I didn't mean for this to turn into a debate, my apologies if I caused it to stay off-topic. However, it seems that if I post on an Atari board about Amiga's abilities, people get angry and when I post on an Amiga board about ST abilities, people get defensive.
I'm not denying that the A500 is an overall better personal computer than anything else out on the market when it was released, because it was! It reminds me of my old Atari 800, and that 800 was my most favorite computer of all time.
Here is what I AM saying. When the A500 was first released, it had more advanced hardware for graphics, sound, etc than ANY cell phone, word processor or dedicated sequencer that came out that year. But back around then, I considered the cell phones to have more advanced hardware for making wireless phone calls. MIDI and the DMA laser printing interface was far more "advanced hardware" on the ST than the sound/RCA & parallel printer ports on the A500.
"Advanced hardware" doesn't just pertain to co-processors, it can also be interfaces & ports. Would your ever rip out your USB, SATA and IDE stuff and once again use only RS232 and parallel ports for all of your IO?!
And adding the ports/interfaces to an A500 doesn't help much. Consider the Sega Genesis CD/32X. Since these attachments didn't come with it from the factory, it didn't get as much support as the Saturn because the Saturn HAD the CD and 32X features built in out of the box. Also, the A500 was already expensive enough without having to buy add-ons.
The only exception I can think of atm is the Video Toaster. I think that's a well supported add-on simply because there wasn't any competition (that I know of). My only regret is that I didn't get one for my A2000 or A4000 back in the day.
To sum up, there is no debate at all! To me, everything is clear. Then again, I'm the type of person to take advantage of a situation instead of being "stuck". I chose to own both Amiga's AND Atari's, so I came out ahead of most people I knew.
PS: Then again, I didn't see the purpose of owning a Mac or PC, especially since both were so easy to emulate