CommodoreUSA CEO Interview Answers

[Wildstar128]

@Duce

Amiga.org has not sold out to anyone. Expect less CUSA coverage in the future not more. I don't think there is any danger of CUSA trying to buy out your favorite Amiga fan sites anytime soon. Not even including a $10 copy of Amiga Forever with the expensive Linux machines they sell just goes to show how cheap they really are.

Do you understand the laws governing interstate and international trade. You can not bundle software without permission. That is what CommodoreUSA is dealing with in accordance with the laws not the quasi-lawless folks who don't run business in any formal business manner whatsoever.

[Wildstar128]

I am thinking, lol.

There's plenty of business people, from guys making parts for cars that haven't been made for 80 years, to guys making components for Amiga's that will never get rich, yet they still keep doing it.  If you see what they are doing as a failure because they aren't making millions per year supporting a hobby they love, knock yourself out and call them failures.  I won't, and either will 99% of the people here.  Instead we're thankful there are people around still slugging away to bring stuff to market.  For nearly 20 years these grassroots guys, combined with people selling and trading older hardware have been the lifeblood of the Amiga community.  Those guys that are getting their hands dirty and burned up with soldering irons are the ones to respect, and people around here show said respect to them in spades.

For them it's simply not about venture capital and owning nice cars.  Perhaps many don't even break even.  Perhaps many still work crappy day jobs to fund their passions of bringing new products to market for things that the rest of the world forgot about a long time ago.

It's not all about money, and the fact there's still new products coming out for the Amiga's that were made 20 years ago shows this - things like the ZorRam, Indivision cards, the ACA accels, the FPGA Arcade/Minimig, etc.

The issue is there isn't enough people with money buying things for Commodore and Amiga classic machines. Different then antique cars. Most antique car collectors are rich executives. Most of the commodore/amiga collectors are poor with poor paying jobs. Maybe $30-50k a year. In addition, there is also so few actually using the hw and don't see much use in buying hardware upgrades. In addition, there is no market room for a company like Commodore USA to even put a CMD like presence in the commodore 8 bit and amiga. There is just not enough people spending money to rent commercial space. This means, they need a main stream market for revenues. As an individual, I can put a limited presence by just doing something and to soften impact. This is the kind of issues we have to keep in mind.

Too many players with not enough purchaser can be detrimental too.

[Wildstar128]

Lotta guesswork in there and not much in the way of numbers. I ask again: do you have any basis for saying that CUSA makes more money than the entire Commodore/Amiga hobbyist market?

Again, "mainstream viability" is irrelevant. The Amiga is twenty years out of being the mainstream and a good fifteen years past any hope of ever recapturing a significant part of it. Even if you redefine "Amiga" to mean nothing more than any computer that has rented the brand name from Bill, there's no way they can ever make a dent in the mainstream. (Certainly not at those prices.)

Okay, if you were advocating for Windows or Mac OS and saying this, that'd be one thing, but if you're using this as a point in Linux's favor? I can only conclude that you've never actually used Linux. Trying to use Linux in any kind of semi-comprehensive desktop PC capacity is closer to programming than some actual programmers get these days.


Okay, but even by that definition, they've produced a run (10,000, according to Barry) of C64x cases. How many C64xes have they sold? If one were to judge by user posts on the CUSA forums, it's a dozen or two. Have they ordered another run of cases? Have they even made a dent in their existing case stock? How does this compare to the sold-out first run of AmigaOne X1000 machines and registrations for the second run?
 
 And, what, do the people at Amigakit just come in on a Saturday and fill orders for kicks? What basis do you have for suggesting that Amiga hobbyist businesses don't pay their workers?


 No. It is not based on Unix. It's not even Unix-like. It's certainly nothing like Linux.
 

 Okay. Now under what logic would you say that charging somewhere around twice the cost of the components for a PC built entirely from commodity hardware is "a fair price?"


 Who says it has to compete? It's an entirely separate market.
 
 The entire first run (100 machines? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) has sold and they're registering interest for a second.
 

 Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?
 
 
 Where are you getting these numbers from?

You can either get new people or serve only those that are already die hard people. The only way to get new people is in the mainstream. That is where they are. Old people that once was here and now is there - is there.

"Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?"

I don't know, it might be because you guys started bashing him just for getting the brand and in other words started it. I suspect he is better then the other a--holes who would shut down every Commodore website. Sued everyone of the sites with the logos, and had them all thrown in jail and fined for statutory violation of $25,000 per violation and legal precedence is that each day a violation occured would be a violation up to statutes of repose.

Well lets assume 2 years. That is 365x2 or 730 days of violations. Each day a violation. 730 violations at $25,000 and a year in jail for each violation. Imagine 730 years of imprisonment and $18+ Million dollars in fines each. That would be pretty gnarly. Then throw in the copyright violations.

That would be an grade AAA a--hole.

It is a good thing Barry is not one of those.

[Wildstar128]

Lotta guesswork in there and not much in the way of numbers. I ask again: do you have any basis for saying that CUSA makes more money than the entire Commodore/Amiga hobbyist market?

Again, "mainstream viability" is irrelevant. The Amiga is twenty years out of being the mainstream and a good fifteen years past any hope of ever recapturing a significant part of it. Even if you redefine "Amiga" to mean nothing more than any computer that has rented the brand name from Bill, there's no way they can ever make a dent in the mainstream. (Certainly not at those prices.)

Okay, if you were advocating for Windows or Mac OS and saying this, that'd be one thing, but if you're using this as a point in Linux's favor? I can only conclude that you've never actually used Linux. Trying to use Linux in any kind of semi-comprehensive desktop PC capacity is closer to programming than some actual programmers get these days.


Okay, but even by that definition, they've produced a run (10,000, according to Barry) of C64x cases. How many C64xes have they sold? If one were to judge by user posts on the CUSA forums, it's a dozen or two. Have they ordered another run of cases? Have they even made a dent in their existing case stock? How does this compare to the sold-out first run of AmigaOne X1000 machines and registrations for the second run?
 
 And, what, do the people at Amigakit just come in on a Saturday and fill orders for kicks? What basis do you have for suggesting that Amiga hobbyist businesses don't pay their workers?


 No. It is not based on Unix. It's not even Unix-like. It's certainly nothing like Linux.
 

 Okay. Now under what logic would you say that charging somewhere around twice the cost of the components for a PC built entirely from commodity hardware is "a fair price?"


 Who says it has to compete? It's an entirely separate market.
 
 The entire first run (100 machines? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) has sold and they're registering interest for a second.
 

 Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?
 
 
 Where are you getting these numbers from?

If your batch run is 10 then that isn't much to say.

10,000 units at $595 is 5.95 Million in sales. Then you have the Vic and other models. So, if you figure about $6-8 million in revenue. How much sales does jens make a year on all his products.

The last I recall, he didn't even sell 100 C-Ones. That was maybe $35k-$50k. Did he even get that. If I recall, he spent over $150k to get the batch produced. Maybe it was somewhere between $125k-$175k. It has been awhile since I saw his old post on the CommodoreOne list(s) with that info.

He is one of the largest commodore/amiga hardware developers existent. The big -10 would be lucky to be between $750k-$1M. That is if they have a good year and that is usually only the one time batch pre-order that happens maybe once in 5 years with each of the developers.

The sw developers generally make $0.

So, how do anyone make a living when you are lucky to sell 30-50 of anything.

There usually is only one time batches and that first may get sold old but the second batch takes years to deplete even though the second batch is half to equal the first batch.

There are maybe 100-250 active folks left world wide that actively purchases hardware on a regular basis. Of the ~6000, you are lucky to get 10% to buy anything a given year. So, each vendor is lucky to get 1-2% to purchase their product. So viably, I can only expect at most 50-60 purchases of something a given year and it would then take 3-5 times as much time to sell another 50-60. Product sale life is good for maybe a year and then it is slow as heck.

