The bag does not “dangle from the neck”. It rests on one’s shoulder – this is a big and key difference.

The “gimmicky” feature is absolutely the number one reason why people are buying the bag.
You make it sound like it is a hassle to use, which it is not. It takes certain practice, and the length of the strap has to be adjusted correctly. Then the whole “process” takes two seconds. We are regularly gathering feedback from our customers. Everyone says how EASY it is to use the bag. It takes certain practice, and the length of the strap has to be adjusted correctly.

The backpack feature is not mentioned in the review, and it is a big selling point.

Regarding bike messengers: I cannot see why they would use the bag as a desktop (they deliver packages), but they could, however, use it in a backpack fashion. That said, the bag is probably too small for a bike messenger.

Thank you for reading this.

My humble apology for missing that connection. In hindsight, I see that you are one of the integral players in the Atari Corporation and in the book. The book was filled with so many names of individuals, besides you, that I did not recognize, probably because my personal Atari connection was more with the computer side, primarily after the Tramiel’s purchased the company. I did read the entire book and look forward to their next book covering the Tramiel years. I attempted to point out in the second to last paragraph of my review that it is a long read, somewhat complicated by so many individual names and technical points and the jumping around in chronology. None the less, I did enjoy the book and again apologizes for missing you and the MyMac connection.

Also, the book covers the years mostly BEFORE the Atari computers, which is why there was not much coverage of that. The authors hope to do a second book of the later years some time later.

Sorry, as someone who was involved in the making of this book (including donating to it on Kickstarter), access to a lot of people, lending of artifacts, etc, etc, I almost question if you actually read most of it.

The reason the snap does indeed look somewhat generic (we reluctantly admit) is because this type of a snap-bolt functionally works best. There are some variations of this snap on the market, but they are very similar. When developing the case, we looked at about a dozen of different designs. This type won: it is light, the trigger is easy to pull with a thumb, the hook is easy to insert and take out from the grommet, and the strap slides easily through the loop, which is critical. The snap is hand polished (which is not cheap) and electroplated.

Regarding the strap width. I personally think the ideal width would be an 1 1/4″. The problem was we could not source the cam plastic buckle of that size. Making a new mold was prohibitively expensive and very time consuming. Again, functionally the strap works fine, and everyone we asked said 1″ strap was fine. But I think a slightly wider strap would look a bit better. May be

We had a great opportunity to gather customers’ feedback at the MacWorld Expo in San Fran earlier this year. And we did. We asked questions about the strap width, hardware, leather quality, stitching, lining, fit, etc. People liked our products; as a matter of fact, we got many compliments on quality, and we did not hear any negative comments. However, some said they wanted different colors.

Rich

All the best,
David

I’ve replied to you offline