"I'm not saying that corporations should not be punished for wrongdoing. I'm saying that attorneys should not be able to make obscene profits from defending the poor, innocent victims."
How many attorneys would defend those "poor, innocent victims" without the so-called "obscene" profits from the settlements they win. That would require more non-profit organizations to fund the lawsuits. Instead of a tort specializing law firm filing a claim against Microsoft for some faulty product that violates antitrust and privacy standards, you would need the EFF spending money on an in-house legal team to do the same thing. Which requires more people donating, of course.
- Spoken like a guy who would have the game system named the LYNX as part of his user name...:)
Of course, we'll forget about those travesties that were "E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and "Pac-Man", all on the Atari 2600.
"When will the avg American figure out that class-action lawsuits only benefit big-time litigation attorneys?"
If corporations actually behaved themselves and didn't try to cheat the average American, there would be no need for large scale class-action lawsuits in the first place.
"Sheesh, I've been doing that on my ReplayTV 50x0 unit for 4 years now, and the only thing I had to touch was the new hard drive I put in. I honestly don't understand why ReplayTV units haven't dominated the planet by now. Poor marketing, maybe?"
Not as good of a "Season Pass". The GUI is not as good as TiVo's. Being sued into oblivion twice already (bankrupting the original ReplayTV company, and then SonicBlue). No word-of-mouth except for "I own a ReplayTV" postings on any website with news about TiVo. No marketing campaign to speak of. No deals for ReplayTV being used by a cableco or satellite company (unlike the old DirecTV partnership or the upcoming partnership with Comcast - and the licensing agreement with Scientific Atlanta does not count). No Linux loving. No partnership with Intel or Microsoft. Etc.
If you want to transfer shows using a TiVo, might I suggest doing a Google Search for "DirectShow Dump"?
"Your section on the Bad should have included all the things TiVo has taken away (e.g. 30 second skip), or never provided when they could (e.g. Replay TV style automatic commercial skip) to the benefit of their customer base. I don't see TiVo presenting as rosy a picture as you do."
I'd say that TiVo keeping itself a float is a benefit they've given their customer base, unlike ReplayTV. ReplayTV has bankrupted two parent companies already by having incurred the wrath of the broadcasters association and the MPAA. Does that slow the pace of innovation on TiVo's part? A little bit. But at least it didn't jeopardize my "lifetime subscription" I bought for my machine three years ago.
And you can still enable the 30 second skip on the TiVo remote. Its just TiVo had enough brains not to place a specific button labelled as "commercial skip" on their remote which saved them expensive litigation fees that ReplayTV spent and bankrupted their parent companies.
...That the Series3 TiVo set-top boxes will sport Intel chipsets (like a StrongARM or something beefier) instead of the current 200Mhz MIPS chips that are currently in the Series2 units (or the 50Mhz PowerPC chips in the Series1 units). It would benefit the set top boxes greatly to have more raw power to deal with HDTV and interactive options.
Might this also be a path towards an Apple buyout of TiVo (that many of us want)?
"By simply offering the ability to get your video content from your DVR to your Mac (in this case, the idea is that they are one and the same) is ALREADY a competitive reason to switch from Tivo. I've been toying with the idea of nixing my Tivo in favor of a ReplayTV because frankly, I want to watch some Adult Swim on my PSP when I'm on the bus, and I'm tired of the wait. Getting Tivo files onto a PSP without Windows is like pulling teeth. They've repeatedly told the Mac Faithful, wait, wait, wait, then oops, nothing because it's expensive. Now we get PSP support, MAYBE in the middle of 06? Whatever, I'll wait till after the January Expo to move to ReplayTV, or Apple's new option, assuming it materializes."
It would probably be better for you to pick up a cheap (possibly used?) Windows PC and download the program called *Direct Show Dump* (DSD) which strips the DRM from recorded TiVo files that you transfer over through TiVo-To-Go. From there, you could transcode to get it onto the PSP or iPod (video) without pesky DRM. And in doing so, you wouldn't be forced to "dump" your TiVo in favor of ReplayTV which will only be kept alive until D&M Holdings finds another company to rid themselves of the platform and hopefully make a small profit off the intellectual property just as they did with Rio.
