Tramiel arguably mismanaged Atari worse than Warner brothers. Sure Tramiel cared about computers, but his management style was hostile to getting anything done.

I agree that the custom chips were a dead end. However the ST line could have beat the mac if management was any good. (as could/should the Amiga, though I was Atari locked at the time and so I didn't pay attention to what they were doing)

I mean I agree about Tramiel management. I was an Atari ST user from 86? 87? to 92.

But I also think there's just no way Atari Corp could have taken on e.g. Apple regardless of management. They simply didn't have the capital, market penetration, etc. to carve out a segment that big. Apple was already a big deal and although the Macintosh was not really a big success at that point, there was a giant company behind it with top tier talent, and lots of cash.