Why Commodore Failed - A Conversation with Commodore UK's David John Pleasance & Trevor Dickinson
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- Опубліковано 8 жов 2017
- Former Commodore UK Managing Director
David John Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson
of A-EON Technology talk about the fall
of Commodore and David’s upcoming book
“Commodore: The Inside Story” Tomasz “ALT” Marcinkowski from the Polish Amiga Portal and Museum of Computer
History in Katowice, Poland speaks with them at AmiParty 21 on August 12, 2017
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A-EON Technology
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Polish Amiga Portal
www.ppa.pl
Museum of Computer History and Information, Poland
www.muzeumkomputerow.edu.pl
Chelm Amiga Legion
chal.pl
/ chelm.amiga.legion - Наука та технологія
English subtitles for the interviewer have been added - enjoy! Thanks for all the feedback. Like I mentioned to a few of you, this conversation was not planned. It all happened at the last minute. I was at AmiParty to have fun more than to do extensive coverage, so I only had 2 microphones with me. Naturally I put them on David and Trevor. We were not even sure if Tomasz would be in the video. Anyway, English subtitles for the interviewer have been added - enjoy!
a kiedy polskie napisy??
atryda1111 When someone who speaks both Polish and English is willing to do it. It takes a very long time
I often only have two microphones on me when im trying to have fun.
Great stuff guys, one day I'll have the guts to travel.
Having worked in the gaming industry, i can tell you the 90's was a hotbed of old Amiga coders moving to game writing frameworks. I Often spot Amiga stuff popping up in odd places ;0)
Keep up the good work guys =]8¬_D
When the 68EC020 came it, it would have been a higher end embedded processor, used in laser printers and arcade games (in addition to the 1200 & CD32) not for washing machines or VCRs, except for possibly high-end fuzzy logic washing machines. Heck, even the 680EC00 wouldn't have likely been used for such uses at the time of its release, since those could get by on 8-bit MPUs, except, again, for perhaps high-end fuzzy logic washing machines.
Absolutely loved my Commodore 64, Amiga 500 and 1200. The best years of my life revolve around those three awesome computers.
Same here. Exact same models.
The C=64 was my daily driver computer for around a decade and it had some of the most memorable games I have ever played. if anyone from Commodore reads this , Thanks for the memories , I love you guys.
They will read it Washu! The C64 is the ultimate classic. Our WAUG newsletter editor was using his to make the newsletter well into the 90's !
The fate of Amiga still saddens me today. A500 was mind blowing. Then the management f'd everything. Just like Elop destroyed Nokia's phone business. It was like planned destruction.
Absolutely amazing interview. Anyone who is a Commodore fan needs to watch this.
Thanks MVG! Agreed. I was great listening to David's incredible, but sad stories
Slashdot crew, reporting.
David is clearly switched on. It's a shame that Commodore couldn't bring on more guys like David who had at least an iota of sense
Done and done . A few nitty griity stuff i didn't know. Mainly from the buy--out. but it would make sense, If Esom bought UK instead, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this potion today.
I'm not a Commodore fan and I'm still watching this!
That was sad. So many people got into computers and science because of CBM. These days even businesses with a business plan fail but they don't leave millions in the lurch. It is amazing now to see a resurgence of these machines because everything that was available back then is now freeware.
A bit depressing, but glad the truth is being told.
As someone who was there in the very beginning everything they are saying is true. We who loved C64 were heartbroken when the company fell. I learned so much during my high school years not from my teachers but from our community and my curiosity. We were teaching the teachers in our high schools. ;)
I started with a C64 and then later a C64C, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and love it. Enjoyed the A3000/A4000 for a brief time too. Amiga was a community.
David is bang on re: Transfer Pricing. Each local CBM operating company was in fact just the local exclusive distributor. If you ran your business well you showed no profit so that CBM Corp, which was headquartered in the Bahamas, could show the profit in a tax free country. On the surface it was a brilliant scam. We were also charged “Management Fees” on top of the artificially set transfer prices.
Mehdi showed up after working at Dillion Reed who was handling a cash infusion from Prudential. It was bad enough when he was a “Special Advisor” but when he came on as CEO it was our death knell. I once asked him if he would like to go to the parking lot to settle a disagreement. The little coward declined.
Thanks for inside info! For anyone who doesn't know who Rich is, here's some info from an article from when Gould replaced Rattigan with himself (this was the 2nd stage of the end of CBM, after Jack leaving and before Mehdi as CEO):
"The company appointed Alfred Duncan as general manager of its American operations and Richard McIntyre as general sales manager. Mr. Duncan, who had been a manager of Commodore's Canadian and Italian subsidiaries, replaces Nigel Shepherd, who said he had been dismissed. Mr. McIntyre, who had been manager of the Canadian subsidiary, enters a new position."
So, basically under Gould, the folks who had run the Canadian subsidiary were put in charge (with however much autonomy Gould, and then also Mehdi, allowed). Of course, CBM was originally a Canadian company (well prior to Jack leaving), and Gould was Canadian and lived in Canada.
www.nytimes.com/1987/04/24/business/business-people-chairman-replaces-commodore-chief.html
@@RetroDawn From all I have read about Mehdi Ali, he was ignorant and made very stupid decisions which killed Commodore. I wonder where he is now - still, no doubt, taking advantage of "positive discrimination", which has to be the explanation of how he got to the top of Commodore,. Jack Tramiel wouldn't have given him house room.
