Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ames!eos!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!declan From: declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: MacWeek Article Revisited Keywords: MacWeek Color Message-ID: <1990Jul9.033654.24628@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 9 Jul 90 03:36:54 GMT Sender: declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh) Organization: AIR, Stanford University Lines: 34 MacWeek's Mac the Knife column has always shown little restraint; it's no suprise to see that sort of NeXT-bashing taking place. Apple is, as usual, above most criticisms, and NeXT is portrayed as an evil upstart that can't possibly succeed. Of course, the NeXT community may feel similarly about the Macintosh, but we've got a better product, no? $-) Right now, NeXT is in the peculiar position of having a superior interface and development environment, operating system, and overall design (in my opinion), but few third-party products and only one computer model to choose from. Also, NeXTs don't seem to be selling that well in the general marketplace - someone posted an ancedote a few days ago about two-digit sales quotas at Businessland stores - and colleges seem to be rushing to buy color SPARCstations... One lab here at Stanford, for instance, has 35 color SPARCstations and only six NeXTs. But, fortunately, that will (should?) all change later this year... Robert Lin posted that NeXT's announcement may include: >- System 2.0, with high performance file system and task scheduler > algorithm thoroughly revised. You'd be surprised how much performance > is lost to poorly optimized schedulers. >- New Canon 32 ms, 512 M floptical to fix persistent complaints. >- The 68040, of course, at 25 Mhz and maybe 33 model, depending on > Motorola's production capability. >- Low prices. Major price cuts can be achieved while still preserving > profit margin because one very expensive cost, our "free" NeXT > software, has been amortized and paid for by us pioneers. >- A show of strength from major software vendors, with applications > available for immediate delivery, to once and for all silence > critics of the "no apps" variety. Then, the NeXT community will have a machine that can do what it originally promised to. There are a few interesting upgrade problems that will arise, though... Will NeXT offer a Greyscale -> Color upgrade, and if so, how will they handle them? Personally, I don't want to have to trade in MY greyscale monitor for a color one - I want BOTH on my desktop. Might the color upgrade entail a separate board? It would be nice (although perhaps not feasible) to fit all the support chips on the main processor board. And how will NeXT handle the problem of TWO monitors attached to one cube - at the moment, the power supply is built to work with only one monitor; the second one might have to plug into an AC outlet. Of course, this unbridled speculation IS very premature... One thing that will probably come about, though, is that Sun and others will have a hard time competing against the kind of intrinsic value offered by a low-priced color '040-based NeXT. Just about everything a Sun comes with can be found on a NeXT, and the converse isn't true: A NeXT comes with bundled NextStep applications, a DSP, cheap optical drives, a low-cost 400 dpi printer, and so on... -Declan ------------------------------------------------- Olympic Technologies : Registered NeXT Developers NeXT Mail:declan@portia.stanford.edu -------------------------------------------------