

No push. No plan. Just slow decline.

The Amiga should’ve become the standard.

It had multitasking before Windows could spell it. A real GUI that didn’t look like clip art. An audio system that wasn’t just square waves and sadness. It had the ingredients to own the 90s.

But Commodore blew it.

And now we’re all stuck in a world of OS updates that break more than they fix, GUIs that feel like committee projects, and machines that have no soul. Just specs.

All because some execs in the 80s looked at the future... and said, “Eh, let’s cut the budget.”

What Could Have Been

Imagine a world where Commodore didn’t blow it. Where they actually listened to the engineers. Funded R&D. Marketed the damn thing like it was a game-changer instead of a glorified toy.

The Amiga could’ve eaten Apple’s lunch and made Microsoft sweat through their khakis.

We’d be living in a world where:

• The OS isn’t some bloated Frankenstein built out of patches and panic.

• Your desktop multitasks like a champ, without RAM-hogging nonsense or spinning beachballs of death.

• Creators, video editors, animators, musicians got real-time tools decades before Adobe figured out how to half-ass a GPU renderer.

• 3D support wasn’t bolted on as an afterthought, but baked in from the start.

• You boot into a clean, fast UI that doesn’t try to upsell you cloud storage or nag you about updates.

• Games? Fluid. Sound? Studio-quality. Software? Beautifully optimized because everyone built for the same, elegant hardware.

Instead of constant compatibility issues, driver hell, or seventeen background processes phoning home to some data-mining server in Silicon Valley... you just used your machine.

And it worked.

That’s what we lost. Because a bunch of corporate clowns couldn't see past the next quarter’s numbers.

Commodore had the future in its hands. And they threw it all away.

Addendum: The Dream Didn’t Die — It Just Moved to the Basement

Actual screenshot of AmigaOS

Turns out, the Amiga isn’t dead — it’s just living in exile.

There’s still a crew of diehards out there keeping the lights on. AmigaOS 3.2 dropped in 2021 for the OG 68k machines like it’s no big deal. And it works. It's fast, it’s light, it boots in seconds ... no bloat, no nags, no telemetry bullshit. Just pure retro computing with the soul intact. There’s even AmigaOS 4.x for the PowerPC weirdos, if you want to get real deep in the rabbit hole. It’s niche, it’s messy, and the licensing drama could fill a Netflix docuseries… but dammit, it’s still alive.

Not because it’s profitable ... but because some people just refused to let go. And honestly? That kind of devotion deserves a salute. I kinda respect the hell out of that.