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Commodore - Back In The Hardware Biz At Last?
Aphrika writes "Commodore is back in the hardware business [via current owners Tulip Computers] and this time they're taking on... Apple? Due for release in August are three MP3 players; the eVic, fPet and mPet. The eVic is a 20GB (hence the name) hard drive-based player, while the mPet and fPet are closer to the Muvo/iRiver styled flash players. They'll also be hoping you pay a visit to the Commodore World Music Store once in a while to stock up on tunes..." We also recently mentioned Commodore's 'TV Game' and ROM-store projects over at Slashdot Games.
I was a C=64 owner and fan back in their day which was my youth. Ironically today I'm a Linux zealot and Mac lover and go no where without my iPod.
I'm torn. I feel ashamed because of it. Bastards.
The fPet is a music CARRIER..
That reads like "Standard USB thumbdrive" to me, definitely not a player. I'd still get one because of the logo.
this is of course a marketing ploy to draw on the vintage name of commodore, and might i say a damn good one; if i didnt have an ipod i'd buy from them right away!
/(o^_^o)\
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
But will it have 64 kilobytes of RAM?
It's not Commodore, it's just the name.
It's like if I started calling my garage Digital Equipment Corporation and started selling pet rocks, it doesn't have anything to do with a VAX.
there server is hosted on one of their mp3 players....
This makes about as much sense to me as using the GE brand name to sell fresh carrots.
And how in the world does the name eVic imply 20GB of storage? Is it something in another language (like vic means 20), or was the poster meaning that the eVic was supposed to compete with the iPod based on similarities in the way they are capitalized and the lengths of the name?
None of this makes any sense. They should sell C64s today for hobbiesests and nostalgia. They could be very tiny, still use a TV, be tons of fun. Or make another hobbiest platform. But... MP3 players? Like the market needs more MP3 players.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Does that mean we'll get iTunes for C64s now?
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
I wonder if the server is also a Commodore 64, slashdotted after 3 comments!
And all your base are belong to us, Slashdot editors!
But on topic, I think this is great! Nothing quite like reviving an old computer brand name to rekindle the embers that we thought were long dead. I foresee that Atari will be back with their own portable media player; then we'll see the iAmiga, followed by the eAtari, followed by Apple's own iPod-GS, and then even IBM will join the fray with a portable player called the iPC-jr, complete with cooling fan and proprietary bus that won't take anyone else's add-on harddrive.
Heck, I might even get big hair and a skinny tie, too!
I find this really sad. Those products look terrible, and re-using the old commodore brands (Vic, PET) just makes it that much more sad. Though, it's not *that* sad, because Commodore stuff was never really that good (the Amiga had its moments though).
They need to fire their copywriter ASAP, that's for sure:
With this USB 2.0 data&music carrier you can easily extend your pc, notebook or mac with an extra storage harddisk.
PC, notebook, or Mac? What if I have a Mac Notebook do I have to order two? Is it really a hard disk?
The stick can be used for copying, store and move data...
The English can be used for speak and write words!
Exclusive Commodore design!
Yes, we used both red *and* blue plastic on this bad boy! Ka-ching!
you can enjoy listening hours and hours to all your favorite songs with just one battery!
Wow, just one battery! Folks, portable music doesn't get any better than this. Hell, even my car works with just one battery!
The player is including a neck cord,
It's including a neck cord with what? Its tax forms?
Just connect the camera to the docking, drag the made photos to the storage device and you can make new photos again!
Hey, I hope nobody finds my maid photos.. my wife will kill me. I better not connect the camera to the docking as they suggest. And besides, when my memory card fills up, I do what any smart person does! I buy a new camera to hold more pictures!
Beware the docking..
... a new venture from Jack Tramiel, assuming he's still alive, than someone who just bought or co-opted the Commodore names.
Tramiel was a master, a guy who could read the market in real time and act quickly and ruthlessly. He was Commodore.
They bought the Commodore name some years ago and have just now revived it for an unrelated line of hardware.
So this isn't really Commodore -- why should anyone care?
