Why Commodore Failed - A Conversation with Commodore UK's David John Pleasance & Trevor Dickinson
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- 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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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.
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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
I'm still crying inside 😭😭😭😭
Paul Bennett us too :-(
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
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
I could just sit and listen to David all day
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.
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.
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
i loved my amiga with octamed lol
Legends can't fail. Again. Legends was not fail! Commodore are LEGEND! Commodore has written history!
What's dead can never die!!!!
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.
As the saying goes: "Believe those who seek the truth and doubt those who have found it."
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.
I could listen to David talk all day and I so wish he had been successful in the takeover of Commodore UK as I'm sure they still would of been around in some form under his leadership.
Just think about this 'business plan' and Amiga for a second. Come on. How could that possibly have worked out in 1995? CD32, 1200, 400 were already obsolete and over priced a year previously. The Amiga engineers were gone. The Commodore 'brand' was in tatters. AAA was nowhere, Hombre was an outline. With everything in place and everything going perfectly it would have taken another year minimum to get new product developed, tested and marketed. And you would have no backwards compatibility. Meanwhile PlayStation arrived with a global monster marketing machine, the like of which hadn't been seen selling hardware below cost to profit on software. The PC market was entering a golden age. He had a very good plan for Commodore and Amiga no doubt. But it is not the one being presented here..
Agreed!
would have, not would of;) still, a good point
@@EnglishPolishOnline always one isn't there
@@CRG Oh yes.:)
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.
amazing story, make subtitles for questions as this part of sound is terrible low.
Yeah, that is a good idea. This interview was not planned and I only had 2 microphones so I gave them to Trevor and David
it that case anything poited as recorded towards you should be better then ambient recording you have from pointing opposite direction. anyway good job with interview, just subtitle to fill sound gap and done.
I added subtitles - enjoy!
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!
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 as always David.
Yep, he was very honest about his feelings and didn't hold back. Respect
Nicely recorded boys.
Anthony Jarvis Thanks so much Anthony! Glad you enjoyed!
I love the Amiga, but the idea that there's leftover Commodore IP that would be revolutionary if it was released in 2017 is a bit silly.
Yeah, it would have had to evolve over time.
Right what made the amiga great was all the co processors. All PC's do that now. Fat Angus was what we call a GPU now.
Silly to say silly! PCs are basically legacy hardware with design decisions made before the Amiga existed in many regards and the PC industry basically just threw brute force to see it through the competition rather than clever bottom-up design. We are seeing its failings in the current decade of relative performance stagnation. If you think of things like real time pre emptive kernels for operating systems and a newly designed system bus architecture round a RISC CPU (see what Acorn achieved with the Archemedes years before the Amiga AGA chipset!) etc there is a lot of stuff you could get out of it, like how the Amiga architecture held its head for what, over a decade. There is a video going over evidence of what had been developed here: th-cam.com/video/FSibCddeJWM/w-d-xo.html&t
Great interview, many thanks!
Right on Cyber, thanks for the kind words!
Didn't explain how you managed to survive through the 90s with the obsolete motorola technology. You said the book will reveal, did it?
My first pc was a cbm. I had to sell my amiga to buy it for my studies. I never got over what I lost. Ppl were raving about how you could get stereo sound with a soundcard. I should've hung onto it
Amiga's hardware was great then and it's operating system was and still is superior.
Couldn't agree more!
The Amiga was an amazing computer in 1985. Fast, capable, reliable, colorful, and fun. Unfortunately, it was the same computer in 1993, and the early 90s was the worst possible time to sit back, rest on your laurels, and hope that an 8-year-old architecture would keep your business afloat.
Great interview, quality videos as always guys :)
Kenny O Thanks Kenny!appreciate that very much!
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!
I loved the old days when a so called "home computer" was a real machine that was perfectly designed to make all parts work together. Todays PC are so meaningless. Fit together whatever. It not even needs a name. What a shame. -.-
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. :)
These gentlemen drink Polish beer called "Perła" from the city of Lublin. Only there is produced very good beer but better in the bottle.
Perła is yummy!
Interview with Mehdi Ali when?...
as much as I like these videos, I think he's overstating the importance of any of this info these days - nobody is going to take you to court for this.