I seen this with many of the stuff produced in the Commodore and Amiga community.

These are ball park and vary. I seen this with Jens, Jim and others.

The few things that continuously sell are cables and cords.

[Wildstar128]

I wasn't suggesting that it was you personally. It was a generalized statement about that amount of times we have seen people trying to convince us that Commodore USA where the best people for the job. And yes like you I have seen others trying to bring the brands back into the mainstream. Lets not forget Commodore Gaming, a company I feel Commodore USA resemble in a fashion, that had taken a stab at bringing Commodore kicking and screaming into the x86/64 era. And that survived for a while then failed.
 
Look I am simply saying maybe it's time we just let this one go and allow the thread to fall off the front page.

Anyway, I think I said enough on this. I think the point I am trying to make is don't expect any serious business to try to venture much into supporting a nanoscopic number of customers. It generally take as much as an entire town of 10,000 for a small computer repair business to thrive and function because you don't get the entire amount every year.

There is less than that in the community.

Even the demoscene has been slowing down compared to 2005.

[Wildstar128]

Where are you getting those figures? According to Barry they produced 10,000 cases, but there's no information indicating they've sold even 1/100th of those. Hypothesizing about how much they might make, if they sold every single case they produced with at least a base configuration PC (i.e. not bare cases,) which we don't know, says nothing whatsoever about what they actually did sell.


Again, what basis do you have for any of these figures?


Who said anything about making a living?


You say "ball park," I say "wild guessing with no sources to back it up."

Lets look at the names on the membership list and assume easily the 50% of you are on every forum or most. Since 70-80% of you are on all the Amiga forums the of the  remaining around 15% are umique to this forum and the rest are on several.

Those here, represent maybe 1/5 of the folks and the rest are part of clubs and not online in appreciable level. I rarely saw any one forum being over 10,000. lemon would represent one of the largest bulk of the forums. Most of them are here and across all the forums. i would assume half those on Lemon are inactive folks and 1/4 of the active ones are repeat accounts. Ie. Same person had to create a new account and lost the old one.

6000-12000 would be a good guess.

I am being conservative and figuring 6000 active.

9077 lemon64 and 7131 or so on lemonamiga...

I would assume 80% of commodore users are also Amiga users.
I would assume only have the acconts are active and they would represent about 80%.

So around 6000 is rough hand guess of active amiga and commodore users.

I would go as much as 50% more for anyone not clearly measurable and is by large off line or little web presence. So, 9000 or so. I would doubt past 10,000 active.

[Wildstar128]

Okay, now where are you getting the $6-8 million figure for CUSA from? What reason do we have to believe that they sold 10,000 C64xes in the past year? Nothing from them, certainly.

Every one of those first 10,000 were sold because they had to get a second batch. The $6-8 million figure accounts for also sales of the other products as well. CommodoreUSA got a lot more media attention and public awareness and ultimately purchases then every current hardware developer in the Commodore and classic Amiga community has ever been able to muster.

There was 250,000 C64DTVs in sold in the first batch. So, giving a reference of price difference of the DTV being 1/20th that of the initial price of the C64x. It would be reasonable that something at 20x the price is going to sell at about 1/20th the quantity.

If 10,000 units sold, you are talking $5,950,000 in gross revenue income. I didn't say profit. So, $6 million is a fair minimal. Lets add to that factor the other products ordered.

So even if 2/3 of the c64x were sold but there is also the other products as well. In short, $6-8 million is reasonable.

There is some royalties that has to be accounted for. I believe in the netherlands between asiarim, commodore licensing bv, commodore holding bv and all that convoluted money handling... I am venture to make a estimated guess based on royalties and some of the information gleaned from it.

The information is like a gestalt pattern. Enough to give you a sense but still some missing information.

[Wildstar128]

Point. And they sold out a 10,000 unit production run (C64x-size)...in seconds, on the first day.   :laugh1:

Are you on drugs? No way 10,000 people wanted a c64 case with a pc board crammed inside bad enough to spend that kind of cash.

