The Atari 1200XL fiasco
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The Atari 1200XL fiasco
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Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#2Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL.
They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#3Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
MS has unfortunately now fallen greatly from that, and gotten onto the same aggressive and hostile trendchasing practices as the rest of Big Tech. Only their legacy keeps them from totally losing the market at this point.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#4Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
I love the C64 but the Atari 8-bit line was fine indeed (one of my first exposures to home computing was Star Raiders at a family friends house - blew me away). Archer Maclean, author of Dropzone (and other titles) famously labelled them the 'Porsche of home computers'.
Where I think the 64 had the edge was in the incredible SID chip and I'd argue the amazing hacks that were found for the system over the years that enhanced what the 64 was capable of.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#5Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
The big pro of the Ataris was their graphics. Replacing a frame buffer with a display list and a dedicated processor that keeps banging out pixels based on its "program" is brilliant. It's an interesting maximalist counterpoint to the Apple II's minimalist approach to color graphics.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#6Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
Atari 800 XL <3
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#7Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
Atari 800 XL <3
Thank you. I love you too.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#8Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
MS has unfortunately now fallen greatly from that, and gotten onto the same aggressive and hostile trendchasing practices as the rest of Big Tech. Only their legacy keeps them from totally losing the market at this point.
As someone that bought into WinRT, saw it as .NET 1.0 done right, and went through all the technology reboots between Windows 8 and WinUI 3.0/WinAppSDK, I can only double down on that remark.
It was gone so bad that most Windows developers, me included, advise focusing on Win32/Windows Forms/WPF, at BUILD 2024 WPF got back into the spotlight as official Windows GUI framework (WinUI 3.0 keeps being years away from feature parity with UWP, let alone WPF), even Office and XBox teams rather reach out to React Native than bothering to make XAML C++ in WinUI 3.0 work.
Check the agenda for BUILD 2025, hardly anything related WinUI 3.0 / WinAppSDK.
And if you want to have some fun, come around into the Github discussion issues from all the related repos.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#9Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
The Atari line was much better at scrolling, had a much much better master palette, supported display lists (nicer than setting up interrupts in the C64) and the POKEY had some advantages over the SID, not just the extra channel but also in doing beefy sound effects.
I don't think any of this is denied by C64 fans.
The C64 on the other hand could push nearly 6x the sprite data per line, had Color RAM for more interesting tile work, the SID was more capable for music, and it had much much better support for high resolution graphics.
For their time they were very comparable but when (ab)used just right the C64 can do a neat NES impression. The Atari can't do that, but it can do some bonkers 3D using the super low resolution modes.
Re: The Atari 1200XL fiasco
#10Microsoft was one of the first companies who fully internalized the importance of seamless backwards compatibility. The lessons had been around for a while, such as the fate of the 1200XL. They would have done a lot better, even at a higher price, if they had focused on it. The Atari 8-bit line had a lot going for it and was arguably superior (flame wars incoming, Atari army please help me) in many ways than the C64.
The Atari line was much better at scrolling, had a much much better master palette, supported display lists (nicer than setting up interrupts in the C64) and the POKEY had some advantages over the SID, not just the extra channel but also in doing beefy sound effects. I don't think any of this is denied by C64 fans. The C64 on the other hand could push nearly 6x the sprite data per line, had Color RAM for more interes…
The 6502-based Atari computers had the CPU clock held at 80% higher than the C64. That must have been a very significant impact at a time when the CPU had to do most of the work.