Yes you wouldn't think so, but unfortunately there have been quite a few legal battles in the Amiga community that are still going on now. Unfortunately fans like us are usually the ones who loose out when these thing happen
I wonder if any of the ex IBM employees working for Amiga ended back at IBM. After they closed down
Jay Miner at Wikipedia is quoted as at that time he felt other companies would steal everything, and they did. Don't let Bill Gates haircut fool anyone, Bill is exceedingly thiefly.
Nice interview. What is this technology that C= was developing?
Thanks! He was referring to the Hombre chipset, perhaps he was thinking of other things as well.
After talking to dave hainye a follow on to the cd32 far beyond PlayStation. A graphics card that could be added to pcs to give new high end graphics modes. Amiga infinity as well, an upgradable tower system that turned into the infitiv cases in the end. Also a way of networking amigas daisychain style.
Ah yes, you can get a lot of information in this wonderful interview th-cam.com/video/aZV-b8uwg4Q/w-d-xo.html
I might be picky but for me if you find a way to use Topaz med-res like the old workbench for the titles, that would be terrific, yeeeeaaahhhhh...... :)
Simone Bernacchia yeah that's a good idea. When I started the channel I couldn't find topaz for Mac or Windows but perhaps I should look harder. I could also do it in DPaint on a real Amiga and then bring it into Adobe Premiere as a bitmap but that would give me much less flexibility in Adobe Premiere. But that would be awesome.
The true fail of commodore pretty much was the infight between its dependencies and "princess". Lets just imagine CBM UK would have been able to integrate PT despite his reputation... sometimes including your opponents is just better than fighting your opponents... but well, it over. I am just a bit angry my 3000 started to act a little unstable over the last ten years....
David is a true gent, I have met him on several occasions and he loves to chat about Commodore and it’s tragic demise.
This idiot Trevor completely ruins this video with his constant interruptions and the way he finds himself funny. I would advise to view the other interviews with David on TH-cam instead.
Can’t wait for the book David!
Andy Mason Trevor is a good friend of David and is writing the forward to his book. I guess you will skip that part. He also runs A-Eon which produces the AmigaOne computers. In my opinion he is a great member of the Amiga community and a super guy, but I respect your opinion of wanting David to be alone. Many people did find their interaction entertaining though.
Atari was filling the need at the time with the 800xl.
I wouldn't say they failed. There is a great deal of culture around the brand and a new generation has brought the brand back in 2023.
True, but you could argue that Commodore is dead, but Amiga is alive for sure!
@@TheGuruMeditation No. The Amiga is not the future. The original C64 will never die. The case design was iconic and perfect. It is safe to say that the C64 physical design is officially timeless, immortal, and new models will be coming well into the future. No one hardly remembers what the Amiga even looks like.
@@tonystorcke I totally agree about the C64 being a timeless classic, but you are completely wrong about the Amiga. The Amiga is thriving right now. Almost 50 new games are coming out for it every year, the A500 mini was a huge success, there are many active Amiga user groups all over the world (about 11 just in the UK!) , there is tons of new hardware for Amiga etc... I was just at Amiga 37 and they sold out 1,000 tickets per day and the amount of vendors there was staggering. There is another huge Amiga event happening at a football stadium in England this summer. So, how did you come to the conclusion that people hardly remember what the Amiga looks like? Sure it isn't as well known with young people as say Nintendo, but the Amiga community is very strong and passionate. And sadly neither the C64 or Amiga are the future - PC & Mac are. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy our nostalgic Commodore communities
@@TheGuruMeditation I will consider what you said. I was leaning towards the C65. I may get the A500 mini, but the prize in my future collection will be the c64 from retrogames.
@@tonystorcke The MEGA 65 is awesome. I am also confident that there will be a full size A500 Maxi coming as well
great interview.
KATOD_music Thanks!
In the early days of creation, there was a great man.
One day he yelled to his herd:
“You are unique”
…wise words, wrong community.
I lived thru this, I owned a Commodore, and a Amiga,,, loved it!!.... but as soon as i saw the NES, Genesis, & cartridge game rentals at vcr movie rentals killed the c64 and Amiega period...
consoles didnt quite offer what the C64 and later the Amiga line and capability brough to the table
Thank you.
