I'm not affiliated with CUSA, but if I was its CEO I would apologise to you here....yes they handled that rather badly. If anything I would say just please don't judge Barry too hard.....he's a firm Commodorian for sure, just not a PR kind of guy....
Don't judge him? Don't judge him based on two years of observed public behavior? What the hell am I
supposed to judge him on? If someone is consistently, observably a douche and a sleaze for two straight years, that's not an issue of "not a PR kind of guy," that's a
track record. Even if we had any evidence to believe that he's a "firm Commodorian" (we don't,) everything he's said and done in the past two years has been ample indication
not to trust him with anything, least of all my money.
Point taken.....the prices are rather high I agree I don't doubt that. But also, you need to remember that the reason why we now have much higher component costs compared to yesteryear is, first, we have inflation. From something costing $500 in 1985 will be around $980 today.
That's another load of shít. Computers in general are
massively cheaper today than they were in 1985, inflation notwithstanding, and I can buy a perfectly good assortment of hardware at the Commodore 64's initial price, desktop or laptop. CUSA's machines aren't ludicrously expensive because of inflation; people have priced out equivalent-spec machines to the "Amiga Mini" and come up with a price tage of
$900-1300. (
Including the etching.) They're ludicrously expensive because Barry is adding massive markup in hopes that some dumbass will be stupid enough to order one.
That said, the closest we've had yet in recent years with this idea of 'computers for the masses not the classes' has been Apple. The current iPad is successful because it is actually following a Tramiel-style tactic with vertical integration of the manufacturing process. Apple can do this because it has its own plants. Having your own chip-fab plant goes a long way to maintaining costs in the long run, and Steve Jobs was well shrewd when he acquired PA Semi.
Uhh, no. Putting aside the issue that sourcing and rebadging ≠ vertical integration, Apple sells laptops-without-keyboards with a paltry amount of RAM and Flash storage up to less than half the capacity of the hard drive in my three-year-old netbook at prices you can buy a full laptop for, and their actual laptops for much more. That "computers for everyone" jazz is just marketing babble.
Well with the current prices of new components being produced, we're not going to expect miracles in terms of pricing. After all, Amiga IS a 20+ year old product....new stuff is bound to cost more and old stuff less....
Again, if we're talking commodity hardware, that's purest bullshít - the comparison between price and computing power today and 20 years ago is absolutely
mind-blowing. And it's beside the point, anyway - whether or not their prices were justified, how would shelling out for things I don't want encourage a company to give me what I
do want?
I know you're anxious but CUSA is still young, and I think giving it 2 years is still a little premature. As someone else said, you need to give them about 5 years to see whether they've succeeded (or not). But then again you are talking about the restart of a 58-year old brand with at least 40 years of business experience and manufacturing prowess behind it before it fell....it'll take CUSA I reckon a fair amount of time before they could get to their level...
Two years of douchebaggery, fast talk, and shoddy manufacturing isn't "a little premature," it's a God-damn
tradition.
