So annoyed I won't get to read the Rise and Fall of Commodore: The Amiga Years book until after Christmas so reminiscing by watching this video;

Commodore 64 - 25 year anniversary

Jack could have ripped the Amiga apart for the chips if Atari had bought the Amiga but without his leadership at Commodore and his aggressive competition with the cheaper Atari ST the Amiga campaign suffered.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Jack was certainly a force to be reckoned with and Commodore's marketing kind of lost it's edge after his departure. However Jack didn't really understand the computer market, and Commodore's success with the PET, VIC-20 and C64 was really down Chuck Peddle and the engineers he hired. Could it have been done by MOS alone, if Jack hadn't driven them to the wall in an aggressive takeover, who knows?

I can't help but feel that Jack's opportunistic and short term approach did more damage than good in the long run. Of course some of this could be blamed on Irving Gould's tight control of the purse strings but Jack continued to shit all over people even after he left Commodore, so that's a pretty moot point.

What Tramiel did was to alienate every vendor and manufacturer out there by his "business is war" mentality. With the C64, he slashed the price to 399$ or so in order to force the competition out of the computer business. But he didn't compensate the vendors who had already bought the computers at a higher price, forcing them to sell the C64 at a negative profit. They never forgave him for that and a lot of stores, especially in the US, refused to sell Commodore and later Atari computers. There where a lot of stories like this and people eventually understood his game, demanding cash up front for selling parts.

This for example hurt the Lynx. They had a sweet deal with several parts manufacturers in order to make it cheap. But when Tramiel did his usual tricks by forcing the Lynx team into debt (I can't remember the details but I think Tramiel put a huge order of stuff and then refused to pay) and buying them out for almost nothing. When the manufacturers heard that Tramiel now owned the Lynx they demanded to renegotiate the deal and cash up front. They even demanded more money from Atari that they did from other companies, and because Atari needed these parts Tramiel had no choice but to agree. This made the Lynx so much more expensive that it couldn't compete in the marked, turning it into a commercial failure.

When Commodore was a huge corporation that sold enormous amount of computers vendors simply had to suck it up in order to participate in the profit machine, even if they had preferred not to. But when he lost his leverage it really hurt his business, and post Tramiel Commodore suffered from his bad reputation too.

Tramiel may have been a charismatic figure that deserves his place in the history books, but I hardly think his business practices was admirable or sensible.

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@Yasu

Well we had Thomas Rattigan running the show for a while and that seemed a pretty sweet period. Why Irving Gould played a power play rather than reward success I will never understand. Commodore was more than just chasing a $1billion valuation but Irving Gould really didn't get it. He probably hated the Amiga concept other than the CDTV and CD32.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @Yasu Well we had Thomas Rattigan running the show for a while and that seemed a pretty sweet period. Why Irving Gould played a power play rather than reward success I will never understand. Commodore was more than just chasing a $1billion valuation but Irving Gould really didn't get it. He probably hated the Amiga concept other than the CDTV and CD32.

From the various insiders telling their stories it's pretty obvious that CBM had a terminal case of corporate politics. Things like the cancelling of the A500+ at the peak of sales can be easily explained if you realize that the first thing a new exec would do was to kill all the projects of the previous exec, regardless of merit, and replace them with his own pet projects. There were also power blocs plotting against each other by sabotaging products, that is how they got rid of Jack Tramiel. Apple had a similar thing going when they sacked Steve Jobs in the early 80s.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 24-Nov-2015 at 12:21 AM.

Quote:

@Yasu Well we had Thomas Rattigan running the show for a while and that seemed a pretty sweet period. Why Irving Gould played a power play rather than reward success I will never understand. Commodore was more than just chasing a $1billion valuation but Irving Gould really didn't get it. He probably hated the Amiga concept other than the CDTV and CD32.

He got fired pretty quickly, before it was clear that his plan was a good idea (except maybe the massive lay-offs). I think Irving just didn't care about anything except getting a pay check large enough to support his libertarian playboy lifestyle. And he was scared that someone would take it away. Which is probably why Ali Mehdi became CEO in the end as he also didn't care about anything except getting his pay check and keeping Gould happy.

Tramiel was a terrible CEO, but Irving was a terrible majority share holder.

_________________
Amiga Forum - Sweden's best Amiga Magazine

My MorphOS Blog

"Free speech includes other peoples right to offend you."

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: @BigD Jack was certainly a force to be reckoned with and Commodore's marketing kind of lost it's edge after his departure. However Jack didn't really understand the computer market, and Commodore's success with the PET, VIC-20 and C64 was really down Chuck Peddle and the engineers he hired. Could it have been done by MOS alone, if Jack hadn't driven them to the wall in an aggressive takeover, who knows?

