Way to sell an Amiga

[ElPolloDiabl]

Easy way:

1. Have the product ready for Christmas
2. Market it as the latest family entertainment gadget
3. Profit

Hard way:
1. Have the product constantly delayed and accompanied with competing vapourware products.
2. Fail to even have a full featured web browser. Ignore what the market is asking for. Be generally mediocre in opposition to the old era of being a budget high end system.
3. Don't profit and then blame... software piracy, a recession, chicken or the egg.

Okay its a little simplistic, but feel free to expand. It could also apply to any company that treats a market with passing interest and just assumes people will continue to swallow whatever they're given.

[amigadave]

Easy way:

1. Have the product ready for Christmas
2. Market it as the latest family entertainment gadget
3. Profit

Hard way:
1. Have the product constantly delayed and accompanied with competing vapourware products.
2. Fail to even have a full featured web browser. Ignore what the market is asking for. Be generally mediocre in opposition to the old era of being a budget high end system.
3. Don't profit and then blame... software piracy, a recession, chicken or the egg.

Okay its a little simplistic, but feel free to expand. It could also apply to any company that treats a market with passing interest and just assumes people will continue to swallow whatever they're given.

A little simplistic?  That could be the understatement of the month.

Find something productive to do for the Amiga community (or better yet, with your family), instead of wasting your time on useless forum threads.

Learn to program (if you don't already know how) and write some new app. or game for one or all of the Amiga OSes, or find another way to contribute to a project.

Not meant to be a personal attack, just a suggestion on how to better use your time and energy.

[ChaosLord]

Easy way:

1. Have the product ready for Christmas
2. Market it as the latest family entertainment gadget
3. Profit

How many Amiga products have you produced and sold to the public?
Name all of them.  Include both hardware and software.  Don't be shy.

How many non-Amiga electronic products have you produced and sold to the public?

[ElPolloDiabl]

How many Amiga products have you produced and sold to the public?
Name all of them.  Include both hardware and software.  Don't be shy.

How many non-Amiga electronic products have you produced and sold to the public?

Firstly this is not a personal attack, it is more of a discussion of how things are in life - in general.

Let's take the Dreamcast as an example: It took off fast out of the gates with a pre-Christmas launch, then next year was on the way out.
There was a poster just recently asking for info on what Android Tablet to buy his nephew for Christmas.
I think people will buy risky at Christmas time instead of being rather being indifferent to a purchase.
Answer to the question: None, but I think I know the electronics market inside and out. I have a good idea what is hot and what is not, although there will be others who are closer to all the latest gossip than me.

[ChaosLord]

Way to sell an Amiga
Easy way:

1. Have the product ready for Christmas
2. Market it as the latest family entertainment gadget
3. Profit

...
I think I know the electronics market inside and out.

Since it is soooo easy and you are such an expert and its close to Christmas, I fully expect your first product to be available for purchase within 30 days.  I look forward to purchasing it.  Thanks.

[Franko]

You'd be hard pushed these days to sell an Amiga to most folk. Almost everyone I know who owns a PC or MAC haven't a clue about the machines they're using. To most a computer is just part of everyday life that they use to browse the net, do online shopping, pay bills, sort out finances, find info, download music or play the odd game on.

Most of them have no idea about adding extra hardware let alone even attempting programming. It is in a lot of case's something that you have to have cos it's cool to have one or it looks good sitting in a corner of the living room.

The Amiga on the other hand is a different beast altogether, it's a machine that encourages most users to learn about how it works, how to upgrade it or how to write programs for it. It's simply not suitable for most folk of today, who just want a computer to do a bit of browsing and ramble on about how fast the thing can play the latest 3D games, that all look and play the same.

The true meaning of home computing died a long time ago when machines like the Amiga, the AtariST and all the others of that generation were left behind by people who didn't have the willpower, time or patience to truly enjoy what home computing really means.

[coldfish]

You can still do all those things Franko, if you want to learn about today's machines and enthuse about hardware or software details it's all there.
More like computing went from being a hobby shared by a niche group who had these sorts of interests - to commodity items that are owned by people who really just want a black-box device to serve up internets and entertainments.  The same thing happened with most emergent technology like steam trains, motor cars,  radio, film, TV,  etc...

