Jack Tramiel w/ Leonard Tramiel Introducing the Atari ST on The Computer Chronicles - April 8, 1985

[Justin]

 

Jack Tramiel introduces the Atari ST and discusses business practices on The Computer Chronicles, April 8, 1985. His son Leonard Tramiel, VP of Software Development at Atari demonstrates the Atari ST and TOS.

Interesting to note that once again Jack Tramiel touches on something @Video 61 has been pointing out in his Blog posts - that Jack Tramiel's philosophy was that it was "not our job to develop software - we develop the hardware product, it's up to the third party publishers to develop the software." Jack Tramiel recalls how people told him the C64 would fail without software, and yet with third party publishers the C64 ended up with an endless array of software. Jack applied this same philosophy to Atari products, namely the Jaguar, with different results.

Also discussed is what was going on at Commodore after Jack's departure and just prior to the release of the Amiga, as well as spending time with a Commodore User Group as technical support was nearly non-existent. 

Additionally the ROM chip format that became the TurboGrafx-16 TurboChip and the PC Engine HuCard was shown off for the first time at COMDEX Japan, at the 26:30 mark in the video. Very cool to see this so early.

[Video 61]

20 hours ago, Justin said:

 

Jack Tramiel introduces the Atari ST and discusses business practices on The Computer Chronicles, April 8, 1985. His son Leonard Tramiel, VP of Software Development at Atari demonstrates the Atari ST and TOS.

Interesting to note that once again Jack Tramiel touches on something @Video 61 has been pointing out in his Blog posts - that Jack Tramiel's philosophy was that it was "not our job to develop software - we develop the hardware product, it's up to the third party publishers to develop the software." Jack Tramiel recalls how people told him the C64 would fail without software, and yet with third party publishers the C64 ended up with an endless array of software. Jack applied this same philosophy to Atari products, namely the Jaguar, with different results.

Also discussed is what was going on at Commodore after Jack's departure and just prior to the release of the Amiga, as well as spending time with a Commodore User Group as technical support was nearly non-existent. 

Additionally the ROM chip format that became the TurboGrafx-16 TurboChip and the PC Engine HuCard was shown off for the first time at COMDEX Japan, at the 26:30 mark in the video. Very cool to see this so early.

hi justin,

 

jack never understood that by 1985, the computer industry was a far different animal than in 1979.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

[Justin]

18 minutes ago, Video 61 said:

hi justin,

 

jack never understood that by 1985, the computer industry was a far different animal than in 1979.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

@Video 61 and then he tried to apply that same "no first party software support" philosophy to Atari Lynx and Jaguar. Most money is made on software anyway, hardly any on hardware. In the video game industry hardware is typically a loss leader at this point. Sell the razor handle below cost, and make profit by selling endless razor blades.

[RickR]

I think the other missing piece of his flawed plan was providing real support to those third party companies.  Documentation and dev stations and everything else that will make them successful.  From everything I've read, he nickel and dimed everybody. 

[Jinroh]

On 9/6/2023 at 9:51 PM, RickR said:

I think the other missing piece of his flawed plan was providing real support to those third party companies.  Documentation and dev stations and everything else that will make them successful.  From everything I've read, he nickel and dimed everybody. 

Haha yes, there were book like the ones from Abacus pretty much at the onset of the ST, but you still had to buy them. 😅 Jack was giving tons of value to the consumer, but...the software houses, well, at least they had lots of clever guys, and could figure things out themselves. Though the elegant design of the ST helped there. 😉

On 9/6/2023 at 9:30 PM, Justin said:

@Video 61 and then he tried to apply that same "no first party software support" philosophy to Atari Lynx and Jaguar. Most money is made on software anyway, hardly any on hardware. In the video game industry hardware is typically a loss leader at this point. Sell the razor handle below cost, and make profit by selling endless razor blades.

Honestly, I think Jack's goal was to just undercut Apple. I dunno if he had a vendetta against Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak, or he just wanted to flex, but I think he succeeded in giving a killer alternative to the Mac, he just didn't have a plan besides "Make the Jackintosh." 😄

        Jack's Plan

1. Make the ST.
2. Undercut Apple
3. ???
4. Profit? (Maybe?)

Edited September 8, 2023 by Jinroh

[RickR]

4 - Use the profit to buy Motorola and screw everyone who used the 68000 series CPU in their computer. 

[Video 61]

On 9/5/2023 at 11:47 PM, Justin said:

 

Jack Tramiel introduces the Atari ST and discusses business practices on The Computer Chronicles, April 8, 1985. His son Leonard Tramiel, VP of Software Development at Atari demonstrates the Atari ST and TOS.

Interesting to note that once again Jack Tramiel touches on something @Video 61 has been pointing out in his Blog posts - that Jack Tramiel's philosophy was that it was "not our job to develop software - we develop the hardware product, it's up to the third party publishers to develop the software." Jack Tramiel recalls how people told him the C64 would fail without software, and yet with third party publishers the C64 ended up with an endless array of software. Jack applied this same philosophy to Atari products, namely the Jaguar, with different results.

Also discussed is what was going on at Commodore after Jack's departure and just prior to the release of the Amiga, as well as spending time with a Commodore User Group as technical support was nearly non-existent. 

Additionally the ROM chip format that became the TurboGrafx-16 TurboChip and the PC Engine HuCard was shown off for the first time at COMDEX Japan, at the 26:30 mark in the video. Very cool to see this so early.

hi justin,

 

i am creating another blog entry, where i will quickly touch on the launch of the atari ST.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Jinroh]

4 hours ago, Video 61 said:

hi justin,

 

i am creating another blog entry, where i will quickly touch on the launch of the atari ST.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

Can't wait to read it Lance. 🙂

[MistaMaddog]

Well a lot of computer companies, including Apple, mostly allowed 3rd party companies to make their software with some 1st party stuff to get new buyers started (ie. MacWrite or NeoPaint).

But that same philosophy cannot apply to consoles like the Jaguar because consoles are a much tighter controlled market.  Sam might have hoped that 3rd party developers in the UK would provide a large bulk of Jag games like they did for the ST, but the US video game market was completely different and gamers were looking for ports of favorite arcade games like Mortal Kombat.  (I honestly doubted any Japanese company would develop stuff for the American Jag...)

I can't wait to read more of Lance's blogs which offers a dealer's insight of the original Atari. 🙂