asciilifeform: eventually they diverted revenue into making items like 'c128' but it was too late.
asciilifeform: the death of cbm is a pretty well-documented subject, and revolved around their one and only unforgivable sin - royally pissing off their c64 install base by breaking compatibility
asciilifeform: how this can be compared to 'playstation' i cannot fathom
asciilifeform: again, it was a computer, sold as a computer, with 'anyone can write for this' and proper docs
asciilifeform: quite comparable to mid-90s msdos, in terms of pure technical 'effect'
asciilifeform: (at least was, a few yrs ago, on emul.)
asciilifeform: ferphuxxsake amiga had what we'd call a gpu today
asciilifeform: compare in the flower of their youth, rather than, say, '93 when cbm was a vegetable
asciilifeform: did mircea_popescu ever see an amiga alive ?
asciilifeform: c64 was unthinkably good for its day.
asciilifeform: in any of the products sold by that firm
asciilifeform: there is literally no trace of it remaining.
asciilifeform: decimation: pre-'next' apple is as gone as cbm
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: point was not that it was difficult to drill. aftermarket 'keys' appeared almost immediately. point was the symbolic meaning of this abomination
asciilifeform: (there were really four outfits under name 'apple' - the folks who sold apple ii series; the folks who sold 'mac' until '99; rebranded 'next corp.' under herr jobs; the present-day zombie.)
asciilifeform: cbm shipped ~schematics~ with machines. apple sold... yes, a key, with which the 'annointed' could open the b&w mac chassis
asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=25-06-2015#1175101 << there was! but it is a mistake to lump in amiga. cbm was still under delusion that it sold ~computers~ rather than 'system' (that is, complete slave planet like apple, where peripheral makers pay danegeld, etc)☝︎
asciilifeform: (from which was eventually promoted to sharashka)
asciilifeform: incidentally k. did 'win from not signing the papers,' in a way. after recanting his confession (given under torture, which mutilated him in ways which ultimately led to his death) his death sentence was commuted to life-at-hard-labour
asciilifeform: leaving aside the fact that poor u. wanted to save own sorry hide, rather than 'damage system,' there is precedent.
asciilifeform: herr ulbricht didn't have a 'lawyer problem,' he had a military problem. or could a sufficiently expert german lawyer have exonerated, say, the 'july plot' folks who failed to nail the fuhrer
asciilifeform: i see dratel as a pretty obvious case of usg mole
asciilifeform: the solution of very expensive problems with no precedent is quite possibly a lemon market, yes.
asciilifeform: after that, it's merely a matter of 'build skyscraper'
asciilifeform: and any undergrad 'ee' student can draw you the muller gate standard cell in cmos.
asciilifeform: and yes, the 'software industry' is so utterly rotten that an individual act of deretardification has to be contemplated on own merits, rather than as 'market action', modellable with the usual rules. sorta like buying a russian nuke. sui generis.
asciilifeform: but to bring it back to the 'dirty house, cleaners want wheelbarrow of gold, so must stay dirty' - i doubt mircea_popescu is suffering from any software problem that, say, terry davis (deliberately not nominating any of the folks here for this gedankenexperiment) couldn't or wouldn't fix for, say, 50000btc
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu's summary is essentially correct re: 'software industry'