This is probably one of the best interviews and inside info we've had around the Amiga, Commodore and it's history in years! Thanks a lot for this!
Wow, thanks for the very kind words Pad! Tomek did a great job keeping it informal, making everyone comfortable. And David obviously doesn't hold anything back. I can only imagine what will be in the book!
Indeed, loved Tomek as well!
Fwiw, Mr Pleasance, you were a hero of "10 year old me", and listening to you speak now, I feel like I was a good judge of character for a kid. I wish you'd been put in charge of CBM sooner. Thank you, for putting out your version of events - it's something I've wanted to hear since '94.
Shemmie Yes, David knows business well and much respect to him for expressing is true feelings
Also, a huge thank you guys for putting a brilliant interview together.
You are welcome! It is a lot of fun for us. Especially when we get nice feedback such as yours.
I loved my 64. . Programming in assembly really made it hummed along. I build CNC lathes and EFI computers for rotary on them. 6502 chipset was brilliantly designed..
I was 9 when commodore went under, and didn't even see my first 64 until many years later. I find this stuff fascinating, thank you so much for taking the time to get this on video!
Thank you for lovely video I am Amiga 500 owner since 1989,keep Amiga memories alive!
har pap You are welcome. Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks
Thank you! I am looking for commodore amiga 2000
Having the Amiga opened my eyes in that I could recognize which was a good OS and what to expect/demand from one. My life and tech-awareness wouldn't have been the same without that knowledge.
Thank you guys. I was an Amiga nut back in the days and I treasure any info about its history.
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
I just found out about the Commodore because I was searching of the console wars back in the 90s and damn this interview is great. I recently watched the "How they make Commodore 64" video and it was impressive to have a look at how they make these computers. Such a shame that the Commodore didn't persist in the modern era. I search the youtube and there's barely any documentary about it heck most people tackle the console version instead of the PC version. This needs to get more views.
*Amiga
I have such a deep and profound respect and admiration for Mr. Pleasance as well as anyone else who was able to persevere and be successful through all of the horrible management and financial decisions made at that once great company. That was a fantastic interview. Thank you very much for sharing that.
I loved my Amiga. I was so disappointed commodore went bankrupt back in the day. But with such a passionate and loyal community the Amiga still lives on in a way.
True, the community is awesome and has had a massive resurgence in recent years
Can't say I'm surprised about the Petro comment. When Petro said he wasn't going to make the Amiga price competitive with PC's I knew he had no idea what he was doing.
Its all so disappointing to me, I had so much hope laid at the feet of every single twist and turn yet behind the scenes Escom screwed everything so careless it was almost deliberate.
Polish guys got little carried away when talking about "iron curtain" and Poland behind others. I bought my first A600 in Poland only couple months after my friend from Birmingham. Excellent interview though.
This interview is pure gold!
Thanks for doing this (and with this video and audio quality)!
Thanks for the very kind words João. Much appreciated and glad you enjoyed it!
In all the interviews I see with David it's clear how much he cared about the platform, and the pain he felt with the decisions Commodore HQ made and imposed on the markets he was responsible for. I'd love to have seen what he could have done if he wasn't duped out of that final deal
You are right. He was absolutely devastated when the deal fell through. So much so that he quit the computer business all-together. What could have been...
Not much I reckon, I think the guy is extremely overrated. Mostly by himself.
He's certainly on a promotion mission on account of his book. Do you have anyone else in mind who might have been able to carry the Amiga flag?
They would have stayed solvent enough to at least have a chance to get some of that new tech he describes out to market. But at that time, they would have had to have dealt with PCs largely caught up in technology, and of course the Intel/Cyrix fights.
He's clearly *really* pissed off.
Excellent interview, thank you :)
When Commodore went under I was gutted :(
You are welcome! Thanks for watching. Yes, I think we were all gutted. Ugh
The Guru Meditation
Anyone who loved the Amiga such as us would all have had to be gutted by the demise of Commodore.
I remember the image of David Pleasance in CU Amiga so it's great to finally hear this wonderful man talk, he's truly a diamond in the Amiga's crown.
It's *extremely* aggravating though to hear fully why Commodore died as per the information from David, not aggravation towards him of course but towards the absolute f@#king pricks that screwed Commodore, pricks it appears with zero integrity!
But emulation lives on ..:) Its not the same as physical hardware, but it's still nostalgic.
Great interview- content and camera work. Somehow the quality looks better than most 4k videos. Great comments and links. So much fascinating history!
Thanks Andy! As you indicate resolution is not the be-all end-all. There are so many factors involved in making a quality image - lighting, lens quality, sensor size, sensor type, image processing, etc... I didn't have any equipment with me other than the camera and 2 microphones, so I positioned them near a big window and pulled the sheers closed to create a large soft light source for them. I also balanced the camera on my belly because I didn't have a tripod. I guess that meas I can claim my beers as a tax deduction, ha ha!
Trevor and John are both so charming and brilliant. God, so much squandered passion and talent. Breaks my heart!
Yes, mine as well. They are great
Thank you! The mic on Mr. Pleasance is great and the subtitles worked fine.