Most c64 fans would just buy a real c64 from ebay for 30$

c64 was a fantastically lovely computer. But a pc with an emulator and a c64 shell? I just don't see 10,000 people (in seconds) buying that.

There were over 6 million Commodore 8 bit and Amiga users/households world wide while Commodore was alive. There were 250,000 c64DTV solds. I think worldwide, 10,000 is reasonable.

Most bought it because they can have a computer that does real co,puter work to contemporary computing needs not 30 years and not half-ass. You got WYSIWYG with 16 million color word programs. What is printed is usually close to what you see. Mostly ink to light differences. In any case, you can do real stuff but most of those may have bought it for having a modern pc in a c64 style case with a good flavor of Linux with real computing and programming capability BUT you don't have to program Linux to use it. They have user interfaces like every other major OS like windows and mac osx. It is also produced by respectively legitimate licensee of the trademark and brand.

Of the 6 million individual users in the peak and probably closer to 10-12 million distinct individuals having bought c64s and a number of them were the bulk of Amiga purchasers. There is others who didn't get a Commodore back in the day that wanted one and probably had got one near the end or second hand shortly after 1994/1995 and then was part of the community when the community was closer to a million active users and they left with the mass progressive exodus between 1995-2000. Those years had huge impacts on the Commodore community. There is not remotely that many Commodore and Amiga users active. I have not seen much of any computer hardware product from anyone other than CMD that sold more than 250 in a 1-3 year span. How many hardware products other than x-cables and other cheap cales made by many different hobbyists and vendors, sold in the order of 1000+.

Anyone ?

The life blood of any business to be in business is to have cash revenues. Other than what can be said as tax fraud are you making profit. Deliberately making products knowing you never make a profit on is not something that can be lawfully used as business loss on taxes. Deliberately making a business loss and getting the IRS to reward you for that... Is definitely an abuse of the system and best described as a form of tax fraud.

I am not sure about the other countries but I would think they would have measures to come in with police force, break your legs and throw in jail while waiting for years to get a trial and even then it is a kangaroo court.

The hobby 'business' maybe more relaxed on these issues but to be a business.. The bottom line must be kept in mind.

For a developer to make this something of a full-time business, you better make the money or you better have a serious trust fund or win the PCH $5000 a week for life or the big lottery or a government supporting your living expenses (social security, welfare, etc.). Then yeah, I can see you doing this for nothing.

The majority of us don't have that and every hour spent on producing something must be accounted for.

Can any of you really be able to support customers daily and spend 40 hours a week or more running a business dedicated to the Commodore and Amiga classic systems developing hardware and software as commercialware?

I think we agree that is not a reality at this point in time and probably not for any foreseeable future.

I know people have came to accustom of waiting 10 years for an order to be fulfilled.

Lets think about this for a moment. Some of you might know what I am referring to.

One of the challenges for me to purchase stuff from hobbyist is I am not in any desire to wait 10 years for an order to be fulfilled and it never gets fulfilled. I want something in a reasonable timeframe fulfilled. I can handle a few months from a hobbyist. It depends of course.

[Wildstar128]

Millions in sales? Time for fairy tales again? In the future each machine will be delivered by Unicorn?

http://hol.abime.net/399/boxscan

Millions isn't alot and is easily doable. First, Barry isn't someone with no money connections and financing. You think Barry is completely financed this out of dollars in his wallet? No. It is business venturing and numerous financial arrangements.

Barry knows how to run businesses and isn't someone who has never ran a business. He may not be the brightest individual in the world but experience and knowledge goes hand in hand. The other business like anything is equity to start up CommodoreUSA. Lets put it mildly, it is business and as such he is not going to run it like anything other than a business. Whatever issues or supporting of Commodore and Amiga classic has to be isolated from running down the revenues and incurring liability on the CommodoreUSA business end.