DSD works great. Would I love to see it and TiVo-To-Go work on OS X? Certainly. But that's not enough of a reason for me to dump TiVo in favor of a platform (ReplayTV) that is well known to bankrupt its owner (Replay, SonicBlue, and waiting on D&M Holdings) and inevitably leads to another round of corporate musical chairs. TiVo's problem is that it is small and doesn't have a large revenue stream (which prevents it from providing great Mac support) since it only has around 3 million customers (most of which are through the DirecTV deal....2 million of 'em). Replay has never attracted anything beyond 200,000 users. Which platform do you think is more solid now?
"I had no problems with Air Sea Battle on my old 2600 over 20 years ago. Was a great game and never crashed once. Great multiplayer game indeed. My problem was that the joysticks wore out real fast."
On my 2600, the game would not play if a controller was plugged into the second joystick port. Nobody else I knew had that problem with the game. Perhaps if the net existed back then and we all had computers, maybe I would have discovered other people with the same problem...
"You have to admit though. Those are some decent crash screens. Not unlike the screens you'd see when pulling out a Atari 2600 game cartridge with the power on. Hey wait, the crashes themselves look better than atari 2600 games. Oh no!"
Great. Compare the graphics of a year 2005 console with a platform that debuted in 1977.
Funny thing is that my Atari 2600 still works. The only game that I ever had issues with was *Air Sea Battle*. Went through 20 cartridges of that and it never worked with my console. Good thing Atari didn't have a shrink-wrapped EULA to prevent the return of those cartridges back in the day.
"They're waiting until CableCard 2.0 is finalized."
That's the official excuse. However, I don't think CableCard 2.0 will change its physical size any (or card slot reader either) so I don't see what the true holdup is. Plenty of LCD and plasma screens are shipping with DCR support this entire year and thus only supports CableCard 1.0 currently. We don't see any of those manufacturers holding out until 2.0 hits, if ever.
"The iPod is a cheap computer, with limited functionality compared to your desktop or your laptop. Its only advantages are its customer-pleasing price, its focus on functions customers want, and its ability to creep up to desktop functionality... when it wants to."
I dunno about that one. The iPod would need a better processor (an Intel ARM based processor) for starts as well as a better OS to go along with it to get better media features standard. It has been reported in the past that Apple engineers are rather fed up with the iPod's OS, but it would probably take a lot to slim down OS X for a "Mobile OS X" solution or dusting off the Newton OS. Another option would be to buy the remnants of BeOS from PalmSource, but something tells me that PalmSource's new corporate overlords would not agree to that.
Granted, the TiVo Series3 will need a better microprocessor than those MIPS 200mhz processors they currently sport in the Series2 models. Perhaps they should also be looking at a StrongARM chip from Intel, or a Sony/IBM Cell processor(s).
"4. It isn't supported on the new iPod Micro, but that's probably because it's obsolete"
Was that a SNL "Weekend Update" reference to the Steve Jobs skit this last Saturday? If so, you should've referenced the micro invisible iPod that also floats.
"So TiVo will let us transfer shows to our iPods. This is the same TiVo that already makes their DVRs will obey the Broadcast Flag despite no federal legislation ever mandating such compliance. Seems to me that Disney, the WB, and every other studio will simply flag all their broadcasts as Do Not Record, blocking such free attempts to provide content to one's iPod and PSP and requiring these shows to be purchased. Therefore this announcement therefore amounts to NOTHING!"
Hollywood is still trying to hoist the Broadcast Flag onto Congress. TiVo is ahead of the ballgame just-in-case it becomes law. Would you prefer them to miss a deadline and suffer an injunction so that they cannot ship products until they comply with the law? How about a suicidal run against the MPAA like Replay? In either scenario, the only parties that benefit from an activist TiVo will be the likes of Motorola, NDS, and Scientific Atlanta (now a division of Cisco) who all ship under-performing DVRs for the cablecos and will automatically benefit by having TiVo close its doors. Be careful what you wish for.
And the content distributors will not enable the broadcast flag until it becomes law. They'd be sued class-action style if they did otherwise, not to mention suffer FCC fines.
"The question is, will the industry leaders recognize and respond effectively? Or rather, can they? I don't intend to be making a yet another cheap flame of the world's leading software company, which cannot be ignorant of the what's going on, but responding may require breaking their business model."