Thanks a lot! I wish I had 3 mics so I could put one on the interviewer as well, but I only had 2. This was a last minute interview that wasn't planned so I am glad the subtitles worked. Thanks for watching!
Greetings from Poland :)
Cześć !!!
This is the single best interview I've ever seen from Pleasance. I think it would do him quite well to bring along Trevor as a sidekick for everything he does. It really humanises him. I'll say that while I've always been "entertained" by Pleasance, I just never really bought his overall story arc. I've always believed he's selling his own legacy, and he is in fact a salesmen. That's always been his job. And a salesmen best attribute is to be likable, so you'll buy. It's so very easy to trash someone that's not here to defend themselves; Commodore is dead, there's money to be made from bashing them... He holds no real love for Commodore, it does not pain him to point out anything and everything he feels they did wrong. Now I actually believe him when he says he tells no lies from his own point of view... But in a way that's kind of how a salesmen has to be in order to sleep at night. lol. They must believe their story if they are going to sell it to people...
He claims he's going to tell it, warts and all... Well, I'll believe it when he actually points a finger at himself. It's not hard for a subsidiary (Commodore U.K.) to be in the black. It's the head company (Commodore International) that is spending all the money. Of course you can say they were spending it in terrible areas, but they were also spending it in required areas. Nobody ever talks to them about that. There's way more overhead for the main company.
He didn't talk about it here, but he often mentions the special Batman packages he sold with the Amiga, or bringing it into Toys R Us, how successful these were for the U.K. market. But never does he acknowledge that America was not the U.K. market, and we didn't want Batman. And the dealers, who Commodore had to beg to come back to them after Jack Tramiel abandoned them, they were an important part of the American business. Which was made up of young adults to middle aged adults, with more money than those in the U.K., with less of a need to pirate software, who wants software and not just games, who's game tastes were of much bigger and more expensive types of games. Who may not have had the percentage of sales compared to the U.K., but due to sheer size outsold all markets except Germany. The Batman pack would not have worked in America, selling it in Toys R Us would not have worked. Those bigger and more expensive machines (2000-4000) were largely sold in America, practically every single last 3000 was sold in America.
I believe him when he talks about bad decisions of Commodore staff. I wouldn't be surprised if their was a mistress in the Philippians. Of course it's a bad idea to have so many PC engineers. But am I to believe that this salesmen would have turned the company around if only Escom would have sold to him? In the end nobody has made more money off of Commodores demise than David Pleasance. It's important to hear him out, as not that many people on the inside care to talk, but it's also important to take him with a grain of salt. I'd rather listen to Heine talk about why he thinks Commodore failed, these are the people who actually loved the company... and in fact to this day they don't tend to like talking about too many of those failures, because they didn't see them that way at the time. Pleasance loves talking about the failures, because he's well known for a success. I remember reading an interview with him from the magazine Amiga World when he came over to the American side for awhile. In the end I can't dust that salesmen attitude off, the man loves himself. I think he does believe he could have saved Commodore, but that does mean he would have.
Trevor loves the Amiga... Trevor loves Commodore. Trevor is us. David Pleasance needs to be eaten up because he's willing to share information, but we must all be careful about how we interpret that information. Great interview and great quality as well. Much better looking video than the ones you normally see of these guys at special shows and such.
Very insightful and well-thought out response Shot97. You the man!
Sorry thats all deflection in itself. Commodore were a shambles with the Amiga full stop, the buck stops at the US management. Ever since they bought the Amiga tech, its well known that they took years to create a market for a technology that was so far ahead of the competition. The TV effects niche market it got in the US was more by luck and relied on the 3rd party Video Toaster hardware, nothing to do with Commodore US. Commodore basically sat on the tech and let the competition creep up, in the later years they used the Amiga to subsidise their PC ambitions and were obsessed with becoming a billion dollar Stock Market company instead of investing in Amiga R&D. The big sales boom was in fact the home Amiga 500 but Commodore in the US, obsessed with "serious computing" didnt market it well and didnt join up with any well known retailer. Comodore who once had a foothold in the US gaming market let it go to the Japanese games consoles, I mean throwing millions at the CDTV for home entertainment instead of updating what was actually selling and launching the tepid 4000 for the serious (US) market when the Mac and PC multimedia content creator market was snapping at the heels. lol what were they thinking. By contrast the games market for the Amgia was booming in Europe and Commodore UK capitalised on it and pushed it to greater heights. Its clear he isnt saying his Batman packs would have sold well in the US just using it as a contrast between constant failure of marketing in the US with a decent run of success in the UK, so much that the UK management had a well funded business buyout plan, compare that clear direction with the endless failure of all those other subsequent PC manfucatures/retailers Escom and Gateway 2000. It is obvious that even as a Salesman Pleasance knew his product and believed in it and was excited about the future tech the Amiga engineers had architected in the US. Unlike those other beige PC retailers that were just after the naming rights.
@@suburbia2050 I agree , in my opinion one of the biggest mistakes commodre made was that as a tech company who made most of its sales off what was essentially gaming PCs(c64 and Amiga) they never produced many 1st party games , they had a few for the c64 like jack attack and international soccer but they produced no 1st party games on the amiga platform which bit them in the ass with the amigaCD32 when it came to competing against consoles. I also think instead of making the C64GS in 1990 they should have relased a handheld console based off the c64 8bit technology since 8bit hardware still had sales potential well into the 90s in that market (gameboy/gameboy color). Also they should have produced more 1st party productivity software like a photo editing program and office suite or bought out other companies for that purpose
After just 10 minutes of interview David got me. Great interview, I feel the honesty in his eyes, I have preordered the book, I'll be waiting to read it.
