On July 23, 1985, Commodore introduced its Amiga 1000. The world wasn’t ready. Dave Haynie said there were no 1980s computers—just 1970s and 1990s—and the Amiga pulled the industry into the 1990s.

A typical setup cost nearly $2,000. Its custom chipset delivered up to 4,096 colors, stereo sound, and a GUI, while the OS offered full preemptive multitasking. It ran on a Motorola 68000 at 7.14 megahertz with 256 KB RAM, booting from a single floppy.

Unlike the Macintosh, Lisa, or Atari ST, the Amiga used true preemptive multitasking, akin to Windows 95, though it lacked memory protection. Early software was unstable, but by 1991 developers had learned to code for the new environment.

Commodore sold roughly 4.91 million units before going bankrupt <9 years later. Despite marketing missteps, passionate users kept the platform alive, and today the Amiga remains a symbol of technology ahead of its time.