There's videos on TH-cam by fanboys of Petro saying how awesome he was for Amiga and he was a legend, its strange how 1 guy can polarise opinion regarding Amiga.
Yes very true
Trevor Dickinson added little to this interview.
he made David appear to be the smart guy. So his presence was valid
...why have a factory in the Philippines? because the CEO has a mistress there!!! I BURST INTO LAUGHTER AND THEN TEARS!!! ...because i am a Filipino...
Trevor's laugh made my day :D ( 15:40 , 17:39 , 19:24 , 29:47 )
Yeah he is an awesome guy and full of great humor.
He sounds like a happy fella.
Cool 😎
Had an 500 than a A1200 with 68030 (full) 68882 @28mhz 6Mb ram even virtual memory and cdrom. Did amazing things on it ages before mac and pc guys. If the AGA machines had more MIPS and PCI support and mac emulators where supported AMIGA would rule
InstaLabSparti it was way ahead of its time
And the community here in Greece was great, made may of my best friends in some Amiga shops i hanged around
Well, now I need to know what technology they were working on right before the crash.
Hombre th-cam.com/video/FSibCddeJWM/w-d-xo.html&t
So let me get this straight. Management failed Commodore but was going to get together and try to buy it after making it a failure? Glad they didn't get their dirty hands on it.
UK guys kept Commodore on life support for years.
Irving Gould is to blame for everything, Commodore failed because Irving put Jack in a position where he had to resign or was fired....but EVERYTHING Commodore produced after Jack left was a disaster (the 80 dollar 264 series became the identical 300 dollar plus/4, the Commodore 128 could not use the 2mhz CPU unless used in business mode with the terrible 80 column chip and the Z80 could never be used as a co-processor...but at 300 bucks for an 8bit you were paying for all those isolated extras slapped on the motherboard) the Amiga 1000 would have been almost as cheap as the A500 in Summer 1987 due to falling RAM prices just by replacing the 256k Kickstart RAM daughterboard with a single ROM chip....the A2000 was a slow ugly machine no more capable than the now 24 month old Amiga 1000, the Amiga 1000 was not even pushed for the last 12 months before the fugly A500 came out etc etc etc) The A4000 030 was too slow when it launched let alone the final fiscal full year of Commodore. The CDTV was the best Amiga CD multimedia computer money could buy.....they chose to force retailers to sell it many metres and yards away from the Amigas on sale in stores AND they never even bothered to put Workbench on a CD.....something at the time PC's could not do...cold boot Windows from CD-ROM etc.....The Amiga in the 1990s should AND WOULD have been the same as the 3DO except Irving Gould's Commodore treated the creators of the Amiga (AKA A1000) so badly they all left and went and did amazing things like the 12mhz 3DO and the incredible Atari Lynx hardware....but it's OK we got 1280x256 in 4 TTL RGB 4bit colours so that''s OK....no wait!
Thanks guys
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
Interesting insight. Thank you for sharing.
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.
A bit depressing, but glad the truth is being told.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
Great interview, but Trevor needs to chill out and stop interrupting the guy that actually gives out useful information. Thanks for the upload.
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.
Fantastic interview! Love this!
Thanks Ms. Mad!
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.
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 still use my Vanilla A1200 to this very day.
David Pleasance should have been CEO of CBM
Shameful they had no plan and far too late regardless of the tech Mr.Pleasance thought he had at that stage. How could a business plan of restocking shelves with old Amigas possibly have worked out.PC (both home and office) was long out of sight
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..
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.
Greetings from Poland :)
Cześć !!!
Dunno if medhi Ali is dead yet, but if he’s not, it’d be interesting for him to be interviewed, and maybe take some responsibility.
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!
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!
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.
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.