Thanks for the kind words Daniele! Glad you enjoyed it. Yes, David is speaking from his heart.
One could say it didn't failed. They manage to give us some of the most amazing computers ever and gave us thousands of joyful hours. My childhood would have been very different if I hadn't met the Amiga. And It keeps on giving even today. Who doesn't like to play Amiga games?.
exactly, well said
I still have my Commodore 128D and Amiga 500. I actually did a mod on my Amiga and installed a hard drive inside (where the floppy was). It all still works! (and no, I'm not selling them) This interview sheds so much light on what happened. Such a shame an awesome company was so badly managed. I would love to see it resurrected!
John Andrews nice! Glad you enjoyed! Your HD solution for the 500 is very interesting. I have an ACA500+ that goes into the side expansion port and lets you use a CF card as a HD. Brilliant stuff
When parts start to run out,you may.... Sellers who sell parts on eBay, will die eventually as well.
Aww man, memories! Remember seeing David in Amiga Format when I was a teenager. Great times!
I still use my Vanilla A1200 to this very day.
Great interview. Back in the day we all saw Escom as the Amiga savior. Sounds like they had no interest in moving the Amiga forward. What a shame.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
David P. talks very harsh about Petro T. It is really a very interesting and important interview, so my congratz to the responsible makers. Poland is really a great Amiga-country! I love it!
Thank you! And yes, thanks to David for expressing his true feelings. He has become a great friend. But it would be nice to get Petro's side of the story as well. I am game to interview him if he is willing.
@@TheGuruMeditation absolutely would love to hear that interview. It doesn't make sense to me why David so easily pulled out of the bid despite having money. Got to be more to it than that.
Yes we was that was mine First 16 bit proper PC
For some reason, all the laughing Trevor did, the two didn't seem to get along (that was my first thought). David was in the middle of talking, then all you heard was "HA HA HA HA !"
WOW !
Stunning guys, this was the first time I heard David's voice.
For sure I knew for ages who he was, proudly owning Amigas since 1987 (A500, wich was stolen during summer. A2000 (later got 60830+68882 accelerator board with 4Mb iirc), wich I trade for a quite pristine A1000 once I had bought an A4030... I still own 3 Amiga: an A500 gifted by a friend, the A1000 & the A4030) !
I loved the way David spoke so freely, sometimes having Trevor to repeat his words in a more "polite" way (loved that "bent as the butcher's hook !", will try to remember this formula, just in case it might be needed !).
Wise & honest men it seems, for I failed to detect any bullshit / nonsense in what David said, regarding how close I was watching Commodore's demise and Amiga's death.
As far as I remember, I've been using the A4030 as my main computer up until 1998 or 1999.
What got me into the Amiga wasn't games, it was the creativity allowed by this wonderful machine !
I still miss DeluxePaint a lot, I loved toying with various Soundtrackers, I marvelled at the code some of my friends created.
What made the Amiga so special to me was the demoscene.
And it still gets me every time, as well as other people, as I explain to them how few memory, disk space, Mhz the Amiga was made of. And how these specs mostly blown away any other computer from that era.
Thank you so much for having recorded and shared this.
Cheers Manuel. Thanks for taking the time to write this and share your story
"What is it you need." Those words will stick with me. Great story, great video.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. It was a pleasure recording it and posting for everyone.
I'm livid right now that I didn't stumble across your channel sooner. Brilliant interview!
Marky Shaw No worries Marky. You are here now and we are glad to have you. We have lots of cool stuff on the horizon. Glad you enjoyed the interview!
Great video interview, guys! Great job! Thanks for sharing it. Ps: for me, a Brazilian portuguese native speaker, there was no need to have subtitles. That guy's English is excellent! It's very clear and easy to understand.
Marcelo Badari Music Thank you so much Marcelo! So glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the feedback. That is great to hear. When I first posted the video it didn't have subtitles because I had no problem understanding him either. However several people said they couldn't understand him so I went ahead and created them. I wish I had a 3rd microphone for him but i didn't. Oh well. At least the subs are there now for people who can't understand him.
I could just sit and listen to David all day
I'm still crying inside 😭😭😭😭
Paul Bennett us too :-(
Fantastic interview! Love this!
Thanks Ms. Mad!
Great interview and it's good the truth is getting out. Commodore management just had no idea and never listed to people like David who could have saved the company and even made it a market leader. It's a real shame the CD32 never got the life it deserved. Oh how things could have been so different (as I begin to weep). I was lucky enough to have and still own a C16, C64, VIC20, A600, A1200 and CD32.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. It was good (and sad) to hear David's stories. Can't wait to read his book!
Why am i only viewing this now,great interview,David's books are a must read.
Thanks!
As the saying goes: "Believe those who seek the truth and doubt those who have found it."
This interview is pure gold!
Thanks Mauro! Glad you enjoyed it.
