I loved the C64 and the Amiga. They were my first and second computer. But it's painfully clear in retrospect that Commodore never stood a chance. Jack Tramiel ran the show like a cigar-puffing industrialist straight out of a Dickens novel. There was none of Gates's vision of computing or Jobs's sense of quality from the top of the company. The Amiga line was developed almost entirely outside Commodore and then bought up and brought in house.
I wouldn't blame Tramiel for Commodore's demise either. The Amiga was a very fine platform and Tramiel is also behind the ST line (called, at that time, "Jackintosh") after departing to Atari.
The ST line was truer to the Commodore of the VIC and 64 era in that it was simple (much simpler than the Amiga), powerful (somewhat less than the Amiga) and inexpensive.
At that time, nobody was predicting the collapse of the PC market around the IBM PCs (which were much more expensive than the home computers of the mid-to-late 80's and much clunkier).