Why Commodore failed. simple.. instead of realizing what they had and what was thriving on their computers, Games Graphics, creative applications. The heads of Commodore was fixed on the idea of corporate business computing, the likes of Xerox, IBM and later Microsoft. They wanted to be in the 'Business' market, and was completely blind to anything else. They also let such 'Business' execs lead the company into the ground, which has been the case with every successful creative product placed in the hands of "business men'. The biggest crime in computing history is the notion that Apple did it all. That Apple set the landscape for what exists today, in Graphics Music artist and all things computer creative, when its absolutely not the case, JUST THE OPPOSITE. Commodore broke so much ground with Just the commodore 64, But when the Amiga came into play it truly was a revolutionary product. Commodores biggest mistake was simply not producing its own microprocessors. They produced custom chips, but when the PC went Pentium and the Mac PowerPC the amiga was still stuck with its Motorolla chipset. Also.. the Amiga didnt keep pace graphically. the very leader in all things graphics fell victim to complaisant. They didnt improve on its graphics. as such the huge advantage Commodore had over its competitors was handed over wrapped in a bun. They didnt make the moves they shouldve. and in the mid 90's without more computing power and better native graphics it was over. And the mac and PC markets took flight. The PC with audio and graphic cards, the mac with vast native improvement. I hate to say it, but when leadership gets old, you got'a get those old guys out for younger blood, people who are in tune with the times and the desires of the customer. not just people looking to sit back and watch the money poor in until the well runs dry.
Yep, totally agree. Also, in some ways The Amiga could have been a bit ahead of its time. I am not sure that people were quite ready for a multi-media powerhouse. They didn't really understand what it was. Then by the time people started to realize a home computer could be a powerful tool for artists, the Mac and PC had already surpassed it like you said. But if the business people focused on the Amiga's strengths, perhaps things could have been different
Agreed. It's easy to look back now and see at the time they had a clear niche market sown up but didnt realise it. Instead made the greedy complacent and fatal mistake of thinking they could compete in the same space as IBM
I bought a Commodore 25 MHz PC because I had two Amigas at the time and was happy with CBM hardware. No surprise then that the CBM PC ran faster than similar clones and remained 100% reliable. I always thought the Amiga architecture was far superior to the IBM 640K crap and would have made a faster transition to the kind of hardware we have today possible. I had owned a couple of 64s before that and those were bought after early experience with kit form Z80 machines. It was a travesty of monumental proportions from bad management to poor sales presentations to let the Amiga fail.
Agreed. It is very sad. Thanks for sharing your story!
I went to a UK computer show (I am from England) and one exhibit was an A500 running the Newtek Demo. Alongside the stand was some sort of PC clone playing music... except of course it wasn't. It was hooked via MIDI to a synth, Yamaha I think, and had some fancy graphics card for the display. I found the Amiga was playing through a SINGLE large speaker so half the stereo was missing. Lousy small stand, lousy sound system and a small monitor. A perfect example of how not to sell something. I spent quite some time talking to people who had come to look at the thing making the most noise (The synth) and explained to them that the Amiga was capable of doing all of that, IN STEREO if anyone had bothered to get a second speaker and was doing the graphics with no add ons. Most had not spotted the fact that by the time you had bought the graphics card for the clone, bought a synth to make the sound and a MIDI interface system the clone would cost many times the cost of the A500. When I mentioned the lack of stereo to one person at the Amiga stand I got a blank stare. Without using profanity the best I can describe my feelings when I left that show is somewhere between disappointed, confused as to how that could happen and in fact pretty angry.
That is a shame. Also that New Tek Demo reel was light years ahead of its time. It blew me away when I saw it. There was nothing else that could do that at the time. Not even close
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 !"
I thought they opened a factory in the Philippines because of the cheap labor but they're actually assembling the whole thing in Germany and branding it as "Made in Germany" which is scummy.
Commodore failed just because was headed by businessmen (Gould, Ali) only interested in making money and milking the Amiga as much as possible.
I'll always be upset that my Amiga 1200 and CD32 were left in limbo that day David and Colin didn't win the bid .. but Dave and Trev have made me laugh on this video Commodore did manage to do the most outrageously crazy things to cause the bankruptsy .. however the AMIGA continues in one way or another it's too damn good to disappear for good expect a big big comeback lots of positive things happening if you delve around on the internet
Agreed! And we haven't see this much development in the Amiga community since 1994! Vampires, Accelerator cards, new games, etc... It is awesome!
@@TheGuruMeditation amiga cd32 was come to domed but 1200 never had a chance to show aspekt
1992 - 1994 destroyed two great products. It was the Neoliberal arrogant business thinking. Star Trek TNG and Amiga
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.
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.