The conclusion kicks in pretty hard. Every business should be in direct contact with customers and ask them what they want. But the thing is.. This is wayy harder when doing high tech than when making couches. Commodore was a company that survived almost 20 years of insane high speed development, where the rules changed every 12 months.
You guys have a great channel. Thanks for making the vids!
CobraTheSpacePirate Aw thanks so much Cobra! Your comment means the world to us! Thank you
i loved my amiga with octamed lol
I don't believe for a minute that whatever Commodore was developing just before they closed shop was released today would be a better computer than what we have now. Back in the 90s we were barely getting into 32bit CPUs, and nothing from that era can compare to what Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, IBM, Samsung, and Motorola have out now. Though if Commodore still existed and was pushing the envelope on technology we might have better/faster tech than we do now.
All of the issues these two men were complaining about is common place for all computer companies that started in the 70s and 80s. Atari ended up getting Jack Tramell after he left Commodore. He did do some good things for Atari but inevitability it died. No mention of the man who INVENTED the Amiga, Jay Miner, who also invented my first love, the Atari 8bit PCs. Would have been nice to hear a few words about him who recently passed on.
He was clearly referring to the overall architecture, than a specific CPU or graphics chip. Your PC still has legacy design from before the Amiga! The fact that the well architected Amiga chipset could hold its head above the competition for a decade without any big upgrade says it all.
Amazing interview, and I was there at Blackpool the last time he spoke, this one is the best yet. I'd not heard it told like this before, and although I knew some of the official story, I never figured it was Petro. I would have bought CBM for the 25M they had, and then tried to raise the lost 25M from investors once I had the stock to sell. But its easy to have 20/20 vision and if we had only known, I'm sure the fans would have kept the company going. But out of the top 15 reasons why the company failed, I think the Petro incident was the final straw, and really the company was in dire straights since 1985 and the C128.
lifeschool I heard David's Blackpool interview is great. I need to watch that. Agreed the company was in big trouble before the Petro incident. Would have been interesting to see what could have been if David and his team took over but like you said hindsight is 20/20
Great interview, quality videos as always guys :)
Kenny O Thanks Kenny!appreciate that very much!
A very fascinating and interesting interview this one. Very cool and would love to read David's book when it comes out.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Phantastic, loved every minute, thank you so much!
You are welcome! Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks SledgeFox!
They Never Asked, What is it you need! Awesome Video!!
Thanks for this interview :-)
You are welcome! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the interview
You are welcome! Thanks for watching!
Great interview as always David.
Yep, he was very honest about his feelings and didn't hold back. Respect
Many of us work for companies today where they don't listen to the engineers, and don't seem to have any plan. I don't think the lesson was learnt.
Great interview, many thanks!
Right on Cyber, thanks for the kind words!
Great interview, but Trevor needs to chill out and stop interrupting the guy that actually gives out useful information. Thanks for the upload.
Man, awesome. Product changed my life. Great stories. I work in IT now; can relate.
Thoroughly enjoyed that. Very insightful. Cheers
Thanks for this fantastic interview
You are welcome! Thanks for the kind note!
Legends can't fail. Again. Legends was not fail! Commodore are LEGEND! Commodore has written history!
What's dead can never die!!!!
Great interview. Thanks for sharing this and making this great content
Thank you so much for the kind words! Really appreciate that. Glad you enjoyed it!
Its piece of history which is now documented thanks to you. :)
David Pleasance should have been CEO of CBM
I truly cannot wait to read this book... very good stuff
Thanks! I can't wait for the book either - and Trevor is writing the forward!
this interview is an amazing example to show the subtle mechanism used still today to destroy from the inside not just companies sized like Commodore but even bigger ones or stronger economic entities like i.e. banks. Here in Italy we are plenty of examples like this going from our biggest phone company Telecom Italia to what was once considered the healthiest european bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena, right now close to bankrupt.
Very interesting. Thanks for that insight soogoonu. Much appreciated!
This is an interesting insight into the inner workings of commodore as a business, it's such a shame what happened.
It really is a shame. I am very glad David and Trevor agreed to sit down and do this interview.
Point 1: Never hire someone who knows nothing about business. Perhaps Commodore should have stuck to typewriters.
If they did there wouldn't have been an Amiga, dur.
The industry is full of stories where poor management caused the downfall of a product (or the entire company). For example, the original idea for the Commodore Plus 4 was actually really good, but management got their sticky fingers involved and screwed it all up. And Mehdi Ali and that Gould character had NO CLUE how to run Amiga, but more importantly, they didn't actually CARE about the Amiga itself. It's too bad that someone like David here wasn't directly in charge of the overall company or we might be talking about our Amiga 9000s right now!
Look at what Steve Job's passion brought to the table at Apple, as far as the direction of his company goes. He had vision and charisma, something that the upper management at Commodore was sadly lacking.
Agreed! There are many Steve Jobs haters out there and he is far from perfect, but look what Apple has done without him - not much! He was one of a kind. I wish Commodore had someone like him or David in charge.
Jack Tramiel was pretty good and he did get the home computer market, at least from about 79 till 84? But he left the company because he fundamentally disagreed with Irving Gould about his use of company assets as if they were his own private property. So when he wouldn't stop it, Tramiel left. At least according to Tramiel's son Leonard, who was also active in Commore and who I think designed the Vic 20 from memory?
