If enough people bought the product to justify the release of a newer model, perhaps it was not so absurd afterall.
Depends on the perspective and POV I suppose; if you like Trevor are satisfied with sales in the range of 200-300 units in the products entire life span, then I guess you're right. If you on the other hand expected it to be an evolution of the platform, a stepping stone towards re-establishing the "Amiga" as something more than a very tiny and constantly diminishing group of people that are counted in the hundreds in total (and split in several fractions on top of that), then I think it's very absurd. Trevor took on the role of providing a HW future for the platform, and his answer to the problem was the X1000. And it has meant nothing at all to the platforms evolution. It probably scared more people away from the platform than a complete absence of new HW would, because then there can at least be hope and dreams of a future, but when this was touted to be the next step in the platforms evolution it effectively crushed all hope of a realistic, sustainable future in many peoples minds, I'm sure of that. We are talking about a 2005 performance level computer that essentially is more expensive than Apple's latest power horse (with rather extreme specs, that also has the substantial Apple brand tax included), it was from the beginning designed on a dead-end CPU and it has specs that nobody (not even Trevor) knows the purpose of. How is this not absurd?
Either the initial investment was completely recouped or the investors did not mind spending money on a project that they enjoy. If someone is so successful in his or her primary career that he or she could run a non-profitable computer hardware business "just for fun", who are we to tell this person to not do it?
Trevor could commission Varisys to design a red/white ball-shaped PCB with pink propellers in titan all over it and other pointless features, performance from the last decade and sell it for $5000 to boing-ball loyals (who would definitely buy it, at least a hundred or so, as long as it's "the real", drivers be damned), it's a free world. But it would be very absurd, as would it be if these things wouldn't be allowed for discussion, when it's a matter of the direction of the platform evolution. Sure, you may be of the opinion that insanely priced PPC HW with unneeded features is the way forward for the platform, and of course you can advocate that all over the Internet. But I'm of a different opinion, and I reserve the rights to express my opinions as well.
I find your entire argumentation to be deeply inconsistent. A few posts back you accused A-Eon of being too incompetent on the management level to ask more than one design house for price quotes, and now you accuse them of not treating it like a hobby and finding people willing to slave away for nothing so they can have a product to sell...
What, people with skills doing their own product development work in-house, instead of paying other companies to do it for them, automatically equals to "hobby" or "slavery" now? This is how it's done in small firms in every industry, everywhere!
You completely underestimate the complexities of the hardware business.
No I don't think so, i'm actually quite certain it's indeed extremely complex, but that wasn't even the point.
If someone finds a severe bug in the X1000 board design that causes data loss, Varisys are fully liable and they are big enough that A-Eon would have a good chance of receiving funds from them. If you have somebody design something for free, then you are fully liable for any issues with the design. If your hobby hardware designer made a mistake, "free" can turn into "extremely costly".
Take an insurance policy like everyone else, if you are worried about these things...?
Other than that, from a consumer perspective, I think Genesi/bPlan (who had their HW competence in-house) managed the Articia-S catastrophe *a lot* better than Eyetech did (who didn't have any in-house HW competence, and chose to buy everything (like development and manufacturing) from external entities).
The difference was significant.
Personally, I would feel very uneasy to pay a six figure sum for a production run of a hardware design that was done by some guy on a shoestring budget. When you are selling custom computer hardware, the designing phase is absolutely crucial and should receive sufficient attention and resources. (Even very experienced engineers can run into expensive hardware problems as the Articia S fiasco showed.)
As the Articia-S thing showed, a HW development company that actually have competence in HW development, isn't perhaps all that bad? Maybe even preferable, yes?
And again, this is the only way of developing R&D heavy products for a practically non-existent micro markets. I'm not talking about hobby or slavery. But paying $1,200,000 for developing a product for a few hundred potential customers can only end one way.
---
Look, of course anyone is free to waste his money in any way he/she likes (as long as it's legal and preferrably ethical), but here we are talking about someone who (in the absence of official platform dvelopment/management) has taken on the role of managing the future evolution of the platform, at least HW wise. This concerns everyone that has any kind of emotional attachment to the platform, and everyone should be allowed to speak their views on this.
