Phase 5 Digital Products comeback?

[Heiroglyph]

keeping secret isnt necessary. honest communication will be enough, even some exaggeration will go through. it has been proven lately. but publicity stunts will make people rather cautious. except for die hard cheerlanders, of course.

I disagree. You could have the most perfect widget in the world and some of this community would scream and yell about how horrible it is and compare the creator to Hitler.

You pretty much have to come out complete with hardware and software to back it up to avoid as much speculation as possible.

[Bennymee]

I'd rather they worked on the product myself.

We have to face it, we don't have business people running these companies anymore. They will make PR blunders and bad decisions like these.

He was probably just a guy like one of us, excited to tell the community what he's working on, but not that good at running the marketing side of a business.

Most people with business sense know not to be in this market at all.

Was the guy doing this not in the marketing department of formerly phase 5 ?

If so, I would be more worried about the technology then the pr this time.

  )

[yssing]

I've seen more than my fair share of scams, failed projects, and twisted jokes on this site to know another one when I see it....ACK Controls, ARIX, etc.....now this "new" Phase 5.

I hope I'm wrong but the past makes me very cynical.

No one is asking for any money, and even if some one was asking for money, no one have give any money away.

[wawrzon]

I disagree. You could have the most perfect widget in the world and some of this community would scream and yell about how horrible it is and compare the creator to Hitler.

You pretty much have to come out complete with hardware and software to back it up to avoid as much speculation as possible.

no. despite the degenerated image the community will likely not react reasonably to a reasonable offer. might sound like a conspiracy theory, while such an offer has usually been surpressed, invoking an expectation that i will be met with resistance, distrust and badmouthing anyway, by so called "usual suspects" (representing simply many if not everybody who either way doesnt care or dare not speak out anymore).

however some not very promissing iniatives went out under the radar so far, till it was too late. apollo/vampire sounds like an  example. am i right?

[Heiroglyph]

no. despite the degenerated image the community will likely not react reasonably to a reasonable offer. might sound like a conspiracy theory, while such an offer has usually been surpressed, invoking an expectation that i will be met with resistance, distrust and badmouthing anyway, by so called "usual suspects" (representing simply many if not everybody who either way doesnt care or dare not speak out anymore).

however some not very promissing iniatives went out under the radar so far, till it was too late. apollo/vampire sounds like an  example. am i right?

I'm not sure I understood your reply exactly.

Vampire is one that I would hold up as a good example of not saying a word until completion. Every great step they make is rewarded with about 50/50 congratulations and complaints of sill missing features. Well, duh, it's not finished.

I'd also say that there were a lot of mistakes due to it being represented publicly by engineer enthusiasts rather than business people. Their hearts were in the right place, but mistakes were made.

Our community overall is hard on anyone so IMHO, it's better to not engage us until you absolutely can't help it.

[wawrzon]

I'm not sure I understood your reply exactly.

Vampire is one that I would hold up as a good example of not saying a word until completion.

really??? i must be missing something in your logic. maybe our resemblance is different..

lets review, the natami approach, majsta going around asking for guidance, first vampire version, work in progress, kind of. tg68 core adoptation, 030/25 speeds. cheap. many bought only to find it discontinued in support after some time and arguably for a good reason. as much as none really complained. at least almost none of the customers.

okay, igor had survived some hard times but if from anyone then from other developers. then apollo team joined in or vice versa.

in my book it is nothing like a closed, behind the scenes apporach. on the contrary. you can simply chip in on irc and be invited to contribute. and it is in my book the right spirit.

[Heiroglyph]

really??? i must be missing something in your logic. maybe our resemblance is different..

lets review, the natami approach, majsta going around asking for guidance, first vampire version, work in progress, kind of. tg68 core adoptation, 030/25 speeds. cheap. many bought only to find it discontinued in support after some time and arguably for a good reason. as much as none really complained. at least almost none of the customers.

okay, igor had survived some hard times but if from anyone then from other developers. then apollo team joined in or vice versa.

in my book it is nothing like a closed, behind the scenes apporach. on the contrary. you can simply chip in on irc and be invited to contribute. and it is in my book the right spirit.

I was speaking more to the Apollo/v2 versions.

The outright hatred shown because the work-in-progress core doesn't have an FPU yet gets pretty bad, not to mention the MMU.

As for the business side, Igor did everything humanly possible to lower the cost per unit but they finally realized that even making no profit and doing all the the labor themselves for "free", they couldn't hit the price they had put on the developer v500 boards and meet demand.

