yeah, Commodore did more to kill the amiga than Doom could ever have done
Even with the platform taking a step back as a gaming platform (and with the Playstation showing up, the seeds were laid for consoles to slowly but surely take over gaming from computers completely), there was still room for a cheap productivity computer, but that requires product to actually be sold by the company, which past 94 is largely gone.
I remember us paying 3 times as much for our first PC as my 1200, and it was a piece of shit.
You also have to take in the fact, that Commodore itself was itself, the ultimate Company, and ultimately it's own downfall. Let me explain.
Today, not one company has everything. A computer Company now, probably has a few design teams of engineers and then sends off the designs to a 3rd party to get the chips fabed, then sends those off to another company to get the motherboards fabricated and so on, Ultimately ending up at an Assembly plant somewhere in China, that slaps "Brand X" and "Brand Y" on it and so on. A few years back (2003, 2004), there was only 3 Laptop factories in the world, and all laptops came out of those plants. It was funny because you could get an HP laptop for x amount of dollars, and find the exact same laptop branded ECS for $100 Cheaper. HP then got wise and started custom designing the case, so ECS could not just re-brand them and sell them for cheaper.
Thanks to Jack's vision (and cheapness) Commodore had EVERYthing. It was the oly company (other than TI) to have it's own chip manufacturing facility, making the turnaround time for hardware developers, next to nothing. Commodore had the ONLY LCD manufacturing facility and Company in North America. If they would have actually made the Commodore LCD laptop- which was designed and had thousands of pre-orders, Commodore would have created and dominated the mobile market back before there even was a mobile market.Sure Tandy had the T-100 laptop out, but Commodore's Laptop was under $500 and had a built in modem and everything.
Commodore had some of the best engineer's in the world beging to work for them. The team of Bil Herd and Dave Haynie dominated every project Commodore had before the Amiga. Bil left and wanted to come back, but management said "No". If Bil had come back when he wanted to the C65 would have been done at least 1 or 2 years earlier and who knows what he would have done for the Amiga.
Commodore also had WORLDWIDE distribution and brand recognition. Not one company can really claim that today. Sure HP and Dell are maybe close to it, but HP and Dell do not have manufacturing plants across Europe.
It is truly, very hard to grasp the whole picture of Commodore, Remember that also, at the time of Commodore's peek, Commodore Canada was STILL making Office furniture, desks and file cabinets in 1986. It is hard too say, but they probably were still cranking out a few calculators at that time also. In Germany, Commodore was THE Company and the products to own. The closest thing today to the fever of CBM in Germany, is the way people HAVE to have an ipod. It was that kind of vibe there. There is a story in the book on the PET JET was over Germany carrying a few engineers, and it ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing in a small airport. The engineers had been welcomed by a marching band and the mayor and the whole town came out to welcome them, because they had thought Jack was on the plane. That is the kind of celeberty status that Commodore had. Once Jack left, Gould, sold off Commodore a bit at a time, ever pumping up the stock price, so they could milk every last cent out of Commodore. Instead of investing in the future of the company, Every CEO Gould brought in had only one agenda. To squeeze every last cent out of Commodore, until the well was dry. The Amiga was just one of the tools and consequently the corpse that was lelt behind in its wake. By 1994, the Amiga was the only thing left at Commodore. The 8bit age was a distant memory of days gone by.
If Jack would have stayed, the Amiga would never have been a Commodore product. Jack's own vision probably would have put Commodore under by 1994 also, because he would had an "off the shelf" version of a 68000 machine (exactly the same as he did at Atari). He MAY have put the resources into the Commodore PC line, but that is hard to say.
Jack did not know the big secret in Business, hire and surround people smarter than you, and grow with their Ideas. That is why he left in the first place, it was either his way or the highway.