Otherwise, blowing $150k on making a bunch of boards for which only 50 on the planet will ever buy isn't going to be prudent. Investing $2k-3k.... Maybe but there is no paying for labor. So, $1k in labor maybe for $129-159 price. This way, you can reinvest and have profit and pay for time.

That is why the price doubling the cost is the strategy. You must nave a profit margin but bring cost down so the price is competitive.

If one is going to have real R&D then for one guy doing the job, we are talking $50k-100k for 20-40 hours a week  to bring a product to market. Do yourself a favor and look up what hardware engineers make at major companies for their time. An honest company would endeavor to pay their staff and contracted developers reasonable amount competitive to anyone else. We are talking $55k to $100k. If you got a $1 million is staffing expenses and 2-3 million in other expenses of operation. You need to make $5-6 million to break even to also address taxes. At this scale, we are talking to be viable - $10 Million revenue is a necessary for on-going operation and growth and that needs to increase at least 5% to stay up on the leading edge of inflation.

$10 Million may sound like a lot but that is still small.

$10 Billion is when you are up there with the big league.

[Wildstar128]

Thank you for this pearl.

First you state you have no connection to C-USA.  Then you admit you met Barry and now you try and tell us that you have detailed information regarding their sales.

So, are you lying that you have a business (or soon to be) business connection with C-USA?

Are you lying when you say you are certain they sold all 10,000 units (unlike teh 100,000 figure they had thrown around)?

Let me give you the benefit of the doubt here.  I think you're lying on both account.  I believe you are hoping to open a Commodore franchise and I believe you have no proof whatsoever that 10,000 C64x computers were sold.

In short, you, Middleman and Dammy are here under orders to try and do some damage repair and you're urinating into the wind.

Still, at least you're entertaining.  Every post you guys make just opens up more and more holes in the C-USA sage of lies.  Keep it up.  Everything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.  

How about actually read what I said instead of changing it. Quote exactly what I said.

I do not work for them. What does that say? I am not an employee of CommodoreUSA. I said I talked to Barry. Talked can mean over the phone. I talked to him because of 1) curiosity, 2) get an idea of how things are going, 3) as it maybe, I may endeavor to do business with. NOTE: Don't make assumptions as nothing is decided on and additionally, Don't assume what that maybe.

For me, this is not about me making money or being paid. There has never been a paycheck of any kind.  I simply don't support the ignorant, distorted statements from this forum.

The fact is, you distrorted what I said. You made claims out of what I said that is not what I said.

I have challenged you guys to make a serious proposal that makes sense business wise to support Commodore and Amiga users that can answer concerns of bank lenders and the likes. Do any of you ever done that? I am pretty sure the banks aren't just going to willy nilly give you $10k, $100k, $1 million, or $10 Million for R&D research unless you answer some serious questions on a financial level. This is what is known as speculative. Your investing someone elses money in hopes of more but at least break even. Doing this is akin very much to speculative housing development. Some of the same financial framework is involved. Certainly there are differences in the technical aspects but on the overall framework, it is a gamble. What do you have as equity to offset if you fall short. These are big deals and this is also where the lawsuits comes into play.

If you understand that, then I would expect there to be some sort of real, serious and professional proposal documents with cited research.

[Wildstar128]

i7 is just x86-64. How is AROS incompatible to the i7.

AROS already has drivers that runs on every video card since 2000 at least and when standardize 16 Million color video modes at every standard SVGA video modes vs. Wide screen which needs adjustments.

Basically, you will simply get un-optimized video output. I wouldn't call it incompatible but then AROS is barely PC compatible to begin with given the lack of drivers and slow development which isn't bad for a small group but you don't have the resource and drivers.

In fact, I booted AROS within the windows computer at the college computers here and I believe they are i7 but maybe just the dual core models.

He failed to answer some key questions, and his rebuke in each case was childish and unprofessional but evasive in those instances.

We stated the bare minimum was for something akin to the effort put into C64x. A freely engraved case purchased from Wesena China is not remotely anything Amiga related and the i7 based motherboard is AROS incompatible.

