Why I had to leave

[Kronos]

@IonDeluxe

So by your logic we would need to thank Irving&Mehdi for the A4000,A1200,
CD32, OS3.0 and OS3.1 ?

Cos after, long sidetracking and blocking they finally allowed it to happen ?
More of,they (C=)even paid for the development  :-o

While I don't have a firm viewpoint on Gateway, I just have to say this about Escom:

They did invest in a new production run for A1200/A4000T.

They did develop new HW (o.k. the Walker wasn't that great, but it was).

They did have a firm path for the future (PPC).

They never took prepayments for allready dead product (PPack) or ones that
where still far away from completion (I am yoda).
They did sell enough Amigas to stabilze the market instead of helping a
~90% decline by declareing AOS dead.

What would be without Ainc ?
Would have been possible for Bernie&Harald to get a Cloanto-like-deal ?
Would have been possible for H&P or Hyperion to get a licence for a PPC-port ?
Would have been possible for bPlan to a licence for WB3.1 when they still needed it ?

Looking at Gateway they seem to be all about buisness instead of all about
daydreams, so yes i think some of the above would have been possible.

[Kronos]

@DarkGlobe

Short summary of the "I am Amiga"-lootery-prepaypament-club :

In summer 2002 AIn decided to start some sort of "market-gauge",by handing
out pre-payment-coupons for the A1, to determine the size of the market.

They did NOT inform Eyetech/Hyperion beforehand !!
The money did NOT go to Eyetech/Hyperion.

They did babble about prizes to be given out if the number of sold coupons
would each up to certain numbers (the highest been 50k, talk about a firm grip
onto reality ....).
Everybody was also promised to get an free t-shirt with his/her coupon, both
to be delivered AFAP.

McBill also talked about OS4/A1 being allmost ready (see where we are now ?).

It soon became clear that the turnout was really really low (~400) and that the
combination of prepay and lottery was illegal in most countries  :-o

So they changed the rules and allowed the coupon to be for OS4 only (funny when it
was orginally meant to gauge the A1-market),they extended the deadline 3 or 4
times, promised a monthly newsletter, and turned into a club.

It all turned funny when I started a bet with redrumloa on the number sold coupons
right here on this site (guess who won that :-P ).

Right now the situation is like this:
Eyetech/Hyperion and dealers made it clear that they wouldn't hounor the coupons.
Which would been quite hard since noone yet got an actual coupon (and no t-shirt).

AInc still haven't said an official word on how they want to hounor those coupons
bought by people who allready have bought an A1.
Some AInc-fans are trying to argue that the A1 isn't an A1 until it ships with OS4, but
you won't find that in the orginal announcemt, and never never ry to use that
argument in any other situation as on the coupons  ;-)

The monthly news-letter has been delivered aftersome delay, and mostly seems to
consist of restating the obvious(or allready public known stuff), hardly worth the
money (<- opinion).

[Kronos]

@Tomas
Nice selective quoting .....

1st : Eyetech/Hyperion did make it clear that they weren't responsible
for the coupons and their pre-payments, while dealers made it clear that they
wouldn't cough up the money in advance. Only afterwards this AInc
accepted theirresponsibilty.

2nd: That sentence was clearly pointing at people who allready have an A1.
People who should have gotten their money back long ago. Money that Eyetech
allready paid to AInc (maybe more, maybe less) with licence-fees.

Barry can promise as much as he wants, he just isn't very convincing unless
he delivers on older promises  (like a solution for the t-shirt-prob).