I want a handheld C64 system. No, not a Game Boy Advance emulating a C64. An actual handheld C64 gaming system. Maybe with a little keyboard a la the Zaurus. And I want it under $100.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Will it be able to play old C64 games as a bonus, and if not who is going to hack it so it can.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
About Commodore International B.V.
Commodore International B.V. is a daughter company of Tulip Computers. The CommodoreWorld concept is developed in cooperation with a number licensee-partners amongst others Yeahronimo N.V. and Ironstone Partners Ltd. Through this joint effort Tulip Computers and its partners will strengthen their power to act and will limit the financial risks connected to the development and production of new products considerably. In addition the introduction of new products and /or services will be much quicker.
About Ironstone
Ironstone Partners Ltd is a commercial vehicle created and funded by a number of individuals with a combined experience of over 100 years in the global games and media industries. Ironstone has offices in both the United Kingdom and Canada. Ironstone focus itself on projects in the worldwide games- and multimedia industry.
Commodore is a very strong brand with worldwide recognition introducing a solution what will bridge the consumer's eGap. An eGap is the entertainment Gap in the life of a consumer...
Seems possible that some new people bought the rights to use the commodore name.
And why is this corporate info written in Engrish?
I'm really surprised that they're introducing something like this, so late in the game. Sure, the market for digital music players may be growing fast, but there are a lot of others in this market, too.
There doesn't seem to be any indication of price, but I think they're going to have a hard time grabbing any kind of market share at all unless these things are cheaper than air... since the feature list for the eVic [what kind of name is that, anyway?? short for Victrola?] looks fairly standard, they're going to have to compete mostly on price.
One potentially useful feature would be the recording capabilities, assuming the interface allows live monitoring of levels. The specs mention bitrates for "music" and "voice" recording, but with a 20GB hard drive in there, it would seem reasonable to have the option to record uncompressed as well.
On a possibly unrelated note, I loved my Commodore 64 so of course I clicked on the link for "C64 DTV". This crashed my Mozilla. Since the people who hacked on old commodores are probably more likely to use Mozilla than IE, this worries me.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
The mp3 player market is now a commodity market, which means the focus is of user friendliness and style, not features. There is precious little to choose between the various horizontally-opposed players; what sets the iPod apart is its style and its user interface. Your average consumer isn't going to care about the name Commodore. They will want to know whether the thing works and looks better than an iPod.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
NO!!! If this is true, you didn't have to tell me! I was better off not knowing. Damn Slashdot.
Get a Slashdot-proof web site.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Lord forgive me for jumping to the defense of a computer that's been dead nearly 20 years. But somebody's gotta answer this.
I forget what Apple IIe's cost around 1985, but they were well over a grand; actually I think close to two grand...unreachable if you were a high school student mowing lawns. On the other hand, you could get a Commodore for $200, and a disk drive for another $200, plug it up to a TV and you were set.
Additionally, the graphics and especially the sound were much better on the C64 than the Apple IIe. The Commodore had a SID chip, which was polyphonic (I think) and offered four different kinds of sound envelopes. You could even tweak the ADSR...all this on a computer that was released in, what, 1983? The Apples and their tinny speaker sure couldn't do that, not without some expensive add on sound card anyway.
I remember a friend who lived down the block who had an Apple used to always be furious that the same games looked and sounded so much better on my cheap computer than his expensive one.
I think for the time, Commodore made amazing hardware and practically gave it away relative to what others were charging. Really odd to see them dissed over something like this.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Commodore is a single entity under law. As a corporation, or more literally, as an "embodiment", it can sue and be sued, hold property and so on as a single legal entity.
In other words, stop using the plural. It's just wrong. Commodore is not the Borg.
And if Commodor beats out Apple, then good for them.
I suggest you read Slashdot
You insensitive clod, how can you leave out M.U.L.E.?!?
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Search your feellings.. You know it to be true!
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
Why should you feel ashamed by hooking up again with a C-64? As lite as Linux has gotten, certainly you can find at least one flavor to satisfy your taste?
I mean, come on, I remember when the TRaSh-80 was around and used a tape recorder for persisting data or TI-99/4A which you could be paid for $0.50 in its final days. It was selling for $49.50 at K-Mart and there was a $50 rebate from Texas Instruments.
