CompuServe Messages

Do you *really* want to know what Commodore has done wrong? (1) They had a marvelous third-party developer rep (Caryn Havis) at Los Gatos (i.e., she was an Amigoid. In fact, she's now RJ Mical's wife.) They took that responsibility away from her and turned it over to someone (who shall remain nameless) who they proceeded to alienate scores, nay, hundreds of third-party developers. [Oops, that's "then proceeded".] (2) They wasted millions upon millions of dollars in an unfocused, ill-conceived advertising campaign, then refused to spend the relatively small amounts necessary to put in an appearance at COMDEX/Fall and CES/January, losing tremendous credibility among developers and dealers. (3) They put the Amiga out on the market far too soon, with unfinished system software and inefficient (in production terms) hardware design, creating problems all along the pipeline. (4) By rushing the Amiga to market, they managed to position it outside of the two major markets, home/education and business. It was too expensive for the home/education market and didn't have the right hardware/software (such as a decent 80 column, 25-line word-processing package on a pleasant-to-read display) to crack the business market. (5) They have consistently ignored the pleas and advice of the folks who designed the Amiga; said folks have had to sit back and wince as they have watched Commodore seriously mismanage the marketing of a machine that they spend three years developing. I *like* the Amiga, a whole lot. And when I first saw it at the Amiga Developers' Conference over a year ago, I turned to a friend and said, "The only thing that could cause this machine to fail is Commodore itself." It has been frustrating watching that fear come true. No, I am not writing off the Amiga, but Commodore's track record doesn't fill me with confidence. I will end on an upbeat note by saying that Commodore has been making some right moves lately, such as relieving the unnamed person above of all 3rd party development duties and turning them over to Terry Ishida, an Amigoid at Los Gatos (I understand he's using Caryn as an assistant). But they've