I always thought even though the Mac was black & white the screen resolution was much nicer than the Amiga.
That being said I preferred the Amiga.
The Amiga was a bargain in comparison, but it was not without its flaws, like all early machines. I had an A500 with a 1084 monitor, and the flicker at high res was bothersome to me. I later upgraded to an A3000 w/VGA monitor, and it was a vast improvement. I ran at 640x400 for everything at that point.
I think you are underestimating the price of "flicker fixers" at the time. I looked up the price of a Microway flicker fixer in an old Amiga World from 1988: Over $500. You also had to add an a VGA monitor: another $400.
Still way, way better than a 2-color mac at about the same price. And it wasn't even necessary, the Amiga 1000 was amazing without it.
The Amiga was ahead of its time in many ways, and the pre-emptive multitasking was fantastic, but claiming it was some paragon doesn't help anyone. If you wanted a fun home machine attached to a TV, it was great. Even a fun home machine attached to a monitor. If you wanted a business machine with a monitor, it wasn't the safest or best choice, if only due to a lack of software.
16 colors is still way better for games than 2 color black-and-white. The fact that the Amiga could achieve 4096 colors in a world where 16 colors was the norm, was astonishing. The resolution did not matter. The capabilities mattered, and the Amiga was far more capable in every way than the Mac. The mac had 1-channel 8-bit sound, the Amiga had 4-channel stereo 8-bit sound, and was capable of 14-bit sound. So go nitpick some more if you want to, I don't care, but I won't be responding to you anymore.
In what universe 512x342 was better that 640x400 ?
There was an add-on called a "Flicker Fixer" that cached the video signal and emitted VGA-signals at twice the pixel clock and horizontal refresh rate. The Amiga 3000 had one built in.
The ECS and AGA chipsets supported "Productivity mode" that emitted VGA signals but ECS supported only four colours in this mode. All games used the TV modes. "Multisync" monitors that could switch between VGA and television refresh rates were expensive, so few people had them.
Also remember the Amiga was competing with the Mac II line for most of its life. Yes, it was much more expensive... but we are comparing specs, and you could get Mac II displays that supported 256 colors out of 16 million (24-bit.) The Amiga didn't have 24-bit color until 1992.
Nope, at the time the flicker fixer was about $100. The monitor didn't cost that much either. I had both, I was not rich, I was a kid who saved up some money.
>Also remember the Amiga was competing with the Mac II line for most of its life.
We're talking about the original Macintosh computer released in Jan 1984, and the original Amiga 1000 released in July 1985. Don't move the goalposts.
The Mac II was not released until 1987, and it had a 68020 CPU. The system you should be comparing it to is the Amiga 2000 with 68020 card. The Mac II was released at a ridiculous price of $3700. It really makes the Amiga look like a bargain - the price for an Amiga 2000 with 68020 was $1495, you could easily buy two of them for the price of one Mac II.
>The Amiga didn't have 24-bit color until 1992.
I don't care? The topic was the original Mac vs the original Amiga 1000. Not wherever you want to take this conversation.
Fair enough on the Mac II. They were very expensive and a rip off! Also, early Mac OS sucked.
Technically the Amiga could display a rock solid hires picture but only on a special monitor that I personally never saw.
The priority on the Mac was to have a high quality monitor for black and white graphics. They put a lot of effort into drawing libraries to make the most of in-built display.
The result was that the Amiga was perfectly fine for playing games or light word processing but if you actually needed to stare at a word processor or spreadsheet for 8 hours a day you really wanted a Mac.
Apple in the 90's was cirlcing the drain, nobody wanted an overpriced black-and-white computer except die-hard apple fans, and Apple only exists today because Microsoft bailed them out. Too bad Microsoft didn't invest in Amiga instead.
There were even C64, Apple II, IBM PC-DOS, and Atari ST emulators for the Amiga.