Interview with Trevor Dickinson

[dammy]

1500 ouch!! I think I better rush my wallet to emergency.
They will probably get about 5 sales. I hope that covers their investment.

I'd bet somewhere between 200 and 350 total sales for the X1000 which would be a fatal disaster.

[dammy]

I'd bet somewhere between 200 and 350 total users of Aros...

Which is way up from the few dozen.  There are now two commercially available systems that run AROS being sold and a third (ARM) in the pipeline and none of those are asking $2,000USD if a person opted to purchase a new system.  

I will also point out to you that C= sold mostly A500/A600/A1200 and very few big box Amigas as a percentage of total sales.  Their cash cow the low cost systems because it would sell in high volume.  One could reasonably say that if C= had never made the A500/A1200, that would have been the end of the Amiga line because they couldn't generate that type of revenue (because the lack of popularity) for future sales and cover their R&D/T&E costs.  It was the low end Amigas (A500/A1200) that generated momentum to create a market for the big box Amigas.

Or if you want to look at it another way, commercial coders want to have a reasonable size market to enter into to recoup their cost of making or porting software.  Without the software, who is going to buy any system, especially if it's a high price one?  If you sold a few hundred units, what commercial company is going to be interested vs selling tens or hundreds of thousand units @ year?  A-EON going high end with high end price tag without having a sizeable low end base to attract users and devs and hope to achieve critical mass has missed something very obvious, IMO.

[dammy]

The Amiga was about doing more with cutting edge hardware and software.  The new AmigaOS/AmigaOne is not cutting edge in either.  The X1000 is an elitist hobbyist machine.  It's about bragging rights in an ever shrinking community.

I'd say that is a perfect summary.

[dammy]

@ Trevor

You said you can't say what the CPU is because of a NDA.  Could you tell us which of the commonly suggested CPUs it's not?  Eliminating some of the debated CPUs would save some folks time from arguing.

[dammy]

Classic A4000s are selling for 500 pounds on ebay.
1500 pounds for a high performance complete system with OS sounds okay to me.
I'm not sure what people expect for such a specialised market.  gertsy

That's the thing, people want current mainstream hardware, not niche hardware.  Special hardware was back during our custom chip days. Those days are long gone, there is no reason to be paying high prices for under performing hardware because of a badge.  The idea of building market share on high priced hardware with nothing but old memories as it's appeal is not a business plan I would want to follow.  Especially when the world economy is entering into a lost decade.

If the A1X1K was a tablet running OS4 with a bunch of pre-installed classic games for ~$500USD, that would a possible winner.  That could build a nice market share because it's modern and wouldn't cost that much so you can have many end users.  Many end users inspire indie game publishers to come sell their wares which brings more users.  That creates a ecosystem that can not only survive but grow with out having millions of units sold.

[dammy]

What I find rather dull is the thought of the day when there is only one hardware platform left and only a choice of OS to differentiate systems.

Well, there is always ARM arch which seems to have a good long life left in it, unlike PPC.  Vast majority of people do not care what the hardware is as long as they are getting a great deal on the old bang:buck ratio.  That is why I think the X1000 has the potential of being a utter disaster sales wise, it violates the bang:buck ratio for anyone outside the OS4 community.  If Trevor is not focus on selling outside of the OS4, that's fine, but the pool of people who have the cash for it gets very shallow very quickly unless there is some easy financing available, which I doubt.

[dammy]

That wasn't the point I was making.  1500pounds for a complete non mainstream computer is not a lot of money.

If it had a significant use that nothing could compare to it, you might be right.  Problem is, it has zero niche uses other then running AOS4 on a single core.  So not only does it not have any real practical use, the only reason for buying it is for a OS that is not SMP.

@Dammy  Sorry but making a pesudo ipad out of OS4 and proprietry hardware for $500 is just a stupid business plan.

 

So your going with proprietary hardware that the target OS can't take fully advantage of the hardware and charge beyond a reasonable price for it is a smart business plan?  And who said OS4 has to (now Hyperion has full say so) run on proprietary hardware?  

Apple can afford to do it because of their reserve and the numbers they are assured of selling.  $500 would be great for us.  Unfortunately it would cost about twice as much just to manufacture the device. Out of business and in debt after the first run.

I never stipulated it had to be proprietary hardware, that's your end of this discussion.   So exactly how much research did you go into OEM costs to produce a tablet for OS4?  If Apple is selling it for around $600, it sure didn't cost that much to manufacture, they like nice profits as does the retail stores and whatever middlemen their are between Apple and the end user.

[dammy]

People don't compare the price of computers to houses, they compare price of computers to computers....  AND in this comparison all you can say about the X1000 is FAIL.

It would be interesting if Dr. Schulz finishes the AROS port to EFIKA-MX now it's going into mass production (see http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2010/05/moving-to-mass-production.html ) in time for A1X1K's release date on which sells more.  $2K officially sanctioned A1X1K with OS4 or one of the OEM (apparently there are several large OEMs) EFIKA-MX based smartbooks with  (again assuming Dr. Schulz finishes it in time) AROS installed.  If I buy one of the two, I know which one I would be buying, or atleast, could afford to buy.