Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!esunix!bambam!bpendlet From: bpendlet@bambam.UUCP (Bob Pendleton) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: RE: Educomputing 2000 Message-ID: <369@bambam.UUCP> Date: 10 Jan 90 22:46:35 GMT References: <840@tahoma.UUCP> Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, Utah Lines: 88 > This is a call for SPECULATION regarding the grade school/high > school educational computing environment of the year 2000. The driving force in the low end of the computer industry is the commodity commputer. A long time ago there were lots of different companies making automobiles. They were all different. Now days there are still lots of companies making cars, But about the only differences you can name are cost, durability, and performance. Computers are going the same way. In less than ten years I expect to see computers manufactured by many companies that can only be told apart by reading the name plate on the front. You will pay for the amount of storage, the performance, and the communications bandwidth that you want. You'll buy a machine based on company reputation, service, price, special features ... What do I expect these machines to be like? Only hardcore computer jocks will care about what CPU is in the system because ANSI C or maybe C++ will be accepted as the universal assembly language. Applications will be sold in an ISO standard machine independent form. Each machine will have a comverter that converts from the machine independent form to a form suitable to the CPU. The OS kernal will be POSIX compliant. Windowing, interactive input, video, graphics (including 3d graphics), and sound output will be done through a highly extended version of X. The GUI will probably be based on Motif. Networking will be based on ISO communications standards. Why will this happen? Because the national governments are tired of spending lots of money and getting nothing. This is a feeling shared by computer users world wide but the governments have the power to force this shape on the computer industry. By forcing conformance to a set of standards you force a situation in which software you buy today will run on computers you buy tomorrow. And computers you own will usually run software you buy tomorrow. The computer companies have done everything they could to avoid face to face competition. But the situation in the IBM PC clone market graphically demonstrated the value of direct competition in the computer industry. The users won big. In last sundays want adds I saw NEW 10 Mhz xt clones with 640K, dual floppies, hercules compatible monochrome graphics, mointor, all the standard interface being offered for less than the price of an Apple IIc advertised in the business section. Even less than some people wanted for USED Apple IIs. Competition helps the consumer and the national goverments are HUGE consumers of computers. Companies that don't follow this trend will die. Computers that don't have enough power to follow the trend will soon be obsolete. Anything with less than a 32 bit data path and 24 bits of address is already obsolete. Though there are so many of them that you'll be able to buy software for them for many years. Looking down the road we see 16 megabit DRAMs coming on the market around '92 or '93 and 64 megabit parts sometime between '94 and '96. 32 bit RISK processors just keep getting faster. And so does the 68000 family and the 80X86 family. Think about it, a machine the pysical size of a Commodore 64, or an Apple IIc, designed to enter the market in '95 could easily have a >20 mips 32 or 64 bit processor and 64 MegaBYTES of internal ram. Such machines can run the kind of software interface I'm talking about and give very good performance. It looks to me that Apples move toward the Mac running AU/X is a smart response to the writing on the wall. By 2000 the schools will be using much the same technology that business and government will have been using for the last 5 years. In my not so humble opinion Bob P. -- Bob Pendleton, speaking only for myself. UUCP Address: decwrl!esunix!bpendlet or utah-cs!esunix!bpendlet X: Tools, not rules.