Jack was there from the beginning and he had Microsoft making BASIC for the computer. So basically he had everyone.

One of the complaints against Commodore was that they were too large and working on a lot of crazy projects so the argument is that he didn't understand the market is really unfounded. The market is what you develop and you don't put money into things that don't make money.

The problem I want addressed is if they owned the actual rights to the 6502 because all they were producing were masks so in other words, they didn't have their own processor design because they bought chips after that from Motorola. The government gave the money to design these chips and not Commodore.

In fairness to the claim that Chuck Peddle said that Jack Tramiel didn't understand the business, the reality is that MOS was sued and had to be bailed out by Commodore because they were sued and the reason that Commodore didn't invest money into MOS may be based on the lawsuit that it really wasn't MOS's property to begin with because if you can be sued then you really don't own the intellectual property and that opens up the unknown and probably why Tramiel said he didn't need him anymore. The liability is that once sued, you can be sued again and again because they didn't own (as in full rights) the intellectual property.

Last edited by Chuckt on 25-Nov-2015 at 12:42 PM.

@Yasu

Quote:

Yasu wrote: Quote: @Yasu Well we had Thomas Rattigan running the show for a while and that seemed a pretty sweet period. Why Irving Gould played a power play rather than reward success I will never understand. Commodore was more than just chasing a $1billion valuation but Irving Gould really didn't get it. He probably hated the Amiga concept other than the CDTV and CD32. He got fired pretty quickly, before it was clear that his plan was a good idea (except maybe the massive lay-offs). I think Irving just didn't care about anything except getting a pay check large enough to support his libertarian playboy lifestyle. And he was scared that someone would take it away. Which is probably why Ali Mehdi became CEO in the end as he also didn't care about anything except getting his pay check and keeping Gould happy. Tramiel was a terrible CEO, but Irving was a terrible majority share holder.

Commodore ran out of money so the idea that Commodore didn't understand the market is like saying they had the money to invest in this technology.

Tramiel gave up full control once Irving Gould had more than 50% shareholder power in the company. Once Tramiel gave up full control, it is hard to blame him because they weren't his decisions anymore.

I was a teenager when I got my Commodore 64. The MOS Engineers and Commodore made the first Commodore. Irving Gould had nothing to do with that. Irving Gould was just riding on the efforts of the company keeping him afloat.

Irving Gould was a failure because he didn't make enough money.

Last edited by Chuckt on 25-Nov-2015 at 12:46 PM.

@Chuckt

I didn't say Commodore didn't understand their market, just that the people in the post Tramiel era didn't care. Commodore would have sold toasters if they thought it would bring them a profit.

Commodore was living mostly from hand to mouth since the mid 70's when their calculator business was failing terribly, mounting a huge debt in the process. Going into the computer business gave them new revenue, but it wasn't able to give them enough surplus to save up for a rainy day. Mostly because Tramiel continues to undercut the competitors, ensuring Commodore would own the low end market but at the price of very low profitability.

Post Tramiel Commodore wanted to change that and get into the high end market where the real money was. But they could never muster enough money for advertisement nor convince businesses otherwise to switch to their computer models in large enough numbers. Their reputation as being untrustworthy and having terrible customer support probably played a big role here.

My guess is that Irving stayed in Commodore because it was a huge company and it could support his lifestyle. He didn't care how Commodore made it's profit, just as long as it kept coming. His choices for CEO:s had more to do with that he wanted someone that could turn the company around to profitability immediately while posing no threat to his seat on the board.

This doesn't mean he wasn't at all interested in the companies strategies. He was after all dependent on them for his pay checks. But he didn't pay that much attention to them and let other peoples figure out the details. He knew they needed to break into the high end market. But the question how didn't concern him, as long as it was a cheap solution. I guess in the final years of Commodore he knew perfectly well they didn't have much of a shot anymore and just tried to milk the cow for all that it was worth before the end.

Also, I don't think Gould owned half of the voters stock. He was the majority share holder, but not close to 50%. I think he had a grip on the board because of his personality, and because of the other members lack of it.

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Amiga Forum - Sweden's best Amiga Magazine

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"Free speech includes other peoples right to offend you."

@Yasu

True. The Japanese reduced the price of calculators and adding equipment from hundreds of dollars to about $10 or less. I don't think anybody could have survived that. There were a lot of competing companies who dropped their stock in that.

Don't discount Jack Tramiel though. He bought and ran Atari and gave them at least two pretty good machines. I would say that he wasn't finished and had a lot of gas in the tank.