That said not all of the things Jack Tramiel did were good for the company. He is probably responsible for its demise by starting the home computer price war. TI was pushed out of the business and pretty much every one but Apple and IBM clone makers struggled after it, and Commodore was no exception.
But then again, without the Commodore's aggressive emphasis on price, the Vic 20 (first computer to sell over one thousand units) and the Commodore 64 (the most sold computer of a single model ever, with somewhere from 12-22 million sold), would have never been so influential and well known.
Another fascinating what if is Amiga. Apparently the original designers had their first system working in the late 70s! Before even the Vic 20 which was quite laughable in comparison to the advanced features present in even the earliest Amigas. And apparently they approached Commodore in the early days too, but Commodore (probably rightly) determined that at the time the design would have been far too expensive as a home computer.
Oh, I forgot to say another thing about Tramiel which wasn't very helpful is he often treated other companies as the enemy. Which too an extent they were, but it fostered a famously hostile relationship with resellers and suppliers. I don't know what impact it had on software developers it had. I'm guessing not good, he for instance managed to negotiate something unheard of, licencing Microsoft Basic for a one time fee of $30000, saying he "was already married" when offered a small royalty of I think it was $2 per unit?
Now this was a coup, no doubt, but eventually software developers will get tired of being shit on and stop making titles for your hardware. Especially if it was coupled with the open approach to documentation and features encouraged by MOS and whatever they turned into under Commodore, I forget, and Bill Herd etc., putting monitors in everything so you can control the hardware down to the clock cycle and byte.
That's great for us and for the users and the beginning programmers of the time, but if the biggest use case is to crack and copy commercial titles, then writing for the platform won't be that attractive for big publishers where there are other companies rushing to close up their platform like Microsoft and Apple. Sad but true.
Also I want to say that a large reason that Commodore failed was that largely missed out on the business market. Mostly because support 80 column text as soon as the Vic 20 hit the scene. This encouraged businesses to switch to IBM and also to a limited extent Apple, and probably also scared schools away, who went to Apple because Apple were effectively subsidising the computers of schools by increasing the prices (quite a bit) for other users.
But eventually the IBM PC compatibles became so cheap they laid waste to everything else, including for a time Apple, who were going bankrupt before Jobs returned and revived the fortunes of the company with the iPod and then the iPhone.
If Commodore had been able to get this business market and thereby drive down price by volume in the same way clone manufacturers did, things might have been very different. Although perhaps not, perhaps much of this was due to the fierce competition and commoditisation of IBM PC compatibles, although if anyone could do it it would have been Commodore who were famously good at nickle and diming to reduce cost while still somehow manage to come up with amazing value.
The Commodore 128 added 80 column text, but the Commodore 128 although a favourite of mine, was far too late, coming out for instance in the exact same year as the Amiga 500, although it was much cheaper.
And 80 columns and CP/M hardly saw any use, the C=128 being relegated to a somewhat cheap games machine, for which almost zero games were written, and most that ran on it would have run even better on the cheaper C=64, and really the only use it got apart from being a glorified C=64, was for programming for the C=64, and getting people a start in programming, because it was somewhat nicer to use that an C=64 for this purpose. Which is a shame really because it had some really nice possibilities which people are only now starting to appreciate.
Of course the Amiga was also mostly used for games, but also for TV production for mere mortals who couldn't afford a $100k and up Quantel Paintbox. Which was doing things in 1981 like real time video editing and true color, things that a 1994 fully kitted out Amiga would have struggled with, but costing 6 figures...
But that's the end of my rant about what I think killed Commodore xD
So many "what if"'s and "could have been"'s. That's what makes the tale of Amiga so fascinating, but also very, very sad.
I was a bit surprised by the hostility towards Petro. In the Amiga press in the 90's, he was viewed as the front man, almost the Bill Gates of Amiga. At least Escom managed to bring back the A1200 and A4000 to the market, though at a higher price than the Commodore originals, and with basically the same specs. But what we really needed in 1995-96 was new hardware.
JimmiG84 Agreed JimmiG agreed. It is very sad
Higher price and poorer pc floppy drive. What an achievement. Escom was about to bring Amiga down, nothing else.
@@betterbeavailable ... it was the dicision of Commodore to put a poor floppy drive in the A1200, escom just took it on like that.
The polish beer they drink is quite strong
Omg I love these guys and their humor. THANK YOUI for everything you gave us in the form of the Amiga computers, all the memories, all that great technology and games and really really thank you for pushing the computer world forward.
The reason the PCS and consoles became as powerful as they became later is because Commodore, these guys, Amiga and the consumers that bought it paved the way.
I wish Commodore did not bankrupt and that it would actually start having a real business plan and Apple-like advertising to help those passionate people provide the income that would help the company become one of the leaders in the computer market even after the time the PCs technology really started getting better and more focused towards multimedia and still provide us with such unique pieces of tech like the Amiga was today.
A very interesting candid interview, its left me wanting to find out more. Thanks for the subtitles as the interviewers sound is poor., such an interesting watch/listen.
Cool. Glad you enjoyed it. The interview wasn't planned so I only had 2 microphones that is why his sound is bad, but I am glad the subtitles helped. It took me a while to make them, LOL
Adam have you read Brian Bagnall's three books on Commodore?. Reading them it is a marvel that the company lasted as long as it did, especially after they got rid of Mr. Rattigan. His successor was a disaster, but I think the company really suffered after the forced departure of Jack Trameil. Not only was Jack out for revenge with Atari but they lost a dedicated supporter, who was as loved by his engineers as he was loathed by others.