Commodore OS is a complete joke. Linux and ugly skin is nothing to do with any Amiga OS. If it can't run Amiga source code natively with zero emulation as Amithlon or AROS do on x86 hardware is certainly isn't anything remotely related to the Amiga.

The only thing Mr BS is doing is pointing out he has nothing more than an AROS incompatible Linux box with a licensed Amiga logo engraved for free on Wesena HTPC mini ITX cases.

We don't want to buy such a machine which has nothing to do with Amiga in any way at all from any possible perspective anyone who ever used/owned/wanted an Amiga will have.

Even MorphOS, OS4 and AROS boxes aren't technically Amiga machines just a development to allow AHI/RTG system software to run without actual UAE/WinUAE emulation.

His Amiga Mini has zero expansion capabilities and very sub standard graphics horsepower. So if we are going to talk about conceptual re-imagining of a machine then this 100% reliance on the fast i7 CPU to make up for lack of graphical hardware acceleration of the low end GPU on the motherboard (and no space to add a $400 PCI-E graphics card in that case) then what he has created is a virtual Atari Mega ST at best.

Like we said HTPC forces you to use on board sub optimal GPU in the machine's casing and this leads to a PC that will be basically the same as an off the shelf $400 PC performance wise. If he had thought this out better he would have chosen AMD technology with superior GPU performance built into the CPU cores on a single chip. Or of course built an A1000/A3000 case and allowed room for people to put extremely powerful graphics cards in such machines. As it stands the technical limitations of the Amiga Mini computer make it suitable only for little teenage girls who spend all day on Windows Live Messenger or Facebook or Youtube and may run a copy of Barbie and Ken. Your Amiga Mini will not even run the 2005 game of the year Battlefield 2. Your specs, CPU aside, are actually circa 2003
(-- snip --)
We are not being harsh, the only bad mouthed delusional people around this place are the secret C=USA groupies that hang round here lately.

Lack of 9 pin joystick to USB adaptors aside it is the only product they have which is remotely saleable and the only issue potentially interested parties have is the price. So drop the price by 40% and they might stave off bankruptcy.

[Wildstar128]

@ WildSpeculation128

Do you work in CUSA's Marketing or Accounting departments, by any chance...??

The crucial bit that Barry is missing is his Business Plan. "This time next year, we'll all be millionaires" isn't a business plan. Neither is charging $$$$ for overpriced rebranded stuff that you can get via eBay.

When you can get CUSA to come back from Fantasy Island, maybe you can get Barry to move beyond his 'concept' and 'vision' and get him to explain his business plan to us.

Other than that, GTFO.

I am not leaving this forum because you guys distort everything everyone says.

I have listen to you guys bull**** since 2003 since Tulip, Yeahronimo, and all the other guys. You guys can't ever be happy unless you owned the brand yourselves and will be literally killing each other. Grow up you sweaty, buttcrack showing, eating cold pizza and drinking jolt with your 1980s punk hair do while growing a beard techno-washouts.

I know you are tired of companies using the brand. If you want it... Buy it and do as you wish. Until then, play with your toys and be content. This forum and the whole Amiga community doesn't need anymore bull**** rants about Commodore USA.

Mods lock this thread. Lets agree to have no more inverviews on this forum about CommodoreUSA. No more discussing them exceptmfor within the designated subforums.
Ok.

Again Mods, lock this thread.





Either support CUSA or don't. Just stop being *******s to them.

[Wildstar128]

The rest of the Amiga community that is doing something other then making b.s. Noise, congrats to you for keeping out of the noise and actually doing stuff.

[Wildstar128]

Enough of the personal insults.  Just enough.  If you want to view a differing viewpoint, do it in a civil fashion.  You aren't going to "convert the heathens" here.  The "Heathens" are quite happy with their little retro hobby, cold pizza and Jolt.

It's beyond me why a mod hasn't banned your account for the personal insults/abuse factors.

Laughable really.  At least when Franko was going off the rails and being abusive, he was factual and funny.  You are just being an abusive bore.