Okay, but who are you referring to as the industry dinosaurs for your scenario, the MPAA studios or TiVo and the other DVR manufacturers? Or both, with the iPod serving as their executioner?
"Too bad they never added Tivo To Go For Macintosh, and I doubt they will ever add this feature to Macs either. Nice to be a second or even 3rd class citizen when it comes to Tivo because i own a mac."
Don't give up yet. Word on the street is that they'll be enabling Mac support sometime in Q1 2006.
If it really bugs you, then go to BestBuy on BlackFriday and pick up their $150 eMachines package (computer, monitor, printer) and then you can have a dedicated cheapie PC to take advantage of TiVo-2-Go. Hey, it is cheaper than opting for an El Gato EyeTV adapter for your Mac.
What I'm really hoping for is iTunes Store support on TiVos...so you can play AAC and AAC+FairplayDRM'ed songs through the TiVo in the living room. Supposedly, plenty of people have requested this be added.
"DirecTV tivos never even supported TivoToGo in the first place. The whole idea terrifies them."
It isn't that DirecTV is terrified by the process due to legal implications; its because DirecTV's parent company - News Corp. aka "Fox" - owns TiVo competitor NDS which does not have a similar option. NDS has been slow to market with just about every platform they've developed, and Rupert Murdoch is using DirecTV as a means of making his investment in NDS not look like a foolish mistake. If TiVo-To-Go and the other Home Media features were enabled on all DirecTV branded TiVos, who would seriously sign up for the NDS DirecTV DVR model? The only things going for the NDS model is that it has a 90 minute live tv buffer and it can display Caller ID info on the screen for incoming telephone calls.
Re:There was a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit
on
Atari 800 XE Laptop
·
· Score: 1
"This is where I get confused... I think it was the 65-XEM (M for Music) that was going to have the AMY chip. The 65-XEP (P for portable) would have been a luggable like the Commodore 64-sx and would have also sported a 3.5inch drive."
I take that back. You are right about the 65XEM; the model number. But I am correct that the reason why it was canned is because the Atari Corp./Tramiel Technology crew could not figure out how to work the AMY sound chip.
They also did want to shift the software on the 8-bit line to the 3.5" disc drive but there wasn't hardly any support from the software industry. Had they done so, it would've been a single sided drive like the ST's SF354 drive and not the higher grade SF314 double sided double density disc drive because there's no way the Tramiels would've allowed the 8-bit line (which was created by Atari Inc.) to have anything more powerful than the ST line (created by Tramiel's Atari Corp.). Player/missile graphics aside...:)
"All very good ideas... but what did atari produce last? The XE game system! Basicly the same bloody thing at the XE except with a detachable keyboard and huge pastel colored buttons. I have no clue what the hell Trammel was thinking... because this thing was released in 1987... carried a heavy price tag... and the library of games they re-released for the sucker were circa 1981-1983... games you could run on an atari 800... then there was Nintendo actually creating NEW games. It would have been spiffy keen in 1985... but this was 1987 and cartridges were that annoying overpriced technology that took up way too much space."
Okay. This one I can explain. Prior to the XEGS debuting, the software industry had scapegoated the Atari 8-bit line for being a pirate's den/cave of software and decided to make an example out of the platform by cutting releases. The real problem was in the Commodore64 land but it had too large of an installed base of users to halt development at that time. The XEGS partially was a response to this by shipping games that had beforehand only existed on floppy disc as a cartridge and thus harder to "crack" and pirate. So the Tramiels thought this might be a way to successfully shore up the XE line a little longer. It also allowed popular titles to be purchased by people who only wanted to buy a console and not a $150 floppy drive.
The Tramiels also thought the XEGS would score as well against the NES as the Commodore64 did against the Atari 2600 once the price cuts dramatically dropped the C64 close to most of the game systems price levels. They thought a fully functional computer would be a bonus to concerned parents who might not want to waste money on strictly a game system. But people wanted the NES more than a computer at that point. Plus, the Atari 7800 had better graphics than the XEGS, although inferior sound, and about 50k less memory...not to mention any computing options. By 1988, Atari Corp. had stripped the 7800 of its expansion slot that Atari Inc. had created on the machine to hook in a keyboard/computer upgrade that would've made it compatible with the XL line of computers, not to mention the Atari MindLink controller.
