OT: Jack Tramiel passes away at 83 years of age

[Willsy]

This is a very very sad day indeed:

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/09/computer-legend-and-gaming-pioneer-jack-tramiel-dies-at-age-83/

 

RIP Jack.

 

[ti99iuc]

:-( a BIG "CIAO" for the Commodore's father :-(

 

He went to heaven, but everything that leaves here is in computer history.

[TEXAS_JOE]

Rest in peace, Jack Tramiel.

 

You contributed to computing history in a massive way and will never be forgotten.

[rocky007]

yep..very sad alos, he offered my "golden age" through the Atari ST.

[orion1052003]

I was always against him for what he did to ATARI, but I wish that he was still around. I read he was a holocaust survivor.

[apersson850]

He more or less killed the 99/4A as well. Accomplished a lot in a lifetime.

[rocky007]

He more or less killed the 99/4A as well. Accomplished a lot in a lifetime.

 

yes, with his fu*** VIC 20 :spidey:

[TEXAS_JOE]

I don't think he meant to. He was just selling computers cheaper than anyone else did. That way he got the higher sales.

 

I'm going to say this, and I am die-hard TI99 enthusiast, but if any company charges $1150 in 1979 and then $525 in 1981 for a 16K computer what's

going to happen is people look elsewhere if they don't fully know what the TI is capable of.

 

And gold-plated CPU or not, the TI was never worth $1150 just because it's RF modulator failed the test.

 

We can't blame Jack for the failure of the TI99. Blame TI themselves they're the ones with the shitty marketing.

[+Vorticon]

Jack Tramiel was a business man, no more and no less. He saw opportunity and exploited it to the max. I don't know if he had a creative side as well, but the fact that he labeled the Atari programmers as towel designers makes it a little doubtful. Nonetheless, he does deserve his place in the history of computing. May he rest in peace.

[Ransom]

It was Ray Kassar who made the towel designers comment (Ray had most recently worked at Burlington Industries, a textile company, before coming to Atari during the Warner era).

[TEXAS_JOE]

How many directors has Atari had ?!

 

I think, Nolan Bushnell, Ray Kassar, Jack Tramiel and then Sam Tramiel, wasn't it?

[Ransom]

James Morgan was Ray Kassar's successor and Jack Tramiel's immediate predecessor as I recall.

 

I wonder how Atari would have done under Morgan, had he been given more than the nine months or so he had prior to it being sold to the Tramiels.

[+Vorticon]

It was Ray Kassar who made the towel designers comment (Ray had most recently worked at Burlington Industries, a textile company, before coming to Atari during the Warner era).

I stand corrected.

[orion1052003]

Got this from a source connected directly to the man himself. Not relaying it to be negative, but this is part of the truth, negative and positive.

 

".....but it's hard to feel any compassion for a man who literally ruined people's lives in his determination to win at any costs...he ruined the life of the President of Federated, Keith Powell, in unspeakable ways too numerous to mention, but including honoring a commitment to me...he fired 800 people in a day with no severance...people who had been with the company for ten or fifteen years...and then of course, it was the end of my production company...but that wasn't the end of the world...but he bankrupted a terrific company in less than 18 months...he was not a nice man...you have to feel sorry for him."

[sometimes99er]

He was, essentially, the anti-Steve Jobs: he wanted PCs to be very cheap and very utilitarian, and didn’t care in the slightest about elegance or technical sophistication. The C64 was cheap, utilitarian and inelegant — and for a good long while, that was a recipe for huge success. The rest of the industry was forced to slash prices to compete with Commodore, a trend that got PCs into lots of homes just when the idea of a PC in the home was getting exciting. (It also drove companies such as TI right out of the market.)

 

ref.:

http://techland.time...amiel-1928-2011

 

 

Interview from 0:16 ... (TI at 25:52)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk

 

Army ... General ... Admiral ... Opel Commodore ... !

 

Edited April 19, 2012 by sometimes99er

[Retro Rogue]

How many directors has Atari had ?! I think, Nolan Bushnell, Ray Kassar, Jack Tramiel and then Sam Tramiel, wasn't it?

 

Directors, none unless you mean director of the board. Presidents wise it seems you're mixing up different companies.

 

Atari Inc. (1972-1984) - Nolan/Ted, then just Nolan, then John Wakefileld, Joe Keenan, Ray Kassar, and Jim Morgan.

 

Atari Corporation (which was a completely different company) - Jack Tramiel CEO and his son Sam as President, then in 1988 Jack stepped down (remaining as chairman of the board) and Sam became both CEO and President.