The problem is the nature of computers. Those with big government contracts like AMD and Intel hired scientists and they made the chips smaller and faster. Any computer that is older than three years old is basically obsolete because the business is that competitive.

I threw out books on different models of computers that I wish I kept. Names like "orange" were taken and the owners could sue for trademark infringement. There were hundreds of computer models and manufacturers and the market was that crowded. You simply could not survive if you charged what some of those companies charged and Jack Tramiel did what he had to do to survive which was to drop prices. It is the companies that could afford research and had the business market that survived.

History is also told by people who didn't survive in the market. Chuck Peddle had the Victor computer and our college had a lab room of them and they were eventually replaced by the IBM PC.

http://www.oldcomputers.net/victor9000.html

He single handedly started the small personal computer market but he didn't survive in that market. He had a lot of power but companies with billions won out in the end.

So him (Chuck Peddle) having started the computer industry isn't everything. It is too competitive and cut throat. You don't get manuals anymore. Companies charge you by the hour or hourly increments. It is sort of like the tire industry. Ever since Firestone had problems on their tires, tire stores don't offer warranties anymore. The whole business has changed. Chips are getting smaller and smaller and those without chip foundry support cannot compete.

Linux is hanging on but who really has the power to challenge Microsoft?

Look at the names on Apple's shareholder's board. They are prominent names. They are serious people who are with seriously rich companies. The market isn't controlled by some hacker in his basement or a group of engineers at Commodore anymore. Those who put millions and billions into this got ahead because the others couldn't afford to keep up.

Lets say that I gave Amiga a billion dollars to become competitive. Don't you think that the other players in the market would spend billions trying to bury Amiga?

Last edited by Chuckt on 25-Nov-2015 at 03:26 PM.
Last edited by Chuckt on 25-Nov-2015 at 03:22 PM.

@Chuckt

Well, read my example about the Lynx again for my point why Tramiel was doing more damage than good.

As for the computer industry, the turnover wasn't that fierce because it was such an expensive investment to buy a computer that you used it for a pretty long time. Most of my friends used their Amigas for more than 5 years. It wasn't until the mid 90's when competition became cut throat, when switching a GFX card or adding a few more MB of RAM made a world of difference. Today it's slowing down again as hardware has become decently powerful. I'm not saying people won't upgrade anymore, but the need for it isn't that big anymore.

I think Microsoft will lose in the end. They have already lost the server market, the mobile phone market and the handheld market. They only dominate in the desktop market, and there it feels like the loyalty to Microsoft is pretty much non existent. If people can they will switch OS. This will hurt them in the long run. I thought they would chance strategy with Windows 10 and make an OS that their CEO claimed "people would want to use" (instead of _have_ to use), but their blunders with privacy questions may hurt them a lot. And don't count out SteamOS. If Windows becomes unimportant to play the AAA games it will lose another of it's appeal.

Microsoft was the evil empire in the mid 90's that everyone had to follow. The times they are a changin', but MS still hasn't realised that they simply can not dictate to people what they have to use anymore. They still like to think they do and they apparently are just as arrogant as ever. This will one day jump right back at them and bite them in the ass. And I will not be unhappy about it

[Edit]
Quote:

Lets say that I gave Amiga a billion dollars to become competitive. Don't you think that the other players in the market would spend billions trying to bury Amiga?

Ehm, yes? I don't understand what that point will prove.

Last edited by Yasu on 25-Nov-2015 at 03:40 PM.

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Amiga Forum - Sweden's best Amiga Magazine

My MorphOS Blog

"Free speech includes other peoples right to offend you."

@Yasu

Companies are dirty in business. My boss wants to be the only one to make any money so they aren't going to share opportunities with us. They also aren't going to care once you sign on the dotted line because you come last. I've also dealt with a lot of U.S. companies that you can't change; they do things that aren't brilliant and they can't change when I complain.

The fact is that a lot of companies that move into certain buildings to rent go out of business because they don't know how to do business. Unless you sign a long term lease, you don't have any power. For example, our elevator broke down so my boss put the money into escrow and told the landowners he wasn't going to pay until they fixed the elevator. This is legal because the money is gaining interest and you don't have to pay unless you get services in return. You have no leverage if you don't know how to do business and the same thing happened with Lynx.

I don't think Microsoft is going anywhere because there are really few alternatives for people to switch operating systems. If customers do switch, where is the support? You aren't going to find it.

@Chuckt

Don't think that what's true now must always be true.

_________________
Amiga Forum - Sweden's best Amiga Magazine

My MorphOS Blog

"Free speech includes other peoples right to offend you."

