I finally got the book on my Kindle! Just an case anyone else needs to read Google books on Kindle, go get this app:
http://www.indiebound.org/readerSeems to work really well for me.
I'm just now through chapter 5 and knowing quite a bit about the internals at NewTek, I question the validity of some of the "facts" in the book. The author seems to have the impression that NewTek was anti-Amiga, which is far from true. If anything, NewTek was the last "major" Amiga company left on the platform
Commodore was a very strange company, apparently made of nothing but typical middle management types. Just having sales wasn't enough, they had to have credit for them. (more on that later)
At one point, NewTek had a very good relationship with Commodore, it was mutually beneficial. Commodore's only technical complaint was that we tended to shut down the OS to get more CPU cycles, RAM and more accurate timing. From Digi-View on, the hardware products needed it, so it was done whether they liked it or not.
We figured out early on that Amiga supply and configuration was a big problem. We had more demand for Toasters than there were Amigas to be had in the channel and they were finicky enough that some dealers and end users couldn't set them up properly, giving a bad first impression of the Toaster itself, hurting sales.
So we worked out a deal with Commodore to distribute them ourselves. For a period of time we were actually shipping more Amigas than Commodore was. Because of legalities plus distributor and sales manager egos the decision was made to brand the NewTek shipped systems with Video Toaster stickers placed over the Amiga logo. Since we were doing all the hard work, taking the financial risk of prebuying all those computers and getting little in return for moving most of the company's stock, why not get extra branding for ourselves?
The other plus for NewTek was that the computer religious wars were already in full swing. PC and Mac users would rarely buy into Amiga (then the 3rd runner) but if you covered up the logo and booted straight into an application? Suddenly it's not an Amiga and they're just fine with that. Eventually remote control software even allowed them to feel like their PC or Mac was actually useful in the production room.
You'd think selling so many computers would make you the darling of Commodore, but the sales staff eventually became envious. I believe this coincided with a major management changeover. They weren't getting the credit for our sales, so the shipments started "slipping" and the distribution contract eventually got dropped. Our dealers (and ourselves) were back to getting them only though the normal distribution channel like everyone else.
Not long after that, Commodore finally mismanaged themselves (and the rest of us) into a hole. I'm not saying that killed Amiga, but I'm sure that losing our guaranteed sales didn't help the bottom line and their going under very nearly did kill us. It's hard to sell expensive add-on's for computers that aren't made anymore. For some reason users don't feel comfortable in investing thousands of dollars when the computer company is in bankruptcy. Go figure.
This is also about the time that the Flyer was released, a huge investment risk for a company that "was ashamed of it's Amiga roots". That was sold well into the next decade when an Amiga could be found to house it, with NewTek pushing it at every major tradeshow well beyond when all the sane companies had moved on. In fact up until last year, we still did tech support and repairs on all our Amiga products.
And yes, NewTek DID try to buy Commodore. The combination of unreasonable valuation and the legal quagmire caused by the numerous creditors killed that idea. Had that deal gone through I'm sure we'd be looking at a much different situation today, as would many of the creditors.
There was even somewhat of an Amiga clone built (similar to a Draco) along with our own minimal Amiga-like OS to run it. The result wasn't significantly better than the Amiga Toaster/Flyer and the writing was on the wall that CPU based effects would be possible (the plan B, which became VT[2] many many years later) so the clone was never released.
I'm worried that this massive post won't even work, so I'll stop here. I just wanted to clear up at least some of the missing pieces.