On topic; the Amiga platform is well past its sell by date.  

The kind of "resurrect Amiga" speculation/discussion/rants we see on this board today needed to be (and was) had 10-15 years ago.  No one did anything meaningful then, no one is going to do anything of significance now.  

Better just to remember it fondly for what it was and enjoy (the good bits) of what's left.

[persia]

@Franko

It's because in 16 years a lot of advance have taken place that don't require a person to know how a computer works.  Everything just works, plug it in, turn it on, and away you ago.  The Amiga world doesn't work that way, it's more plug it in, turn it on, guru, try to fix it, surf the net for an answer, fix it, guru, repeat process.  Welcome to the '80s...

Also, the Amiga is back in the '80s in terms of user friendliness, on a Mac or a PC you don't have to understand how something works to use it, in the Amiga world you have to....

[runequester]

@Franko

It's because in 16 years a lot of advance have taken place that don't require a person to know how a computer works.  Everything just works, plug it in, turn it on, and away you ago.  The Amiga world doesn't work that way, it's more plug it in, turn it on, guru, try to fix it, surf the net for an answer, fix it, guru, repeat process.  Welcome to the '80s...

Also, the Amiga is back in the '80s in terms of user friendliness, on a Mac or a PC you don't have to understand how something works to use it, in the Amiga world you have to....

For most basic tasks on the amiga, you click on an icon and stuff happens.
Seems pretty similar to anything else, and certainly no worse than dos/windows at the time.

But of course, yes, if you are comparing a (at best) 1992 operating system with the most recent versions of linux, osx or windows its gonna be lacking accessability.

[persia]

Plus on Amiga you have a self selected audience that has lived for 16 years with no support and precious little before that.  It's not that Amiga that encourages tinkering so much as the audience has survived by tinkering.  

But I think more so than that the audience and the equipment are sort of matched to one another.  If it were possible to fully modernise an Amiga, the community would turn up it's collective noses and say it was too Mac-like.

[runequester]

Plus on Amiga you have a self selected audience that has lived for 16 years with no support and precious little before that.  It's not that Amiga that encourages tinkering so much as the audience has survived by tinkering.  

But I think more so than that the audience and the equipment are sort of matched to one another.  If it were possible to fully modernise an Amiga, the community would turn up it's collective noses and say it was too Mac-like.

Heck, I remember reading articles comparing the amiga to the mac in the 80s

Everything old is new again

[murple]

You forgot...

Easy way:
0. Don't go out of business in 1995

Hard way:
0. Have a time machine, go back and save Commodore or Escom

[Buzzfuzz]

You forgot...
Hard way:
0. Have a time machine, go back and save Commodore or Escom

Ask Stephen Hawking, he might be able to help you build it.

[Amiga_Nut]

@Franko

It's because in 16 years a lot of advance have taken place that don't require a person to know how a computer works.  Everything just works, plug it in, turn it on, and away you ago.  The Amiga world doesn't work that way, it's more plug it in, turn it on, guru, try to fix it, surf the net for an answer, fix it, guru, repeat process.  Welcome to the '80s...

Also, the Amiga is back in the '80s in terms of user friendliness, on a Mac or a PC you don't have to understand how something works to use it, in the Amiga world you have to....

Maybe you are talking about the current fake modern Amigas but I sure as hell didn't need to know how OCS chipset worked to run Digiview, Technosound Turbo, Dpaint and anything else together at the same time or move the mouse or create fantastic music or animations.

edit: and Amiga 1000 + WB1.2/1.3 made PC DOS machines of the 80s look like something only used by losers..........geeky losers with no sense of value for money too and dodgy eyesight and tone deaf ears

In fact WB1.3 never got in the way of my creativity, only unreliable floppy disks! Today everywhere you turn there is a problem, the OS is slow, it is unresponsive, you need GIGAHERTZ of CPU power to display a shitty mouse pointer on a desktop and double click program icons.........Mac is even worse.

