Come now, many of the Moo Bunny regulars will squeal in delight, or at the least be pleasantly amused. You hang out there often, so you should be very aware of this.
Yes, I do hang out there as well. But you would only know that if your a regular MooBunny as well. Some post with their regular handles, some post via anonymous proxies.
Isn't it obvious that Trevor had built what his dream of an Amiga is? Or at least the best approximation he could muster? Is there any indication that he would have rather had 1000 units sold of something that was not his dream instead of 250 of what is his dream box? I have not seen any indication of that. In fact he has mentioned SAM multiple times for the explicit reason that he considers them fulfilling the less expensive box. Its pretty obvious that he is not interested in making a $300 unit that they could sell much more of that would come in at a price point under SAM.
That's one main problems, in order to have sales of high end machines at very high end prices, there has to be demand for it. Problem is that there is no demand for it because there is no significant user base willing to pay that much out for a machine that will be under used by the intended OS. I do wonder how many OS4 Devs are going to be jumping on this, even with a major discount.
It appears he was partially blinded by a dream. He'll almost certainly lose money on this. What's really to get beyond that? Does Ben have a different intention? Quite possibly.
You left out the reason of the third partner.
True, but that is not Trevor's responsibility, nor is it A-EON's. Its Hyperion's.
Apart of being a partner is to share in the glory as well as the failures.
If they can't encourage Acube to make the entry level $300 box then they should look elsewhere, thats assuming its even monetarily feasible. There is no guarantee someone would make back their money on such a box.
They would have been far better off and offering at a far cheaper price if they had bought new but surplus Apple PPC mobos. If Apple is willing to sell them the CPUs, Apple might have been willing to license out one of their old Apple mobo designs.
Lets look at another real world example, should Tesla Motors be looking to make an electric car more like the small hybrids of late or what they are instead making (a big 4 door sedan). Well to make money better they should be making the smaller cars. But they don't want or desire to do that. They want to be the company of "High Performance Electric Vehicles". Right now A-Eon is looking to be the "high end Amiga workstation company". Is that silly, a mistake, etc? Yep most likely. But there is no need or reason to demonize them for it either. If Trevor had not been motivated by this dream what really would the difference be for the community. Lots of folks would be bitching the SAM 460 is too expensive instead, when what they really all should probably be doing is buying an iMica (IMHO).
What your missing is the shear number of drivers/car owners out there. That is a huge pool to skim a few rich people from so it's doable marketing wise. Worse yet, it would be like Tesla selling for full value but the motor will only produce half the horse power and only use half the batteries with a promise that in the future, the owner can use all the batteries to fully power the engine. And all instructions written in Aramaic. Somehow I think it would be a disaster for Telsa, don't you?