The pastels were trendy. Miami Vice still had an impact on fashion/design at the time.
"The laptop itself is pretty cool, though. Reminds me of when I used to play with the Atari computers in the library. (We had Frogger!) I have to wonder how cheaply someone could produce such a device as a kids toy? I mean, the Atari Flashbacks (1 & 2) were both reasonably successful at $30. All that's needed is to add an LCD screen, a cart port, Atari BASIC, and sell it for $50. Voila! A retro-development platform!"
I'm really surprised that the current incarnation of Atari Inc. hasn't simply open-sourced the Atari 8-bit operating system and BASIC. I mean, the patents/IP probably would only still be good on Atari DOS 2.5 at this point. Hell, even TOS 1.0 - 1.2 on the ST side of Atari platforms should be able to be open sourced if the rights holder of Digital Research's GEM/GEMDOS would consent.
"Boy, do I feel nostalgic. But should it be called an Atari 800 system? There was an Atari 400 before an Atari 800. And a 600XL, 800XL, 65XE and 130XE afterwards."
Because the *800* was considered the best models of the Atari 8-bit line. The 800 was better than the 400 because it didn't have a membrane (sic) keyboard and had more standard memory and better upgrade options. The 800XL was considered the best of the XL line, and even better than the follow-up 65XE which was its direct replacement. Thus the *800* is the sweetspot for naming an Atari 8-bit revival computer after. Think Pontiac and *GTO* in comparison.
Of course, this illustration does not count the superior 8-bit computers that never officially hit the market; those being the Atari 1400XL and the 1450XLD, thanks to the Tramiel family takeover.
Slashdot Mirror
"International Superstar David Hasselhof."
:)
Guess they better get "Knight Rider" and "Baywatch" available on the German iTunes Store then for maximum profiteering...
"I'm not saying that corporations should not be punished for wrongdoing. I'm saying that attorneys should not be able to make obscene profits from defending the poor, innocent victims."
How many attorneys would defend those "poor, innocent victims" without the so-called "obscene" profits from the settlements they win. That would require more non-profit organizations to fund the lawsuits. Instead of a tort specializing law firm filing a claim against Microsoft for some faulty product that violates antitrust and privacy standards, you would need the EFF spending money on an in-house legal team to do the same thing. Which requires more people donating, of course.
"looks like atari never made that list."
:)
Because Atari was awesome!
- Spoken like a guy who would have the game system named the LYNX as part of his user name...
Of course, we'll forget about those travesties that were "E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and "Pac-Man", all on the Atari 2600.
"When will the avg American figure out that class-action lawsuits only benefit big-time litigation attorneys?"
If corporations actually behaved themselves and didn't try to cheat the average American, there would be no need for large scale class-action lawsuits in the first place.
". .. you forgot the part where the lawyers, in turn, shell out $800 for Microsoft Software to do their lawyerin' with."
The legal profession is one of the last bastions of WordPerfect usage, actually.
"Sheesh, I've been doing that on my ReplayTV 50x0 unit for 4 years now, and the only thing I had to touch was the new hard drive I put in. I honestly don't understand why ReplayTV units haven't dominated the planet by now. Poor marketing, maybe?"
Not as good of a "Season Pass". The GUI is not as good as TiVo's. Being sued into oblivion twice already (bankrupting the original ReplayTV company, and then SonicBlue). No word-of-mouth except for "I own a ReplayTV" postings on any website with news about TiVo. No marketing campaign to speak of. No deals for ReplayTV being used by a cableco or satellite company (unlike the old DirecTV partnership or the upcoming partnership with Comcast - and the licensing agreement with Scientific Atlanta does not count). No Linux loving. No partnership with Intel or Microsoft. Etc.
If you want to transfer shows using a TiVo, might I suggest doing a Google Search for "DirectShow Dump"?
"Your section on the Bad should have included all the things TiVo has taken away (e.g. 30 second skip), or never provided when they could (e.g. Replay TV style automatic commercial skip) to the benefit of their customer base. I don't see TiVo presenting as rosy a picture as you do."
