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One reason: stigma.

All I recall from childhood/teen years is "IBM compatible PC" a mantra on every TV commercial IBM or others produced.

A PC was for business and you were rich or a fool to spend thousands on something so useless to a regular Joe.

Apple was even more expensive and even less common than a PC and even so Apple was quirky and drew pictures, ATARI and Commodore were for games.

They were in totally different worlds. Back then I wouldn't have even thought to have one computer that did everything.




I dunno about that. At least where I grew up, if your family had a Mac or an Amiga, it was like you had domesticated a unicorn. Everybody wanted to see it, play with it. It marked you out as a member of a family possessed of either great sophistication or enormous wealth, either of which translates easily to status.

If there was any stigma, it was for being on the opposite end of the spectrum -- having a computer whose primary selling point was that it was cheap, like a Commodore 64. The C64 was a fine machine for the price, but nobody was going to ooooh and aaah over it they way they would if you took them into your Dad's study and showed them MacPaint.


Yeah.

I was the only one, among my circle of friends owning computers, that had a PC instead of an Amiga.

My dad thought the Amiga were only good for playing games, for anyone serious about computers, PC was the way to go.

So I was left reading 68000 Assembly manuals, some Amiga reference books, and playing with them on computer parties we used to organize.

In any case, the only way to buy any of them in my home country was on credit.


Agreed, Atari ST and Amiga especially never caught on much with businesses ... they were definitely seen as games machines, even though their capabilities were certainly on par with the IBM clones.


And Tandy? :)




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