All of this is nicer unless you want to "adopt a mainframe" (someone begs & pleads for someone to come get a mainframe and give it a good home (usually basement or garage) before it's towed away. I think the CFO would not find the sharp spike in the electric bill very funny when she sees it, providing it doesn't blow something on the way to the house first.
I'm guessing it would be in the neighborhood of contest to see whose houses stand the greatest chance of being seen from Jupiter. (In a recent year, one of the houses said their December bill was $5kUS more than average.
So did the Apple, if you remember. In fact, it could be said that Apple's devotion to Microsoft BASIC is the reason we have Windows today.
The basic premise is this: in exchange for the rights to license AppleBASIC from Microsoft, some pinhead (who had been tasked with the deal because Jobs didn't think the Apple II had a future) gave the software company full rights to the Macintosh look and feel. Viola! Windows, all nice and legal -- and basically for free.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sad indeed, so it looks by all accounts its using something from windows media player. and what looks like some thinly veiled OEM mp3 players. There seems to be a total lack of technical info on their 'music store', I suppose its now the current fad to throw up a web music store and sell some players and thru a brand name you bought at bankruptcy auction in order to generate some capital.
Am I the only one that sees this as cynically as the rebirth of Atari?
I think the most ironic part is that you need WMP (with optional Commodore skin) to play your purchase from the Commodore music store. I wonder if they have the Amiga version ready yet?
While Microsoft got the rights to the look and feel legally, they didn't get the rights to the security, functionality, and sheer usability. Basically, they got the rights to make crap look pretty.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Apple sells something that only costs 100 dollars?! Where do I sign??
Not more than you need, just more than you want
it's just the little rubber feet for an iBook, don't get too excited ;)
What amazes me stayed at 1MHz, and was able to sell machines. The Apple I, released in 1976, was a 1MHz machine. The Apple II debuted in 1977, at 1MHz. The Apple II+ (my first computer, may God rest its soul) in '79, at 1MHz. The Apple IIe in '83, at 1MHz. The Apple IIc in '84, 1MHz. The Apple IIe Enhanced, at, you guessed it, 1MHz. That computer wasn't discontinued 'till 1993, for crying out loud.
Mind you, the Apple IIc+, Apple IIGS, and Macintosh were introduced during that timeframe at higher clock rates, but still, for 17 years, they sold a machine at the same speed. What the hell happened to Moore's Law?
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Getting nostalgic in my older years I found this site with a bunch of commodore commericals:
m me rcials.htm
http://www.commodorebillboard.de/Commercials/Co
But the one they're missing is the one with that jingle 'I'm playing games with my 64!'
The reason I want that one is my friend was actually in that commerical and it would be cool to see it again.
Player Drive w/20GB 1.8"HDD, 1200mA Chargeable Nicole-Lithium Battery
Nicole Lithium, hmmmm...
if it's really white with red hair, I'm sold.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Well, not exactly true. Actually, not true at all. First off, Apple traded a few million dollars in stock for the right to bring their programmers -- already well versed in graphical user interfaces, having done work on them in college -- to the Xerox PARC, where he saw a prototype system with NO relation to the Star. In fact, this system didn't even have a file management UI. Apple invented that, and it was Xerox who stole quite a bit of the UI that eventually showed up on the Star, thanks to the close ties between Apple and Xerox. Besides the concept of visual file management, Apple also invented the concept of icons that WERE things and could have actions performed on them...in the Xerox model, icons DID things, like physical buttons. Windowing existed solely to permit multiple command lines.
Apple "won" the Xerox case because what Xerox was doing -- moving a cursor around on a screen and manipulate windows and buttons -- they didn't invent, anyway. It had been done in colleges for years.
Apple vs. Microsoft, on the other hand, was a big deal. Apple HAD invented something new. They HAD created a new interface. But, in hopes of getting Microsoft as an application developer for their new OS, they accidentally licensed them core technologies and were vague enough to infer that they'd licensed the whole system. A more vitriolic and pro-mac argument can be found here.
Hey freaks: now you're ju