Star Trek IV "Computer??"

[GreggBz]

Well, if nothing else it serves as an illustration of their flawed mentality.

It was also a fantastically memorable scene, especially for all of us computer geeks.

[mr_a500]

Yes, one has to marvel at the stupidity and incompetence of Commodore Marketing. Besides the PET in the first movie, William Shatner had done some Commodore Vic 20 advertisements a couple years earlier. So you think it would have made sense to continue the Star Trek association - and it only would have cost the price of one Amiga. This is just one small example of the many stupid screwups of Commodore Marketing.

I don't think it would have had much long term impact though. Seeing the computer in the movie didn't make me want to buy a Mac at the time - even though I was obsessed with new computers back then. I didn't even notice it was a Mac until 10 years after first seeing the movie. It's not like Scottie spent half an hour with it and said "Gee, this computer's a fine thing... much better than the flashing crap-boxes we got on the Enterprise. What's it called again? A Mac... what a bonny name! I'll tell you what... throw in a couple Macs with the deal and I'll also give you the secret to 'edible underwear'."

[Blade]

Well, it is marked as rumour and I think it is just that, a rumour (although Commodore Managment fu**ed up other stuff as we know)
I mean, they obviously had allready Amiga Computers on the Set (they say so) and than have to buy another for demonstrating?
Unlikely. No imho the better explenation (and iirc this was also stated elswhere) might be the Scene itself where this computer
was to be demoed, Scotty says something along "What a keyboard? How antiquated!" (Note I've never seen the english original, but
I guess it was something like that ) and my guess is that Commodore simply didn't like the Idea to have their Flagship called
"antiquated"

BTW, in other areas, Commodore was quite cooperative, in some of those "Nasa interviews" it was said that one of the reasones
for the Engeniers going Amiga was that they simply got all neccesary documents for the hardware and such, thus making it
easier to modify the system (iirc the first 68020 for the A1000 actually was made by the NASA), while Apple did have no
interest to share their docs

[alewis]

I'm with Blade. Back in the days when C= was C=, PET's were often appearing on the screen, more often the 8000-SK/PET-200/700 series with the "Porsche Design" body kit - lots of curves, as opposed to the boxy angular design of the 2/3/4/8k series - though istr a fair number of the original 2001 PET's appearing, complete with inbuilt cassette and micheal mouse keyboard.

C= *were* pretty good at promotion, at least until the early 90's, they had learned marketing, branding, and "selling what we dont yet have" very very well in the late 70's and early 80's; they were not stingy about donating equipment if it appeared prominently in public.

[reddwarfer]

Commodore PETs are shown in the English televsion series 'The Fast Show', this was originally aired between 1994-2000. The 'Professor Denzil Dexter' sketches.