Once one of the dev boards (that were sold at or below cost so encourage development help BTW) went on ebay for big bucks, they started doing that themselves and stopped the loose flow of developer boards.

They also finally made the decision to do what they should have done in the first place and actually price the boards realistically and pay to have them produced so that they could meet demand.

Unfortunately the PR mistake was already made. Had they priced higher to begin with (both dev boards and projected final price) there would have been less flack thrown back at them as people probably wouldn't have balked at the new price considering what you get in comparison to other somewhat comparable CPU cards.

I'm not sure if you've been following those types of threads (some of which get quickly closed or deleted) but it's not pretty. Especially when you consider they were doing their best to help the community and simply weren't good with business and marketing.

Full disclosure, I'm helping them finish their SD card driver for free and it will be open source. I bought my v500 like anyone else just before the price change.

[QuikSanz]

@Heiroglyph,

I'm happy with this project and hope it evolves. Love to have one in my A2000.

Chris

Apollo/v2 that is.

[psxphill]

The outright hatred shown because the work-in-progress core doesn't have an FPU yet gets pretty bad, not to mention the MMU.

There is no hatred pointed at Apollo. It started as disappointment that Gunnar repeatedly said that he had no intention of doing a compatible FPU and MMU & instead worked on MMX. It has only got heated because the fan boi's validate Gunnar's decision by saying they don't want an FPU or MMU anyway and anyone that does should shut up and go away (the "I'm awesome, why could you possibly want to run different software than me unless you suck" argument).

The price hike was bad PR, however if it had coincided with the boards being available then it would have been fine. i.e. You pay a bit more and you get it now. The real issue is that people don't know whether the price will rise again before the boards are available and there are boards going up on ebay and selling for much higher prices. It's starting to look like the Bitcoin Mining ASIC fiasco (butterflylabs et al).

[Heiroglyph]

There is no hatred pointed at Apollo. It started as disappointment that Gunnar repeatedly said that he had no intention of doing a compatible FPU and MMU & instead worked on MMX. It has only got heated because the fan boi's validate Gunnar's decision by saying they don't want an FPU or MMU anyway and anyone that does should shut up and go away (the "I'm awesome, why could you possibly want to run different software than me unless you suck" argument).

I don't intend to derail the thread, but you can see where this validates my argument of silence until completion and not having the enthusiasts/engineers as your only PR people.

Either it would have those features completed on release or it would release as an EC or LC type CPU. No discussion, this is the product, buy it or don't. If sales aren't good because of it or there is enough feedback, maybe add the feature(s) in the next revision.

As much as I've held against them, I think Elbox might have the right strategy in releasing product and staying out of sight.

Compared to most Amiga companies they seem to have far less drama associated with them, at least since they stopped responding in public. Back when they did speak publicly they were nothing but drama.

[kolla]

There is also a difference between releasing such a product to developers, and releasing it for end-users, though in this crowd it is hard to tell them apart

[kolla]

Anyhow, people should relax and stop caring so much about everything Amiga, it is just an old computer. Kipper is doing the right thing and quitting when it no longer is fun.

[psxphill]

No discussion, this is the product, buy it or don't.

Nobody would be that honest, getting people on the hook with vague promises of future updates is too common.

You do need someone that is prepared to tell the engineers to suck it up and develop the features that the customers want once in a while though. Even if it's only a small number of customers, every single one of them is a sale. Unconstrained development by engineers was what killed the Natami.

[vxm]

Unconstrained development by engineers was what killed the Natami.

How did you come to this assertion?

[wawrzon]

@heiroglyph

no, i cannot confirm your position. i see no hatred towards apollo team. i see some negative and critical comments and thnere always has been some. but, first of all, it there werent any, one would really have to ask themselves, whats wrong..
secondly the negative/critical feedback and discussion may not have intentionally led to, but (in the end constructively) accompanied in parallel the development of the project.

neither i see the project being damaged by the price discussion or inavailablility. on the contrary. people welcomed the adjustments being communicated to them reasonably well. what concerns igor operating initially at a loss, it accidentally reminds of sort of commercial strategy, when initially introducing a product. without that low price there might be less early adopters, less general tension and a´lso less people joinging their community or the project as such.

all in all, the current may look a bit chaotic, but its there and the circumstances only make it sympathetic. i dont see any, really any, critical failures on part of apollo/vampire initiative.

[psxphill]

How did you come to this assertion?

What was visible from the outside and what was said by those involved.