Watched this before, But enjoyed the interview for a second time! Wished my Commodore 64 Linux Distro still worked! I think it was the coolest looking version of Linux ever!
Cheers! I am so glad you enjoyed it a 2nd time. Thanks for watching. WOW I never saw that C64 Linux distro
And here I am, using a Pistorm/Emu68 combo, total cost of which is about £35, with Caffeine OS, playing mp3 through Paula, all 14 bits of her, on my 1987 Amiga 500. You don't see many PC washing machine/house brick combinations with 5,1/4 inch drives in daily use, performing modern tasks. They are at the tip with all the broken Dyson hoovers and Tesco Technica televisions. My Amiga is 40 years old in 5/6 years time. 40. And it has the guts to do 720p/1080p, 32 bit colour, all software generated 50hz 3d C2P graphics, without a fan or heatsink in sight and on the other monitor (it has 2 connected), I can fire up Superfrog or Pinball Dreams whenever I like. Generic Windows machines are a tool. We don't care any more about them than we would care about a claw hammer. Amiga is a passion, loved and cuddled. Maybe the Amiga has outlived (generic chinese-made) PCs after all... A 10 year old laptop is worth approx, £10. Just sayin...
Great interview, and Trevor's tie is classy.
Yes, i wonder where can you get this merchandise from?
Very very interesting interview, lots i'd heard before like about Newstar etc but this makes me look forward to the book even more!
Great! So glad you liked it Intrinsic!
Nicely recorded boys.
Anthony Jarvis Thanks so much Anthony! Glad you enjoyed!
So entertaining and enlightening. It was such a shame, that so much effort was made to save Commodore, and yet it was undermined by another party.
Thanks Artstate!
Brilliant interview. Thanks.
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
David John Pleasance, have not seen every interview but this man could easily make Commodore great again! Passionate as the hardware engineer and as the software engineer but with a business sense that makes it all work... You can sell pretty much everything, but David seems to love the thing he selled and that is so wonderful! Amiga was such a great computer overall and it is so sad it went so wrong in the end...
Well said, David really does love Commodore and he is absolutely heartbroken over what happened.
Interesting insight. Thank you for sharing.
I so Wish Amiga survived.
hiteck007 me too :-(
stop bitching... Apple aurvived, every computer after a500 showed nothing worth buying comparing to pc 386 and later pc 486
@@user17v Except the A1200, A3000 and A4000 of course. But apart from that you are correct.
@@user17v That's true. The C= board was focused on sales not development so they got kicked in the ass.
@@mattx5499 Their strategy of "focusing on sales" was stealth marketing, pretend the product doesn't exist.
2021: The Amiga still lives on.
I typically don't feel bad for people working in tech getting laid off, but having read about how commodore UK handled things, even from back in the calculator days, it is actually pretty sad. They were an exemplary bunch.
The question I'm wondering is: how come it was the Mac that was able to capture the publishing/creative business and not the Amiga? The Amiga was much better suited for graphic tasks than the Mac
I think it has to do with their marketing strategy and getting into schools. I remember all the journalish clubs at the schools in my area used MAC. Perhaps, people also associated black and white with news print. Also, it is possible the non-interlacing had something to do with it. The flicker on PageStream was a bit difficult when you ran interlaced, but most likely it is for for the 2 first reasons I listed. These are just guesses though.
@@TheGuruMeditation One of the factors was that Apple was able to strike a deal with Adobe to use PostScript so the Mac could use a laser printer. Later on, Photoshop was only available on the Mac for years. It's however unfortunate that Commodore wasn't able to strike a deal on their end, whether with Adobe or other companies. The only high profile creative tool for Amiga I'm aware of was Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint.
@@ecdhe oh wow I totally forgot about that. Yes, you are right, this is a huge factor. I remember Apple having the laser printer, but wasn't aware that they had made a special deal with Adobe. Thanks. PageStream was a great piece of DTP software, but not as main stream as DPaint
@@TheGuruMeditation I thought the Amiga could have achieved it, given the chance, but it never got it.
@@Tech-geeky I know, I wish it did.
thumbs up for polish beer from Lublin,thanks for this very important interview
Good eye! That is great beer. My wife was born and raised in Lublin. Sto lat!
Wow. This is so frustrating to watch. Cannot help but wonder what the Commodore could have been today had right decisions been made. I loved my Commodore. I LOVED my Amiga. Both were ready to topple PC/MAC and then boom. I am waiting for the book!
I don't know about the c64, but the Amiga absolutely could have dominated both the IBM PC AND Macintosh if it had been handled properly, and the design had kept up with the times.
Very advanced for 1985-87, but in the early 90's, the AGA chipset was too little, too late.
It's so sad...
The Amiga is amazing. (much like it's Atari Predecessor that was designed by roughly the same team - which for a 1979 system is still pulling surprises to this day), I mean, I'm not a fan of the Motorola 68k, but that's a minor personal quirk. The Amiga as a whole is an amazing design, that deserved far better than it got...
