There are a range of machines for different people. Cutting off at a particular price only has people saying "if only they". You can't please everyone with one product, you can't even do that with many products.
This, more than anything else you've said, exemplifies why this is a pipe dream. You're not...or, at least you shouldn't be, trying to please everyone. You're not even trying to please most everyone. The target should be a VERY niche market to begin with.
You create a range and people buy according to what they're willing to spend and their sensibilities. Should Apple only have one product? What you are asking for would be suicidal.
Did not Apple start out with only one product? Was it suicidal? With this effort, I think you need to emulate the early days of computing not only with your design, but with your philosophy. You start out with one model and then build up from there. One model, by the way, doesn't mean that you don't have different memory options, storage options, network options, etc. But you want to make ONE machine that LOOKS like a commodore.
You don't think these devices are a modern spin on the Computer in a keyboard concept so reminiscent of Comodore's computer heritage?
Once you get past 'the CPU is INSIDE the keyboard', all similarities to Commodore ends. Maybe this thing is a modern spin on a ZX Spectrum? That seems as possible, if not more, than it being an homage to Commodore.
New designs costs a lot of money and there is no guarantee of success. There will be new designs.
This is true. That's the nature of business...it takes money to make money, and there's no guarantee that you'll make money.
The Commodore Phoenix is an apt name as it will help Commodore rise from the ashes.
I bet you $20 it won't.
I pushed for Beige. Barry laughed at me.
Sounds like Barry doesn't know his target demographic.
People also want the machine to boot into the Blue/Cyan ready screen too. I have to think beige is a rather acquired taste these days. I don't think I've ever heard anyone ask for a beige Amiga either. I see people asking for black.
Black is everywhere. Black is a dell, an HP, even an Apple. A nice retro beige case is where to go...retro should be a big part of the campaign for this thing, and beige is the ultimate retro. And you don't chase after what people say they want. You show them something that they didn't know they wanted and you MAKE them want it.
Wait, so you're going to pick....Darwin, or Haiku, over AROS. How very un-Amigan of you. :-D
Yes, but I'm not trying to recreate an Amiga. I'm trying to recreate a commodore 64. There are A LOT of people out there who used C64s who never had a thing to do wtih Amigas.
I've already mentioned the desire to put AROS as a standard boot option. If you couple it with ROMS it could provide the ultimate Commodore retro experience.
Again, is the goal here to recreate a C64, or an Amiga?
It is not about being Apple. You simply can't go and build something new that is as good as MacOSX anyway and it's suicide to try.
I disagree. I say it's suicide to not try.
You can't expect Commodore to, all by themselves, come up with a revolutionary new operating system to compete with the likes of Apple no matter what short-cuts they take. People already lament that MacOSX is just another unix/linux.
That's EXACTLY what I expect Commodore to do. And that's why this will fail, because the copyright owner doesn't have the vision, the capital, or the will to actually do it.
They do? Apple users I know fall into two categories: people like me, who appreciate the fact that Apple has provided the ultime *nix on the desktop while linux users chase their tails (and often bad mouth apple in the process), and people like my niece, who uses OS X daily, and has no idea what a *nix operating system even is, much less that she's using one.
In our e-mails Commodore USA's owner has told me that there will be a significant amount spent on marketing. Much more than the last Commodore companies seemed to have spent.
There's more to marketing than money. It needs to be good marketing, and I think the cats already out of the bag, anyway.
What you are asking in terms of revamps of Commodore games is outside Commodore's area of interest.
It's the software, stupid. Part of the marketing campaign is actually showing this system doing something *unique*. If they expect that people will just start developing for it on their own, they're out of their mind.
