[iyonix-support] Re: iyonix 2 or not

In article <48E008B9.90507@xxxxxxxxxx>, John Ballance <jwb@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Hi

> Having failed to get logged into drobe to respond to something there I
> thought I'd make a couple of comments here.

It would seem that the state of Drobe matches the perceived state of the
RISC OS marketplace.  :-(
I'm glad you didn't post there: it's unfortunately a bit stale.

> Iyonix 2: This would have been rather a nice machine.. dual core cpu
> etc ..

Triple? Quad? Octo? Dual Core is very <2008. ;-)
Like the Acorn leap from 8 bit to 32 bit (leapfrogging the 16 bit wintel
camp) I was hoping that someone@iyonix would be disassembling their PS3
at least and missing out at least one generation of monolithic processors.

> absorbed many months of my design time. Then came the crunch
> question.. could we make it at a price people would pay, and would
> enough ACTUALLY pay that price.. rumours have suggested a build cost to
> a first batch of 10 to 30 machines of between 50 and 100k .. probably
> not unreasonable at commercial rates, considering the CPU had just
> under 1500 connections on it and itself would have cost over £100!..
> that would mean that sales of several hundred units would be needed at
> similar costs to the current (almost) standard iyonix.

Wow. Doesn't that underline the need for mass-market hardware in order to
keep the costs down? Is it about time RISC OS was running natively on an
off-the-shelf intel/amd/gaming/other box? For its abilities, a native
RISC OS box is beginning to look expensive and, er, lacks multi-media
features in particular and most software in general.

> Would several hundred of you or others actually commit to this.. or
> would we be left thoroughly out of pocket?

Good question. What's the full spec? It could be great but be bright
yellow, look like a pee sea and be named after a sit-com character. This
could put some buyers off.  :-o

> To put it bluntly, we could not make the sums add up! - however hard we
> tried.

This is an impossible task. Forecasting sales for a new product is most
accurately judged by wetting an index finger and sticking it in the air.
Asking a subset of your existing customer base gives no indication of
whether you will attract new customers or those who've drifted away to
platforms anew.

Business is about risk. You have decided not to take that risk. Fair
enough.

> For the future, once the remaining stock of machines is exhausted (<10
> first come first served) iyonix will continue to trade, as reported, in
> spares and accessories.

Some comfort there, then.

Thanks always for all your hard and dedicated work.

[Snip]

-- 
Tim Hill,

www.timil.com

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