Duce,

Show me what the price is for the FPGA and all its components and the PCB at volumes production at 100, 1000, 10,000 and 100,000 unit batch order volume.

I want to see a viable and sustainable business plan for running a full operating business supporting the Commodore and Amiga classics. I have not seen anything that allows for paid employees or even paying the owner a salary of any kind in a long time.

On a mainstream level, I am trying to figure out a way to get the volume produced at a price that won't cause it to be market designated into the console market or the desktop computer market just as the C64DTV was. If I was in charge of Commodore USA, I would need it to be in the market with the Atari Flashback 2 in order to sell without having to have the CPU clocks per cycles and memory in terms of MBytes per $1 as a modern PC and game consoles.

Of course, if you can seriously contend with a PPC Amiga x1000 type system that can be sold for under $199 and compete with every game console on the market or soon to be on the market within $2 years then maybe it might work if you got the games.

Maybe but there got to be modern software and games or you have a worse issue then the CD32.

[Wildstar128]

I mean this is a constructive way, believe me.

CUSA have not been without their own share of distortions and truth-bending. The question that needs answering is this one; who distorted the truth first...??

I am not going to go weed through a million posts on 3-5 different forums with most of them across all of them.

IIRC: I believe the issue belies misunderstanding. I don't remember that much of great reading comprehension among the Commodore and Amiga users still active that I have came to known and met in person and across the forums for over a decade time frame.

This isn't an intended as an insult but it is prevalent that people don't recall what someone says verbatim after less then a day. Already, proof above. I am guessing that it had become a bad case of misunderstanding from both parties and believe me, it is hard for keep calm when you read 10-15 pages full of insults.

I think it would be better if we strive to not get emotional with our responses and it takes all parties to make that happen.

It also makes it hard to tell and get the heads and tails of each response when there is so much vitriol.

Amiga community, can we all strive for less vitriol on our conduct. Lets forget who started what. Not worth it.

[Wildstar128]

Therein lies the problem, Wildstar. Why does it have to be "mainstream"? What's wrong with being quirky and a little different? Why try and compete with too many things at the same time? Why try and sell the same thing into a saturated market, where you have no USP or differentiation? This is exactly why CUSA are shooting in the dark with their ideas and have no clear idea of their target market.

Some of us on here have done sales and marketing....

If you are going back to grass-roots programming to teach the next generation how do program properly, you don't need an uber computer at all; even a netbook is over the top. The simpler it is, the easier it will be for people to understand how to program for it.

If the active Commodore and Amiga community was 100 times larger then it would be be more viable.

Part of the reason is Commodore USA doesn't have some angel putting in billion dollar venture capital that would allow it to do the R&D for a real product even if it is differentiated. The problem is that the digital computer industry is mature now. It is not a pioneering time anymore. They need to get started and get capital. If Barry had the venture capital and that you guys had a serious product that people would use daily for mainstream purpose then yeah.

Computers are like any other product or tool. It has to serve a purpose for which it is designed for. It must be usable to its purpose and ability first. The majority of people buy computers and other products because they need it. Most computer users use computers not program or develop for them. Most are not the geek crowd tinkering. Nothing wrong with that but that wasn't what Commodore Business Machines and Jack Tramiel was about. In fact, that was exactly the opposite. Computers for the masses not the classes. That was what it was about even in the post-Tramiel era even though they were confused with no leadership whatsoever but the only thing guiding them was the inertia of the C64 which Jack Tramiel and company had started. If Jack Tramiel stayed at Commodore, and he got Amiga.... Which would have happened. He would have brought Amiga out much akin to the C64 and c64 sales may have stopped or slown down faster to switch product and kind of followed a similar pattern between Apple II and Mac. At least the Amiga had color. There might not have been the 128 and the Amiga and PC line features would have been integrated so an Amiga would run intel software and x86 out of box and probably even the c64 would have been integrated in some way for backward compatibility as they consolidate the product lines and do it i expensively.

Amiga licensing may have happened at some point.

That is of course What if...