Informations on Mehdi Ali

[TCD]

Originally Posted by grond

I never heard a computer user say "oh, how I would love to have a DSP in my computer", only tech geeks said that sort of thing.

Sounds like you never met a Falcon user.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

Sounds like you never met a Falcon user.

The Falcon that didn't have any commercial games using this DSP (and barely any commercial game at all).

Not including one on the A1200 was a clever move when you compare both librairies.

[TCD]

Sounds like you also never met a Falcon user If you ever want to hear about all the wonderful things a DSP can do I recommend you seek for a Falcon user

Edit: Just found this little gem that mentions the DSP 16 times https://www.halfhill.com/byte/1993-2_atari.html

[sokolovic]

That's as unlikely as meeting a five legged unicorn playing trumpet with an Olympique de Marseille tatoo on its back.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grond

It shouldn't even have been started. I never heard a computer user say "oh, how I would love to have a DSP in my computer", only tech geeks said that sort of thing. The A3000 was expensive enough. The problem was not having AGA in the A3000 and that hardly was Mehdi Ali's responsibility. He apparently did his share to not catch up technically for even more years, though.

I totally agree. Not only that, the A3000 shouldn't have been the A3000 in the first place. It should have been AGA graphics on a card with 32 bit bus on the A2000, and built in on the 'A500++' (AKA A1200). That's what the market wanted.

Looking back at Commodore's history we see the same pattern over and over. Someone gets an idea for a new product. The engineers then flesh it out into a design with whatever features they can dream up - which is easy to do because Commodore has its own chip foundry. When it's finished the marketing department has to sell it. This pattern started way back in 1976 when Commodore bought MOS technology.

Tech nerds love this system because it creates lots of interesting products. Every now and then a diamond is produced that (hopefully) keeps the company alive until the next one. But a lot of time and money is wasted on R&D and production of unmarketable products, confusing consumers and reducing the funds needed to develop more diamonds.

The other way is to design products matched to the market and build on them as the situation changes, constantly making small improvements that don't compromise the user base. This is how most consumer products are developed - less interesting, but safer and more profitable. OTOH it leaves the door open for someone else to disrupt the market with a paradigm-shifting product. So letting a few engineers run wild is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as it doesn't compromise core operations.

Commodore's problem was that after Jack Tramiel left they couldn't afford to let their engineers run wild. They got it right initially by buying a paradigm-shifting design and producing a diamond from it - the Amiga. But the market was changing - and instead of responding to it they went off on tangents like high-end workstations and set top boxes. By the time they got back to where they should have been the damage was done. They were out of fuel and running out of steam - time to collect the loot and abandon ship.

Mehdi Ali might have been clueless about technology, but that wasn't his responsibility. Engineering and marketing should have been working together to keep the Amiga line relevant. They did that to some extent, but not in a well coordinated manner. Both departments put too much effort into fostering new markets with dubious potential while not giving their existing products enough attention. Opinionated Amiga fans didn't help much either. I bet nobody here would have done much better if they were in charge.

I'm not complaining though - a lot of other companies did worse. Despite numerous missteps Commodore managed to polish that diamond into the jewels we still admire today. Could we have gotten even more exciting products if everyone in Commodore had been more competent? Sure, but in the real world that wasn't going to happen. We should accept it and appreciate what we got. The vitriol Amiga fans keep heaping on whoever they perceive as the villains of this story is undeserved and unhealthy.

[Marchie]

Reading the Bagnal books I almost get the impression that the CDTV was the beginning of the end for Commodore -

They sank a lot of money into developing it (the CDTV guys seem to be the only ones who don't have bad things to say about Medhi), and CD tech was at least a rational direction to go in, but they missed the mark in how they packaged it and from then on they were using dwindling resources to try to guess which way chase the market.

It seems like the early 90's were a time when everyone knew generally what was going to be the future (multimedia, networking, mobile devices) but no one really knew exactly how to time their entry or how to package it. To re-hash the obvious, Jobs didn't develop tech that no one else could, but he was brilliant at knowing how to package it.

Coming back to the original post, I'd be really interested in getting more info on Medhi Ali too. It's hard to be an Amiga fan and not dislike him, but just the same I'd like to think he didn't deliberately destroy the company just for kicks. It would be fascinating to hear why the decisions he made seemed logical (at least to him) at the time (again, presuming that he was at least trying not to fail).

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Marchie

Reading the Bagnal books I almost get the impression that the CDTV was the beginning of the end for Commodore -

They sank a lot of money into developing it (the CDTV guys seem to be the only ones who don't have bad things to say about Medhi), and CD tech was at least a rational direction to go in, but they missed the mark in how they packaged it and from then on they were using dwindling resources to try to guess which way chase the market.

It seems like the early 90's were a time when everyone knew generally what was going to be the future (multimedia, networking, mobile devices) but no one really knew exactly how to time their entry or how to package it. To re-hash the obvious, Jobs didn't develop tech that no one else could, but he was brilliant at knowing how to package it.

Coming back to the original post, I'd be really interested in getting more info on Medhi Ali too. It's hard to be an Amiga fan and not dislike him, but just the same I'd like to think he didn't deliberately destroy the company just for kicks. It would be fascinating to hear why the decisions he made seemed logical (at least to him) at the time (again, presuming that he was at least trying not to fail).

But the CDTV is capable of anything a high street CD-ROM PC aimed at families.

Three machines Commodore launched that failed miserably, C64GS/CDTV/CD32, in the grand scheme of things was pretty much down to now Marble Madness/Defender of the Crown style system selling games that made the most of the hardware unique to the machine. In the case of the 64GS it was supposed to have epic 512kb sized games only thanks to the technical skills of John Twiddy and Mev Dinc.

Commodore never really got the fact without world class system pushing game development teams on your side you're going to fail spectacularly. The CDTV isn't a console as such though I know, but it could have been a rival to high street 286 PC-CD family orientated products of 1990-1991. There just never was a proper CDTV game with world class Amiga developer skills, therefore no reason to ever own one if the best games it could play only came on floppy disk anyway

[21stcentury]

The problem was not really the machines but the marketing. They should have invested in strong and exclusives Amiga games licences as Nintendo did it and work for a Photoshop and Office port.

But what sealed Commodore's fate, in my opinion, was that they missed Christmas 1992 by launching the Amiga 1200 too late. I remember that the A1200 reviews appeared in...january or february. It was a serious mistake.
They corrected this mistake with the CD32 but it was too late. They should have sell 400000 machines and customers wanted them but they didn't have enough money for to produce them.

Christmas 1992 : fatal mistake !

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by 21stcentury

But what sealed Commodore's fate, in my opinion, was that they missed Christmas 1992 by launching the Amiga 1200 too late. I remember that the A1200 reviews appeared in...january or february. It was a serious mistake.
They corrected this mistake with the CD32 but it was too late. They should have sell 400000 machines and customers wanted them but they didn't have enough money for to produce them.

Christmas 1992 : fatal mistake !

I agree with that. The question is, what caused that delay and did Mehdi Ali have anything to do with it?

[21stcentury]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I agree with that. The question is, what caused that delay and did Mehdi Ali have anything to do with it?

I don't remember where I read that : But William Sydnes has been fired due to this terrible mistake.

They should have reversed the release of A4000 and A1200.

I remain certain that Commodore would not have closed without this fatal error: the Amiga 1200 would have sold much more, there would have been more support from publishers and Commodore would have had enough money to satisfy the demand for the CD32 and with 400,000 machines sold, publishers would have released many more games.