Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!magill From: magill@operations.upenn.edu (PENNnet Oper/Planning) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NeXT rumors Message-ID: Date: 20 Aug 89 14:46:29 GMT References: <5792@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Organization: DCCS, University of Pennsylvania Lines: 91 > current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying a current > generation...> > > It's the price you pay to be a pioneer. Look at the poor boobs who bought > Lisa's, only to face expensive (and less than completely compatible) > upgrades to Mac XLs, and the current groaning about Mac II upgrades. > Sometimes it backfires, as with the current hordes of MeSs-DOS users who > "just say, 'No!'" to OS-2. > But then again, if people weren't willing to pioneer we would: 1- Not even have the good old MITS-ALTAIR (you all do remember that don't you - the first "real" PC. 2- All be running OS - as in OS/360 - or if you want to get even more rediculous - Autocoder - or if you want to go back to days when STARWARS was written on the PDP-1 or when dear sweet old "unix" was written... machine code assembly. 3- Not have the "unix" that most folks call "unix". BSD doesn't bare much similarity to Unix(tm) (as in SystemV), not to mention MACH. > It would certainly be nice if NeXT were to break with the tradition of > screwing early adopters, but I'm not holding my breath. When you're > looking at exponential growth, it's easy to write off the good will of > your early customers. (On the other hand, since they're such a small > lot, it doesn't cost much to keep them on your side, either!) > Don't forget that the "exponential growth" referred to here has absolutely nothing to do with NeXT - it is an INDUSTRY wide phenomon. I'm one year older than the entire computer industry! (Using 1946 as ENIAC's birthdate) NeXT is "revolutionary" exactly because Apple, IBM, and (what's left of) the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honneywell) took a lesson from the introduction of System 360 which obsoleted an entire generation of hardware AND software OVERNIGHT. The industry reaction was mildly histerical. Nobody wants to replace anthing they spent money for. All this talk about "competition" and "technological superiority",etc is so much hogwash - people (individual and companies/instutions alike) refuse to spend money just to "stay current" - ever had to fight with management for "software maintenance contracts", ever tried to convince management to "upgrade" to a new system. NeXT's introduction into the marketplace was incredibly traumatic - look at the reactions from DEC or SUN or Apple. Oh, they all swore on a stack of bibles that they were "inovating" and not "reacting", but the simple fact of the matter is, the availability of NeXT called their hands. In poker terms, they had to "put up or shut up". NeXT very effectively has raised the stakes in the workstation game. Just look at DEC's decision to drop "Berkley mail" as their supported mail processor in Ultrix 3.1. They have replaced "mail" with "mh". Now if you've ever used mh, you either love it or hate it, but it replaced one program with many commands with many programs containing one command each. This is an incredible pain in the butt for the async "line at a time" user. But DEC also included X-mh - NOW, that's a horse of adifferent color, especially on a 19 inch mnitor. With buttons to click on via mouse, mh is a pretty nice mail handeler! Put another way, DEC's decision to switch MUA's was a purely marketing decision - they want to sell workstations. So they release software that "works" for the async user, but "shines" in the workstation environment. I happen to be a Genealogical hacker (soc.roots) as well as a computer professional, and it pains me to see all of the "faith and trust" being placed in ANY computer system existant today when viewed in the light of Genealogy - our source documents are typically 100+ years old!!! How many of you sitll have your data still stored on 8 inch floppies? But there are many folks out their extoling the virtues of this CPM system or that one for computerizing their geneaological record keeping chores - because "the prices of the computers finally became cheap enough to be affordable for the hobbiest!" Hell, I've got "stainless-steel" tapes in my office from the UNIVAC I. They make nice memorabeila, but there is not a machine around that can read their data today. > I'm still trying to get my group a single NeXT machine, simply as an > example of some interesting new technology, but I wouldn't spend my > personal dollars on one, nor would I buy one each for our whole group, > until the future becomes more clear. Probably the attitude of many of us. If your "environment" happens to be "grant based" such an attitude is easy to support. But then again, what about Apollo? They "were" proven technology until bought up by HP. Today, I would counsel anybody considering Apollo the same way. Risk is the name of the game. It's no different in Computers than in Investing. If you can't sleep at night because of the decision you made - then you took on too much risk. -- William H. Magill Manager, PENNnet Operations Planning Data Communications and Computing Services (DCCS) University of Pennsylvania Internet: magill@dccs.upenn.edu magill@eniac.seas.upenn.edu magill@upenn.edu