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From: gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!!
Message-ID: <1990Nov4.230955.4323@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 4 Nov 90 23:58:28 GMT
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Organization: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
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Why should you buy a Mac over a Next?  You should buy whichever one you prefer
and which suits your purposes better.

A couple of data points in favor of the Mac, though:

1) Color: yes, color is available on the next.  It is relatively expensive. 
And if you start with a B/W Nextstation, you're stuck with B/W.  And if you get
a color Nextstation, you're only going to get 12 bits of color (4 bits of
alpha).  On the Mac you can start with a B/W machine or an 8-bit color machine
and upgrade to 24 bit color later on.  A 24 bit color card for the Mac can be
purchased for as little as $600 or so.

2) If you're a developer, the market for your sofware is much smaller in the
Next world than the Mac world.  (Now, people might say that by this argument one
could develop for the IBM PC.  Well, for all the cool hardware in the Next, and
the super bang for the buck, a Next does not offer anything revolutionarily
better than a Mac, as a Mac does to a PC.  All you cubeheads can like it or
lump it, but it's just true: protected memory, UNIX, etc are just not as big a
jump as non-GUI to GUI). 

 This is supposedly the reason Bill Atkinson didn't join Next, even though he
was offered a position by Jobs: because he didn't want to write software for
the relatively smaller number of machines Next would sell.  Basically he wanted
to have his work have a bigger impact.  So if wider sales and/or distribution
of your software is of interest to you, a Mac would seem more reasonable.

3) Apple is more likely to be in business 5 years from now than Next.  Now
before the cubeheads start flaming, I didn't say Next won't be here.  But it
is considerably more likely that Next will go out of business than Apple. 
Neither may go out of business, but the computer industry is volatile.  This
may -- or may not -- be of concern to you.

So, you should really buy whatever you think is best.  Next does offer more
bang for the buck, hardware wise.  Apple offers a huge variety of sofware, most
of which is just as innovative as what is available on the Next.

Robert


============================================================================
= gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu * generic disclaimer: * "It's more fun to =
=            		         * all my opinions are *  compute"         =
=                                * mine                *  -Kraftwerk       =
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