CompuServe Messages

Paul: economics can't be ignored in business (if you want to be in business that is). No matter how loyal we are to the Amiga, one cannot ignore the fact that Commodore management has utterly failed to make a market within which third parties can grow. The installed base of the Amiga is about 1/3 that of the Mac yet the third party marketplace is hardly one-thirtieth as lucrative. If the Amiga had been vigorously marketed (directly) by Commodore in its natural niche in the USA (the "prosumer" video market) there would be at least 500,000 machines in the USA in the hands of people with enough money to really support a vigorous third party aftermarket. Once that was established, all the other good elements of a computer market would have come together and we would easily be rivaling the installed base of the Mac *in North America*. Commodore had a clear shot at this market *UNOPPOSED* for about five years. They did nothing with it except nibble at it. Scattershot ads. No real support. They dropped the ball right on their own foot –and it was a bowling ball! This is the result of "quarterly report" management and a complete failure of vision of upper management. Commodore engineering and sofware literally worked MIRACLES with a literal handful of people to create what I believe to be the best small operating systems and machine architecture in the world to date. Commodore management took these diamonds and hid them in the fog of their "thinking" all these years. Sad ain't it? And if CBM croaks, it won't be the upper management that gets hurt. They'll already have made their getaway money long before the sheriff puts the lock on the door. The people who'll get hurt are the people who actually created the Amiga and AmigaDOS we know today. Plus we third parties and all of us users and lovers of the Amiga. I long for some intelligent company to buy the Amiga and do right by it. Maybe if we all concentrate on that thought, we can bend the engine of reality by sheer will, hmm? –Redmond