30 Jan
2010
30 Jan
'10
6:07 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2010 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: Atari/Commodore hybrid, was Re: General religious wars (was
Re:Editor religious wars)
What was truly the ST's major flaw was its
display, while obviously a huge
improvement for its time of 85', once the Amiga and Apple Mac II computers
hit the scene with far higher resolutions and deeper on-screen at the same
time color palletes, the ST's really began to lag. This was further
compounded by the very slow introduction of upgrades to the Atari TOS,
small incremental changes were made, while the Amiga OS and especially the
Mac OS made large, noticable jumps in their features... this further
hindered the ST's which quickly lost their polish and shine in the
competing marketplace.
Curt
The ST had that monochrome (cheap too at the time I think) 640x400 flicker
free display perfect for doing work on. Mac II computers that could do VGA
resolutions were many times the price of an ST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II
"The Macintosh II was designed by hardware engineers Michael Dhuey
(computer) and Brian Berkeley (monitor). A basic system with 20 Mb drive and
monitor cost about $5200, A complete color-capable system could cost as much
as $10,000 once the cost of the color monitor, video card, hard disk,
keyboard and RAM were added.."
The ST was always priced for entry level users to compete against the Mac
line plus you could play games on it. They also had one of the cheapest
laser printers at the time (granted used the ST CPU to do the real work).