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A Commodore PET Smartphone?

sgifanatic said:
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/?mbid=social_twitter

The Commodore PET is now an Android smartphone running an emulator.

A nod to the name, but a bit of a travesty, really, for vintage buffs.
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I wish them well - No other entity has been able to resurrect Commodore, so I guess we''ll see whether the Italians can do so. I would venture to say that 90% of the "living" don't even remember the heady days of the '70s & '80s, when the Pet, Amiga, &Co. were king...
gwk
 
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Right, so now when someone says Commodore or PET, they don't think Commodore PET, they think that cheap cell phone. So no one takes a real one seriously.
 
sgifanatic said:
A nod to the name, but a bit of a travesty, really, for vintage buffs.
Click to expand...

A travesty? If Jack Tramiel was still alive and running the company, he would've started making Commodore smartphones a long time ago. Remember, before computers, Commodore Business Machines put its name on whatever kinds of products Tramiel could make the most profit from at the time: typewriters, calculators, wristwatches, etc... even office furniture!

2785085526_7a6e71d70c.jpg
 
But Jack made everything. If he didn't already make it, he bought the company that did.

I believe you're right though. Had Jack still been there, Commodore would have been competing with the first smartphones. That is, many years prior to Apple.
 
KC9UDX said:
Right, so now when someone says Commodore or PET, they don't think Commodore PET, they think that cheap cell phone. So no one takes a real one seriously.
Click to expand...

pet2001front[1].jpg

Everyone already laughs when they walk into my office and sees this machine...
 
It looks like an overly generic Android phone from China with the Commodore logo and "PET" slapped on it.
Reminds me of when they sold MP3 players.
 
The closest matching generic Android phone sells for about half what the Commodore PET phone is planned to sell for. Looks like another attempt to use the Commodore logo to generate high margins and probably doomed to the same failure as the other overpriced generic products provided a Commodore logo over the past decade.
 
krebizfan said:
The closest matching generic Android phone sells for about half what the Commodore PET phone is planned to sell for. Looks like another attempt to use the Commodore logo to generate high margins and probably doomed to the same failure as the other overpriced generic products provided a Commodore logo over the past decade.
Click to expand...

I would agree with you. Adding insult to injury.
 
Actually.... Who cares? We know what a PET is, what it means. No one who is after a crappy Android phone does, nor do they need to, or would be interested. Anyone who remembers CBM won't be confused by it.

No need to get precious about the brand itself, it isn't relevant any more. I mean let's face it, the days of home computers are pretty well gone. They are just internet appliances now.
 
Because they perceive brand value.

What they don't see is that to anyone that the brand actually means some thing to, the product doesn't. If you get my meaning.
 
NeXT said:
It's just an excessively generic Android phone from China with additional markings and a custom theme. There's otherwise not a single thing custom or original to Commodore about it.[/url]
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You mean like when Radio Shack took portable computers made by Sharp, Kyocera, and Panasonic, changed the ROMs a little, and slapped the "TRS-80" or "Tandy" names on them?
 
It is somewhat ironic that all the decent products made for Commodore machines these days (accelerators, accessories, cases, etc) are the things that aren't allowed to say Commodore on them.
 
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