But people want torrent clients, modern browsers, super fast broadband connections, instant on USB connectivity with cameras and mp3 players......and so they have no choice anyway.

Sign of the times, not an indication of how good/bad anything is. If C= hadn't gone bust in 94 and made less stupid decisions with Amiga (ie ALL of them after A1000/A500) we would have all this now too and a real alternative in the market place.

[Franko]

@ coldfish
 

You can still do all those things Franko, if you want to learn about today's machines and enthuse about hardware or software details it's all there.
More like computing went from being a hobby shared by a niche group who had these sorts of interests - to commodity items that are owned by people who really just want a black-box device to serve up internets and entertainments. The same thing happened with most emergent technology like steam trains, motor cars, radio, film, TV, etc...

On topic; the Amiga platform is well past its sell by date.

The kind of "resurrect Amiga" speculation/discussion/rants we see on this board today needed to be (and was) had 10-15 years ago. No one did anything meaningful then, no one is going to do anything of significance now.

Better just to remember it fondly for what it was and enjoy (the good bits) of what's left.

While I get what your saying and agree in part with some of it, I still hold onto the dream that one day someone will produce a new Amiga that is based on total backward compatibility with the original 68k based Amiga hardware (thats why I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Natami will see the light of day..). You would think with all these great advancements in technology that todays blindingly fast CPUs have, producing an old bit of 80's technology would be relatively easy...


@ persia

It's because in 16 years a lot of advance have taken place that don't require a person to know how a computer works. Everything just works, plug it in, turn it on, and away you ago. The Amiga world doesn't work that way, it's more plug it in, turn it on, guru, try to fix it, surf the net for an answer, fix it, guru, repeat process. Welcome to the '80s...

Also, the Amiga is back in the '80s in terms of user friendliness, on a Mac or a PC you don't have to understand how something works to use it, in the Amiga world you have to....

To use an Amiga you didn't have to be a programmer or some sort of technical whizz, the average user at most just had to insert some extra ram in the trapdoor or plug in an extra floppy. The thing with the Amiga was & still is, if you wanted to tinker around with it or learn to write your own programs then you could as it is a machine that allows you to do that quite easily if you want to.

I can't agree with you that old dinosaurs like myself would turn our noses up at a new Amiga, again the Natami looks like it could be the very thing that would satisfy most.


@ Amiga_Nut

In fact WB1.3 never got in the way of my creativity, only unreliable floppy disks! Today everywhere you turn there is a problem, the OS is slow, it is unresponsive, you need GIGAHERTZ of CPU power to display a shitty mouse pointer on a desktop and double click program icons.........Mac is even worse.

But people want torrent clients, modern browsers, super fast broadband connections, instant on USB connectivity with cameras and mp3 players......and so they have no choice anyway.

To me it's fine if people just want a box that you plug in and away you go with torrent clients, modern browsers etc. Good luck to them, thats their choice. This iMac I'm using for the web is all that it's good for (it can't even read a CD/DVD without locking up about 60% of the time and Safari & other progs keep crashing with an application not responding error), I can edit GFX burn CD/DVDs play games easier and faster on my Amiga than I can do on this Mac.



The thing is old technology to me is far better than any of the stuff available today. I won't buy a flatscreen TV for the simple fact that no manufacturer has yet to overcome motion blur (even those panasonic 600Hz ones). I still prefer Vinyl to CD's and especially to MP3. I've never owned a mobile phone as I don't see the point, never owned a car, prefer to use public transport or the incredibly old fashioned thing called walking...

I like things I can tinker with, even if your not supposed to. The first thing I do when I buy something, is to open the case up and see what's inside (not much nowadays I admit, with all this surface mount techno). Ok so bang goes your guarantee but even with todays stuff you can still do a bit of tinkering and learn about the equipment along the way.

To sum up, I'm just one of those folk who doesn't care too much about something working straight out the box. I prefer to footer around with things, learn how they work, how you can repair or improve them yourself and most of all enjoy myself doing that.

Guess I'm a dying breed but hey it keeps me happy... (as my friends & family always call me ' the last of the luddites...')