I can see how that was your view if you came in on the tail end but it definitely wasn't always so. I've owned quite a few of them and if you had the workload they delivered - at a price. But for what they could do they would be 3 to 4 years ahead of the curve for a long time, and then in the space of a few short years it all went to pieces. Between NVIDIA and the incredible clock speed improvements on the x86 SGI was pretty much a walking zombie that did not manage to change course fast enough. But CPU, graphics pipeline, machine and software to go with it is an expensive game to play if the number of units is smaller than any of your competitors that have specialized.
I'm grateful they had their day, fondly remember IRIX and have gotten many productive years out of SGI hardware, my career would definitely not have taken off the way it did without them, in fact the whole 'webcam/camarades.com/ww.com' saga would have never happened if the SGI Indy did not ship with a camera out of the box.
I'm grateful they had their day, fondly remember IRIX and have gotten many productive years out of SGI hardware, my career would definitely not have taken off the way it did without them, in fact the whole 'webcam/camarades.com/ww.com' saga would have never happened if the SGI Indy did not ship with a camera out of the box.