I'd say that TiVo keeping itself a float is a benefit they've given their customer base, unlike ReplayTV. ReplayTV has bankrupted two parent companies already by having incurred the wrath of the broadcasters association and the MPAA. Does that slow the pace of innovation on TiVo's part? A little bit. But at least it didn't jeopardize my "lifetime subscription" I bought for my machine three years ago.
And you can still enable the 30 second skip on the TiVo remote. Its just TiVo had enough brains not to place a specific button labelled as "commercial skip" on their remote which saved them expensive litigation fees that ReplayTV spent and bankrupted their parent companies.
Might this also be a path towards an Apple buyout of TiVo (that many of us want)?
"By simply offering the ability to get your video content from your DVR to your Mac (in this case, the idea is that they are one and the same) is ALREADY a competitive reason to switch from Tivo. I've been toying with the idea of nixing my Tivo in favor of a ReplayTV because frankly, I want to watch some Adult Swim on my PSP when I'm on the bus, and I'm tired of the wait. Getting Tivo files onto a PSP without Windows is like pulling teeth. They've repeatedly told the Mac Faithful, wait, wait, wait, then oops, nothing because it's expensive. Now we get PSP support, MAYBE in the middle of 06? Whatever, I'll wait till after the January Expo to move to ReplayTV, or Apple's new option, assuming it materializes."
It would probably be better for you to pick up a cheap (possibly used?) Windows PC and download the program called *Direct Show Dump* (DSD) which strips the DRM from recorded TiVo files that you transfer over through TiVo-To-Go. From there, you could transcode to get it onto the PSP or iPod (video) without pesky DRM. And in doing so, you wouldn't be forced to "dump" your TiVo in favor of ReplayTV which will only be kept alive until D&M Holdings finds another company to rid themselves of the platform and hopefully make a small profit off the intellectual property just as they did with Rio.
DSD works great. Would I love to see it and TiVo-To-Go work on OS X? Certainly. But that's not enough of a reason for me to dump TiVo in favor of a platform (ReplayTV) that is well known to bankrupt its owner (Replay, SonicBlue, and waiting on D&M Holdings) and inevitably leads to another round of corporate musical chairs. TiVo's problem is that it is small and doesn't have a large revenue stream (which prevents it from providing great Mac support) since it only has around 3 million customers (most of which are through the DirecTV deal....2 million of 'em). Replay has never attracted anything beyond 200,000 users. Which platform do you think is more solid now?
"I had no problems with Air Sea Battle on my old 2600 over 20 years ago. Was a great game and never crashed once. Great multiplayer game indeed. My problem was that the joysticks wore out real fast."
On my 2600, the game would not play if a controller was plugged into the second joystick port. Nobody else I knew had that problem with the game. Perhaps if the net existed back then and we all had computers, maybe I would have discovered other people with the same problem...
"You have to admit though. Those are some decent crash screens. Not unlike the screens you'd see when pulling out a Atari 2600 game cartridge with the power on. Hey wait, the crashes themselves look better than atari 2600 games. Oh no!"
Great. Compare the graphics of a year 2005 console with a platform that debuted in 1977.
Funny thing is that my Atari 2600 still works. The only game that I ever had issues with was *Air Sea Battle*. Went through 20 cartridges of that and it never worked with my console. Good thing Atari didn't have a shrink-wrapped EULA to prevent the return of those cartridges back in the day.
"I'm not sure what the exact question here is for iTunes support. I have full iTunes and iPhoto support on my Humax Series2 Tivo."
Are you stating you can stream iTunes Music Store purchased tracks to your TiVo and it will play them?
"TiVo is trying to make themselves the standard so they can have no competition in the future and own the market."
:)
But....TiVo uses Linux as its OS. Does that not give it good kharma?
"They're waiting until CableCard 2.0 is finalized."
That's the official excuse. However, I don't think CableCard 2.0 will change its physical size any (or card slot reader either) so I don't see what the true holdup is. Plenty of LCD and plasma screens are shipping with DCR support this entire year and thus only supports CableCard 1.0 currently. We don't see any of those manufacturers holding out until 2.0 hits, if ever.
"The iPod is a cheap computer, with limited functionality compared to your desktop or your laptop. Its only advantages are its customer-pleasing price, its focus on functions customers want, and its ability to creep up to desktop functionality ... when it wants to."
