POLL: What is the most viable Amiga platform for *you*?

[commodorejohn]

Classic for the moment, but I'll be keeping an eye on AROS68k, and I'm definitely looking forward to NatAmi, when it finally comes out...

[commodorejohn]

+100

there seems to be quite a few folks here that come to just moan & complain that don't actually use amiga's...

+ 7,000,000

+ 2^128

[commodorejohn]

They licensed the Commodore name therefore they are related to the C= of old.

...no. I don't care if you pay for a pre-existing name, receive it from a mysterious Dickensian benefactor, or make a wish on a friggin' genie's lamp - you don't just get to introduce something totally unrelated and claim it's the same thing. Legal, maybe, but sane/correct/ethical? No.

[commodorejohn]

The Commodore of old DID sell pc clones, so it really is the same thing.

They didn't call them "C64" or "Amiga."

[commodorejohn]

That's not custom, that's just a bunch of off-the-shelf parts, ya poser!

[commodorejohn]

I want to buy out the Chevrolet name, and start selling tampons.  They'll sell well, since all the Chevy enthusiasts will see the relation, right?

You, sir, win.

[commodorejohn]

I'm pretty sure that nothing like this has ever happened in the world of business before...

Hmmm... I see you are in Minnesota... 3M

See, I'm not getting where this "it has happened before, therefore this is hunky-dory" logic is coming from. Sure it's happened before, but that doesn't make it okay - remember New Coke?

(Also, my only loyalty to 3M comes from their manufacturing one of the few really good brands of duct tape.)

[commodorejohn]

Far be it for me to tell you what to like, but I'd much rather the, phoenetically almost identical, "duck tape". It gives much more entertaining visuals.

That's the other one 3M and Duck are the tapes of choice, most of the rest that I've used are pretty sub-par...

[commodorejohn]

The c64 has not been sold in decades neither has the amiga so if a company said they wanted to sell the c64 again the vast majority of people would not think 8bit. Even if they said they wanted to sell Amigas most people would not think 68k.

What "most people would think" has precisely nothing to do with how much an x86 PC in a slightly atypical case has to do with the Amiga.

[commodorejohn]

Its a computer. Most people wouldn't remember the c64 and buy it because it looks cool or whatever.

Supposing that's true, it's still completely irrelevant. The popular perception has zilch to do with the issue of what the C-USA product have in common (or rather, don't) with the computers they're named after.

If CUSA wants to sell and sell big it has to be more than to just us. They need a cool looking computer, with good support, a good website, and good advertising.

And they're more than welcome to do that - I only want them to stop pretending their machines are something that they aren't. Were they not trying to sell their x86 machines under the names of classic computers they have zero to do with, I'd wish them well and continue on my merry way.

It's not that it's O.K. as much as it is about the state of affairs. Nearly everything we see today is a re-spin of something that came before it. There are some who would (and did) claim that even your coveted classic Amiga was conceived by Atari. What about IBM PC Clones... even if you had just ignored them on the basis of them being "unethical", would anyone else. Would anyone else even care?

But this isn't even a re-spin. It's a completely different machine on a completely different OS in a vaguely-reminiscent case. It only even approaches being a spin-off by the inclusion of an emulator, and that brings it as close to being an Amiga spin-off as...every other PC on the market.

As for PC clones, you will note that they are, in fact, clones. That is to say, their design is directly based on the PC and they maintain (with rare exception) significant to nearly-full compatibility with the PC standard as laid down with the IBM 5150 (to a ridiculous extent, really.) I'm not going to say that the intentions of Compaq et. al were noble, but at the very least they weren't introducing completely unrelated systems and slapping something else's label on them.

[commodorejohn]

This is the next generation series, if you don't like it being x86, that's just going to be too bad for you.  Well, there maybe ARM versions, if that would make you any happier.

Once more: calling something the next generation of something you didn't even design, and which it has nothing in common with, does not actually make it the next generation. It doesn't matter how often you repeat it, that won't make it true.

Also, while I like ARM as a general thing, an ARM-based system that has as much nothing in common with the Amiga as this being called the Amiga (whether or not there's a piddly little X on the end to allegedly differentiate them) would piss me off just as much.

Commodore 64 Web.It

Yeah, that was stupid too.

[commodorejohn]

IIRC, the mobo for C64x is custom designed by Barry.  Keyboard and it's associated board is custom as well.  Good enought?

I should have phrased that a little more clearly. I meant that C-USA did not design the original, actual C64 or Amiga, not that they didn't design their current products. My objection is not to the lack of creative work done on the Numiga (though I do find it annoying,) it's to the idea that calling it the same thing (sorry, "the same thingx") is sufficient to make it the successor, even when it has nothing more in common with the Amiga than any other PC on the market. It's like if Lawrence Welk bought out the Hendrix estate, recorded an album of his usual fare, and then tried to release it under the name "Jimi Hendrix."

[commodorejohn]

Second, C=USA, like Eyetech and now A-EON, have a license to badge what they want as specified in their license agreement.

People keep tossing this line out. I've stated many times before that I don't care whether it's properly licensed or not. The fact that it's legal for them to use the names does not automatically make their product a legitimate successor, let alone anything like an official "next generation." If C-USA was hoping that paying to license the names would imbue this with any kind of legitimacy in the absence of that obtained by actual connection with the real Amiga or its legacy, then it's a sad waste of money on their part, as far as I'm concerned.

[commodorejohn]

The box may say Commodore 64 and the badge on the machine may say Commodore 64 but not even a three legged blind man and his guide hamster would have thought it was a genuine C64...

Doesn't change the fact that they were trying to market it as one. However, people do still seem to think that the fact that other companies tried to market unrelated hardware as "Commodore 64" or "Amiga" makes it okay for C-USA to do so. It doesn't. It doesn't matter how many people did so in the past. And the only reason I wasn't deriding the Web.It at the time was because I wasn't online and wasn't a member of the Commodore community then. (Well, that and the fact that, with a name like "Web.It," it mocks itself. God, what were people smoking in the '90s?) Had I been on a Commodore newsgroup at the time, I would have expressed precisely the same sentiments towards it as I do towards C-USA.

[commodorejohn]

First lets try to get a common understanding:
With "in the mid-late 90's" you mean the years 1995-1999?
If so, then you see me rather surprised, as Commodore International declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994.

It wasn't Commodore - it was a company called Web Computers International. I don't recall if they actually obtained a license to use the name or just didn't feel they needed to ask.

This isn't the past this is here and now and what  CUSA plan on selling is about a genuine and real as the Loch Ness  Monster or the fact that I'm a brain surgeon...

Are you suggesting the Loch Ness Monster isn't real? Jeez, man, have  some national pride! I'm not even from the UK and I show that poor beast  more respect!