@@KuraIthys I assume you're a fan of the 6502, then? I agree that there are definitely things about it that are better than the 68k, but the 68k gives you enough registers to really breathe, and especially for C, which, we must face it, was important for applications rather than games. Also, a 32-bit architecture that could grow was important for the future. But the 6502 is my favorite, as well. And the 65816 is pretty darn cool, even if a little awkward.
@@RetroDawn I like both 6502 and 68k, I still some times code something minor with emulators. I do remember starting x86 after some years of doing 68k assembly. I was disappointed to no end about those few registers and totally horrible segment system (and the huge hassle of trying to make a decent working protected mode programs later...). Compared to that 68k was really like being in heaven.
@@ZincSpray Right on! I code in 6502 and 68k, as well (and learning 65816, 6809, Z80, x86, and more). Yes, the coding for 8086/80286 is just dreadful. Even Protected Mode on 80286 still uses 64KB segments. The 80286 was very antiquated when it came out. Programming the 80286 (and 8086) is not much better than programming an 8-bit CPU, especially one that has some 16-bit integer support, like the 6809 or Z80.
With the 65816 you have a 24-bit, 16MB flat address space, just like with the 68000. It was definitely a far better CPU than the 80286, and so much more fun to program. And even the 80386 ASM is anywhere near as nice as the 68000 or 65816 ASM (for diff reasons for each), but at least it's Protected Mode supports a 32-bit, 4GB flat address space, like the 68020 and up.
Thanks guys
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
Very interesting - Never owned an Amiga (don't hate on me, I was in the Atari world!) but I would love to see these guys discussing together with the Atari (UK?) guys as I'm sure there are more than a few similarities on the disastrous way the companies were run and ultimately failed. Of course there were infamous cross-overs like engineers jumping ship to 'the enemy' and Jack Tramiel of course! I think that would be a fascinating discussion and may get a few more nuggets of insider information :-)
Ha ha! Well, there is no hate for Atari from us. My first computer was an Atari 800. I feel like the Atari 8 bit has more in common with Amiga than the C64 anyway, based on Jay Miner's history with both platforms. I never had an ST but I have a friend who is a hardcore Atari guy and the 030 Falcon looks really sweet. Thanks for the comment. I agree and yes, it would make for a cool interview. Thanks for watching!
I still don't understand the Commodore users trash talking the ATARI ST , because from what I've read the main developer of the 64 also designed the ATARI ST . He left Commodore along with Jack Tramiel . I may be wrong but it seems Jay Miner wasn't an employee of ATARI but a contractor with the company . Anyway , both ATARI and Commodore should have started a bigger ad campaign defending their computers because experts said people should buy a crappy POS Wintel or a Macintosh . They really should have asked the public " Who are the these experts that treated both companies so unfairly ? Both the ST and AMIGA were a much better investment than a Wintel or a Mac . The ST was more powerful AND in color than the Mac . And cheaper . And Commodore users that invested in both the 64 and AMIGA insulted the developer of 64 when they trash talked the ST . Furthermore , the AMIGA is only a Commodore machine BY NAME . The AMIGA has ATARI-owned proprietary patents , like the controller . ATARI ST and AMIGA are siblings and should be respectful by both groups .
I never had an amiga, but I did have a c64 that I remember fondly
Wow, so much intrigue!
At the time, I didn't even KNOW Commodore had offered PC's. I would have bought one but they were invisible to me.
@amadeusb4 Judging by the way commodore fans talk about the commode brand and mostly mention only the c64 and amiga i'm guessing most people didn't knoe about commodore PCs either
Honestly, in the end, the Amiga ultimately failed because other computer manufacturers came up with an OS architecture that surpassed the Amiga OS. Even when apple was going to die and Gates rescued it, Apple even knew they had to reinvent the OS. When the AmigaOS was recently being upgraded to version 4.1, they still didnt do it right. Right from the get go, they should have done exactly what apple did; use a free version of unix/linux and turn it into AmgiaOS. Ultimately, this is sad, because when the 4000 came out, it was a sweet computer. They had everything going for them.
'other computer manufacturers came up with an OS architecture that surpassed the Amiga OS' is relevant only if you are competing, or trying to compete in that same space. That was the mistake. A trap.
Commodore already had their niche but just couldn't see it. Graphics, Sound, Multimedia, Programming/Software Development and the hobbyist computer user market. They had it sown up in 1989. And the games. Wow, all those amazing games. But, through greed and complacency, decided they had to compete with IBM in the boring office sector and PCs on the hardware sector.
I find it interesting when David said he didn't agree with Escom buying up stores and thought that was a dumb idea , Apple has their own stores as does samsung and sony plus back in the days radio shack/tandy did as well so maybe under the right circumstances it can work as a way to sell your products or interest people in buying them. I also think since most of commodre's sales were from machines uses to play games (c64/amiga) I think they should have made more 1st party games like how the console manufacturers (sega/nintendio at the time) do , commodore only did a few on the c64 like international soccer and jack attack and non for the amiga which absolutely bit them in the ass when the amigaCD32 came out and they were relying on that to help them avoid bankruptcy. Furthermore instead of releasing the flop C64GS in 1990 they should have made a handheld console based off the c64 tech (8bit hardware had lots of life left in it in the 90s with the gameboy/gameboy color but was reaching it's end of life in the home console and computer market) .
this is so good, thanks!!!