I dunno about that one. The iPod would need a better processor (an Intel ARM based processor) for starts as well as a better OS to go along with it to get better media features standard. It has been reported in the past that Apple engineers are rather fed up with the iPod's OS, but it would probably take a lot to slim down OS X for a "Mobile OS X" solution or dusting off the Newton OS. Another option would be to buy the remnants of BeOS from PalmSource, but something tells me that PalmSource's new corporate overlords would not agree to that.
Granted, the TiVo Series3 will need a better microprocessor than those MIPS 200mhz processors they currently sport in the Series2 models. Perhaps they should also be looking at a StrongARM chip from Intel, or a Sony/IBM Cell processor(s).
"4. It isn't supported on the new iPod Micro, but that's probably because it's obsolete"
Was that a SNL "Weekend Update" reference to the Steve Jobs skit this last Saturday? If so, you should've referenced the micro invisible iPod that also floats.
"The 1 reason to move to the US (TiVo) just got even hotter"
TiVo is now in Canada officially. Just thought I'd mention that.
"So TiVo will let us transfer shows to our iPods. This is the same TiVo that already makes their DVRs will obey the Broadcast Flag despite no federal legislation ever mandating such compliance. Seems to me that Disney, the WB, and every other studio will simply flag all their broadcasts as Do Not Record, blocking such free attempts to provide content to one's iPod and PSP and requiring these shows to be purchased. Therefore this announcement therefore amounts to NOTHING!"
Hollywood is still trying to hoist the Broadcast Flag onto Congress. TiVo is ahead of the ballgame just-in-case it becomes law. Would you prefer them to miss a deadline and suffer an injunction so that they cannot ship products until they comply with the law? How about a suicidal run against the MPAA like Replay? In either scenario, the only parties that benefit from an activist TiVo will be the likes of Motorola, NDS, and Scientific Atlanta (now a division of Cisco) who all ship under-performing DVRs for the cablecos and will automatically benefit by having TiVo close its doors. Be careful what you wish for.
And the content distributors will not enable the broadcast flag until it becomes law. They'd be sued class-action style if they did otherwise, not to mention suffer FCC fines.
"The question is, will the industry leaders recognize and respond effectively? Or rather, can they? I don't intend to be making a yet another cheap flame of the world's leading software company, which cannot be ignorant of the what's going on, but responding may require breaking their business model."
Okay, but who are you referring to as the industry dinosaurs for your scenario, the MPAA studios or TiVo and the other DVR manufacturers? Or both, with the iPod serving as their executioner?
"Too bad they never added Tivo To Go For Macintosh, and I doubt they will ever add this feature to Macs either. Nice to be a second or even 3rd class citizen when it comes to Tivo because i own a mac."
Don't give up yet. Word on the street is that they'll be enabling Mac support sometime in Q1 2006.
If it really bugs you, then go to BestBuy on BlackFriday and pick up their $150 eMachines package (computer, monitor, printer) and then you can have a dedicated cheapie PC to take advantage of TiVo-2-Go. Hey, it is cheaper than opting for an El Gato EyeTV adapter for your Mac.
What I'm really hoping for is iTunes Store support on TiVos...so you can play AAC and AAC+FairplayDRM'ed songs through the TiVo in the living room. Supposedly, plenty of people have requested this be added.
"DirecTV tivos never even supported TivoToGo in the first place. The whole idea terrifies them."
It isn't that DirecTV is terrified by the process due to legal implications; its because DirecTV's parent company - News Corp. aka "Fox" - owns TiVo competitor NDS which does not have a similar option. NDS has been slow to market with just about every platform they've developed, and Rupert Murdoch is using DirecTV as a means of making his investment in NDS not look like a foolish mistake. If TiVo-To-Go and the other Home Media features were enabled on all DirecTV branded TiVos, who would seriously sign up for the NDS DirecTV DVR model? The only things going for the NDS model is that it has a 90 minute live tv buffer and it can display Caller ID info on the screen for incoming telephone calls.
"This is where I get confused... I think it was the 65-XEM (M for Music) that was going to have the AMY chip. The 65-XEP (P for portable) would have been a luggable like the Commodore 64-sx and would have also sported a 3.5inch drive."