 

I was always against him for what he did to ATARI, but I wish that he was still around. I read he was a holocaust survivor.

 

What did he do to "Atari"? Atari Inc. died, he picked up a piece of it and all of it's debt, wiped out the debt, re-introduced the 7800, the cost reduced 2600, an update to the 8-bit line, introduced the next generation ST series, etc. and set up the Atari brand to continue in the consumer market place for another good 12 years instead of dying on the spot.

[orion1052003]

Well, just one of the things is he shelved the 7800 for 2 years which practically killed it. It was made but not released due to his taking over the company. I read he wanted to focus on home computers and stop the video game division, basically the entire Atari. Nintendo asked to be a subsidiary of Atari to make the NES games through them, but Atari couldn't be bothered with home consoles anymore. And when the NES started kicking ass, he brought out the old, shelved 7800 made for an earlier when it was too old in a lame attempt to compete. 2 chances to dominate the video game market as before the fall wasted. Another is that he supposedly fired most of the original employees as soon as he took over. Anyone got any insight on that?

[sometimes99er]

Random Chance

 

Don't forget that it was Robert Russell and Bob Yannes who are the fathers of the C64. Jack Tramiel didn't understand technology but he was a businessman through and through (and a ruthless one at that who didn't think twice before screwing over suppliers, retailers and partners for a few dollars more; fired people on a nearly weekly basis and micromanaged everything except engineering, lost whole teams of gifted engineers because he did not give them the credit (and money) they deserved, etc.). By no means was Tramiel a saint or a visionary. He was at the right place at the right time and because he thought of the computer as a commodity when other companies were still oriented towards businesses he helped to bring about the home computer revolution. Commodore as a company was much more important than Apple in the days that home computing gained traction.

 

Peter Kirn

 

Yeah, absolutely. (Well, Jobs, too, had his share of management bungling ... though I think these folks all deserve some leeway, in that they were managing an industry that was growing beyond anyone's ability to understand, an industry they were essentially inventing -- which is why you do wind up with these odd characters running massively-exploding companies, when they would have been thrown out of a more traditional business.)

 

Tramiel makes Jobs look like a saint, yes ... and for all of Jobs' flaws with people management, he did have a genuine flair for promoting engineering as artists, in motivating them, even if sometimes he motivated them past the point of burnout. (In that, he's hardly alone.)

 

Now, that said, "being in the right place at the right time" tends to be the very definition of historical importance, which is why I think Tramiel belongs in the same category as some of these other people.

 

Of course, I'm with you -- to me, Yannes is the most interesting to me individually (along with Russell, for less-musical reasons), and perhaps a profile of his contributions is badly due.

 

ref.:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/04/jack-tramiels-commodore-64-atari-st-in-music-remembered-as-vision-lives-on-obituary-gallery

[Retro Rogue]

Well, just one of the things is he shelved the 7800 for 2 years which practically killed it. It was made but not released due to his taking over the company. I read he wanted to focus on home computers and stop the video game division, basically the entire Atari.

 

None of that is accurate.

 

The 7800 was not halted due to the product freeze, nor was the announcement about the non-launch anything to do with the computers or any lack of desire to do games. The 7800 was done via GCC and their direct contract with Warner Communications. Back when GCC was being sued by Atari over their Missile Command expansion kit, Warner forced Atari to drop the suit and then took on a settlement with GCC building up a working relationship that eventually included the 7800 (at that time code named MARIA). When the split happened, the GCC contract stayed with Warner. Jack wanted to release the 7800 in time for the Christmas season and also started up the cost reduced 2600 project (the JR.) again. He was relying on the massive back stock of video game and computer products to keep the new company afloat, as well as putting his own money in. He also had to take on all of Atari Inc.'s massive debt so Warner could get it off their books, with the promise he'd be able to make some of it up with the accounts recievable he took on as well. That never happend, as he couldn't get anyone to pay up in a crashed industry. So on top of alll that, Warner would only let him have the 7800 if he paid off all the development fees that were still owed to GCC. The three went back and forth in on again coffee again negotiations that lasted until May '85, which was the context of Many's claim. At that point Jack relinquished and paid GCC. He then negotiated and paid for the 10 launch titles.

