Its a computer. Most people wouldn't remember the c64 and buy it because it looks cool or whatever.
Supposing that's true, it's
still completely irrelevant. The popular perception has
zilch to do with the issue of what the C-USA product have in common (or rather,
don't) with the computers they're named after.
If CUSA wants to sell and sell big it has to be more than to just us. They need a cool looking computer, with good support, a good website, and good advertising.
And they're more than welcome to do that - I only want them to
stop pretending their machines are something that they aren't. Were they not trying to sell their x86 machines under the names of classic computers they have
zero to do with, I'd wish them well and continue on my merry way.
It's not that it's O.K. as much as it is about the state of affairs. Nearly everything we see today is a re-spin of something that came before it. There are some who would (and did) claim that even your coveted classic Amiga was conceived by Atari. What about IBM PC Clones... even if you had just ignored them on the basis of them being "unethical", would anyone else. Would anyone else even care?
But this isn't even a re-spin. It's a completely different machine on a completely different OS in a vaguely-reminiscent case. It only even
approaches being a spin-off by the inclusion of an emulator, and that brings it as close to being an Amiga spin-off as...
every other PC on the market.As for PC clones, you will note that they are, in fact,
clones. That is to say, their design is directly based on the PC and they maintain (with rare exception) significant to nearly-full compatibility with the PC standard as laid down with the IBM 5150 (to a ridiculous extent, really.) I'm not going to say that the intentions of Compaq
et. al were noble, but at the very least they weren't introducing completely unrelated systems and slapping something else's label on them.