:)
I take that back. You are right about the 65XEM; the model number. But I am correct that the reason why it was canned is because the Atari Corp./Tramiel Technology crew could not figure out how to work the AMY sound chip.
They also did want to shift the software on the 8-bit line to the 3.5" disc drive but there wasn't hardly any support from the software industry. Had they done so, it would've been a single sided drive like the ST's SF354 drive and not the higher grade SF314 double sided double density disc drive because there's no way the Tramiels would've allowed the 8-bit line (which was created by Atari Inc.) to have anything more powerful than the ST line (created by Tramiel's Atari Corp.). Player/missile graphics aside...
"All very good ideas... but what did atari produce last? The XE game system! Basicly the same bloody thing at the XE except with a detachable keyboard and huge pastel colored buttons. I have no clue what the hell Trammel was thinking... because this thing was released in 1987... carried a heavy price tag... and the library of games they re-released for the sucker were circa 1981-1983... games you could run on an atari 800... then there was Nintendo actually creating NEW games. It would have been spiffy keen in 1985... but this was 1987 and cartridges were that annoying overpriced technology that took up way too much space."
Okay. This one I can explain. Prior to the XEGS debuting, the software industry had scapegoated the Atari 8-bit line for being a pirate's den/cave of software and decided to make an example out of the platform by cutting releases. The real problem was in the Commodore64 land but it had too large of an installed base of users to halt development at that time. The XEGS partially was a response to this by shipping games that had beforehand only existed on floppy disc as a cartridge and thus harder to "crack" and pirate. So the Tramiels thought this might be a way to successfully shore up the XE line a little longer. It also allowed popular titles to be purchased by people who only wanted to buy a console and not a $150 floppy drive.
The Tramiels also thought the XEGS would score as well against the NES as the Commodore64 did against the Atari 2600 once the price cuts dramatically dropped the C64 close to most of the game systems price levels. They thought a fully functional computer would be a bonus to concerned parents who might not want to waste money on strictly a game system. But people wanted the NES more than a computer at that point. Plus, the Atari 7800 had better graphics than the XEGS, although inferior sound, and about 50k less memory...not to mention any computing options. By 1988, Atari Corp. had stripped the 7800 of its expansion slot that Atari Inc. had created on the machine to hook in a keyboard/computer upgrade that would've made it compatible with the XL line of computers, not to mention the Atari MindLink controller.
The pastels were trendy. Miami Vice still had an impact on fashion/design at the time.
"The laptop itself is pretty cool, though. Reminds me of when I used to play with the Atari computers in the library. (We had Frogger!) I have to wonder how cheaply someone could produce such a device as a kids toy? I mean, the Atari Flashbacks (1 & 2) were both reasonably successful at $30. All that's needed is to add an LCD screen, a cart port, Atari BASIC, and sell it for $50. Voila! A retro-development platform!"
I'm really surprised that the current incarnation of Atari Inc. hasn't simply open-sourced the Atari 8-bit operating system and BASIC. I mean, the patents/IP probably would only still be good on Atari DOS 2.5 at this point. Hell, even TOS 1.0 - 1.2 on the ST side of Atari platforms should be able to be open sourced if the rights holder of Digital Research's GEM/GEMDOS would consent.
"I still have my entire 520ST system, what to do.... Car mod? maybe....."
:)
Just keep it running! (I still have my Falcon; wish I wouldn't have sold my 1040ST).
Maybe give it a graphics card upgrade; a TOS upgrade; or pop in a higher grade Motorola 680*0 chip and a math co-processor for kicks...
"Boy, do I feel nostalgic. But should it be called an Atari 800 system? There was an Atari 400 before an Atari 800. And a 600XL, 800XL, 65XE and 130XE afterwards."
Because the *800* was considered the best models of the Atari 8-bit line. The 800 was better than the 400 because it didn't have a membrane (sic) keyboard and had more standard memory and better upgrade options. The 800XL was considered the best of the XL line, and even better than the follow-up 65XE which was its direct replacement. Thus the *800* is the sweetspot for naming an Atari 8-bit revival computer after. Think Pontiac and *GTO* in comparison.
Of course, this illustration does not count the superior 8-bit computers that never officially hit the market; those being the Atari 1400XL and the 1450XLD, thanks to the Tramiel family takeover.