 

After paying off the 10 launch games, he immediately began that August '85 looking for someone to come head up a proper consumer video games division and relaunch the 7800 as well as launch the Jr. He finally woo'd Mike Katz away from Epyx that late Sept. (the official press announcement went out early November). That October Mike immediately started up the 7800 project again and began looking for more titles to license and have developed, which is when they discovered that the formerly small player Nintendo had locked up all the licenses for the latest "hot" game titles. This was right when Nintendo was going too start their limited test marketing in New York, so they weren't on anyone's radar yet. That's what made Mike have to turn to his old computer software connections and license games formerly on home computers only. The 7800 was then officially re-introduced that January.

 

We also just got done interviewing several ex Consumer Division game programmers who were there during the split, and they verified they were asked to stay on by Jack as contractors to finish the games they were working. Honestly, if Jack didn't want the home video games he didn't have to take them, just like he didn't take the Coin-Op and telephone divisions.

 

Also, it's a misconception that he fired people or "bought Atari". He never fired the employees, Atari Corporation was a completely different company. It started as Tramel Technology Ltd., which he brought Atari Inc.'s Consumer Division under after he purchased it, and then renamed TTL in to Atari Corporation. He did not purchase the employees, just the facilities and IP. (Consumer Division was the actual name that the computer and console fell under). He had His son Leonard and another employee then conduct interviews with Atari Inc. employees to see who would be hired over to Atari Corporation or who would be staying with Atari Inc. and be getting a pink slip as it was shut down. The confusion arose because the whole thing was a hasty and sloppy process with no normal transition process to prepare anyone. Warner did the negotiation,and literally immediately handed Jack the proverbial keys. Even Atari Inc. CEO Jim Morgan knew nothing about it until he was called in to a board room to sign the papers that day.

 

Nintendo asked to be a subsidiary of Atari to make the NES games through them, but Atari couldn't be bothered with home consoles anymore.

 

Way off on that timeline. The Famicom/NES deal was in Spring and Summer of '83, long before Jack. It was with the Warner Owned Atari Inc.

 

And when the NES started kicking ass, he brought out the old, shelved 7800 made for an earlier when it was too old in a lame attempt to compete.

 

No, see above. And by the time it was officially re-released that January of '86, the NES was nowhere near kicking ass. It had only had a small (and not well received) test marketing in the New York area. The "kicking ass" didn't occur until after the national launch/ Christmas season was over at the end of '86.

 

2 chances to dominate the video game market as before the fall wasted.

 

No, as mentioned above.

 

Another is that he supposedly fired most of the original employees as soon as he took over. Anyone got any insight on that?

 

Also discussed above.

[Willsy]

Retro Rogue,

 

You seem to have the inside track on the goings on at Atari. You mentioned you just finished interviewing some programmers that worked at Atari. Are these interviews in connection with some forthcoming publication that you are putting together on Atari? Sorry if I'm covering old ground here - I'm just not familiar with your posts.

 

A book on Atari would be fantastic. I bought the Commodore "On the Edge" book when it first came out. I can honestly say it is the only book where I finished the last page and immediately went back to the first page to read it all again!

 

A fascinating era.

[jaybird3rd]

Are these interviews in connection with some forthcoming publication that you are putting together on Atari? Sorry if I'm covering old ground here - I'm just not familiar with your posts. A book on Atari would be fantastic.

Yes!

[Willsy]

Oh this is fantastic! Where's the pre-order page? I gotta get my name down!

[+Vorticon]

Retro Rogue,

 

 

A book on Atari would be fantastic. I bought the Commodore "On the Edge" book when it first came out. I can honestly say it is the only book where I finished the last page and immediately went back to the first page to read it all again!

 

A fascinating era.

 

I checked out that book on Amazon and it's selling around $100 new!!! Whoa... How much do you want for your copy

[Retro Rogue]

Retro Rogue,

 

 

A book on Atari would be fantastic. I bought the Commodore "On the Edge" book when it first came out. I can honestly say it is the only book where I finished the last page and immediately went back to the first page to read it all again!

 

A fascinating era.

 

I checked out that book on Amazon and it's selling around $100 new!!! Whoa... How much do you want for your copy

 

The current revision is only $18.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864966/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

 

[+Vorticon]

Retro Rogue,

 

 

A book on Atari would be fantastic. I bought the Commodore "On the Edge" book when it first came out. I can honestly say it is the only book where I finished the last page and immediately went back to the first page to read it all again!

 

A fascinating era.

 

I checked out that book on Amazon and it's selling around $100 new!!! Whoa... How much do you want for your copy

 

The current revision is only $18.

 

http://www.amazon.co...ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

The book I was looking at was titled

On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall. It's listing as starting at $100 new. Used copies are obviously cheaper. Willsy, was that the book you were referring to?