Commodore: A Company on the Edge

Commodore: A Company on the Edge 2nd edition by Brian Bagnall

How would the story of Commodore be told if it had survived as a computer powerhouse until modern times? The PET was one of most important early computers. It had a strong place in the education market. The Vic-20 was the first "computer for the masses", selling over a million copied. The Commodore 64 was the best selling computer of all time. However, this often gets ignored or placed as a small footnote in computer history. The Apple II is often seen as one of the first "home computers" in Apple revisionist history. The Apple II series was produced over almost 2 decades. However, even added together, they were outsold by Commodore 64s. They were also more an amalgam of available components, while the commodore systems had more chipset innovation.

Commodore was led by Jack Tramiel. He could be just as demanding as as Steve Jobs, but lacked the cultural appeal. Tramiel also had Irving Gould as a playboy chairman getting in the way. It feels amazing that Commodore was able to accomplish what it did. The company was notoriously cheap. Tramiel would launch lawsuits against people that left. He even rescinded employee stock plans after they became "too generous".  There were great people that left because of this. Tramiel also had a hardware focus due to his calculator background. Software and compatibility were not seriously considered. 

Commodore had purchased a chip company (MOS) and designed chips in house. Chuck Peddle was the visionary behind the entry into computing. He wanted to build  a personal computer. At one point Commodore even considered buying Apple, but decided it was too expensive. (Would Apple just have faded away if that happened?) Apple was already using a MOS chip. Commodore came out with the PET and licensed Microsoft Basic for it. Could Commodore have single-handedly changed the fate of two of the big companies of today?

In the quest for cheap computers, Commodore rushed to production and forsook backwards compatibility. There was a chip design produced to enable fast 1541 disk drives on the commodore 64. However, somebody cut off some parts of the design, and thus left the world with slow disk drives. The Commodore 64 also used an older version of basic, making programming quite kludgey (with a lot of pokes). Commodore would also demo many models, and only produce the ones that looked most successful.

Commodore eventually fell apart after Tramiel was "ushered out". Commodore lost some of the decisiveness after that. Could Commodore have survived until today with different leadership?