@Yasu

Actually microsofts biggest revenue stream is servers anr support. By a huuuge margin.
People underestimate just how much "behind the surface" ms really are.
Yes, everyone knows ms and their end user products, but few seem to understand where their money and power comes from.
People seem to want to claim theyve lost server market, but that market is much more thanthe os used, and even if it wasnt ms is still the dominant force.
With a monopoly on multi billion $ customers their position is still pretty much iron clad.

@fishy_fis

Maybe, but they are still losing ground there. I'm not saying MS is going away tomorrow. I'm not that stupid. But their business practices are not appreciated by a lot of people, so it won't be loyalty that will keep making people buying their stuff. MS aren't Apple, who have a huge fan base that don't want to switch systems unless they really have to.

Unless MS change tactics and start trying to be the "nice guy", they are going to keep losing market shares, even if it will be a very slow progress.

_________________
Amiga Forum - Sweden's best Amiga Magazine

My MorphOS Blog

"Free speech includes other peoples right to offend you."

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: @BigD Jack was certainly a force to be reckoned with and Commodore's marketing kind of lost it's edge after his departure. However Jack didn't really understand the computer market, and Commodore's success with the PET, VIC-20 and C64 was really down Chuck Peddle and the engineers he hired. Could it have been done by MOS alone, if Jack hadn't driven them to the wall in an aggressive takeover, who knows?

It was all smoke and mirrors because Commodore never had the market.

BASIC was contracted out which meant they couldn't write an operating system.
Commodore bought their power supplies from overseas.
They bought a lot of parts instead of make them themselves.

It is kind of like Commodore being in charge but too many other people have to do the work.

The guy that designed the SID chip only worked with them on the design for a month. Where was the development after that? In other words, their operations was making no money and Commodore still had to hire mercenaries to do the design because there was no in house talent before or after that.

The fact that Commodore could only reproduce the 6502 with masks and got sued for having a pin compatible chip meant that they didn't own the rights to the 6502. The fact that MOS executives left meant that after Commodore was sued, Commodore was afraid of putting money into a product that could get sued for "look and feel" or copyright / patent infringement.

Commodore copied the path of the Atari joysticks by putting pin compatible ports and letting users buy Atari joysticks instead of using their own I.P. and making a better joystick like Xbox or Gamecube has. That means that no one was developing at Commodore for this technology.

Someone was at the top at Commodore who was in charge and they let everyone else do the work which means it was micro managed and they used mercenaries instead of develop talent at the company which is why things stayed the same and there was little development.

Last edited by Chuckt on 26-Nov-2015 at 04:25 PM.

@Chuckt

This was the reason Commodore didn't go anywhere.
Instead of paying people and having updates to the SID chip, they only hired the creator for a month.
They basically let go the MOS team.
They contracted out BASIC to Microsoft.
This is the reason why that no one at Commodore could make any real money.

Other companies like AMD and Intel had government and business contracts; They hired scientists and made their chips faster and smaller. They had teams of people developing their chips.

The difference is light and day. Commodore didn't have a real or tangible development team and the competition did. Even when Commodore bought Amiga, they were still doing the same thing; getting mercenaries like Microsoft to develop BASIC and it wasn't their I.P. because the 68000 was developed by the government which means they didn't design their processor. The SID chip was a throwback to the Commodore 64 because it wasn't significantly redesigned.

If you compared the Commodore 128 to the Atari models that Jack Tramiel designed, there might be discrepancies in price and ability for what consumers wanted.

Computers like the C-16 had less silicon instead of more memory making the computers cheaper and less exciting to consumers who wanted more because there wasn't any real development.

It was smoke and mirrors and they gave you the same thing in terms of compatibility so they didn't have to do some hardware design.

Have you heard of the SID chip 3? Sid chip 4? Sid Chip 5? Why not?
Have you heard of a Commodore 64 using a 65C816S (16 bit) like the Apple GS?
Have you heard of a Commodore 64 having 512K without a memory expander?
Have you heard of a Commodore 64 with a built in modem instead of using a cartridge port?
Did Commodore ever fix the bus design so that the 1541 disk drive worked at full speed instead of everyone installing Jiffy Dos? No.
Did Commodore really make their own disk drives? No, they were contracted out.
Did Commodore ever enter the DIY market with a bread boardable computer? Why not?

No to all these questions. Why not? Because it wasn't a real company with real development.

Last edited by Chuckt on 26-Nov-2015 at 04:49 PM.
Last edited by Chuckt on 26-Nov-2015 at 04:43 PM.