Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!apple!bionet!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!knrgroup From: knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!! Message-ID: <1990Nov7.013718.28864@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 7 Nov 90 01:37:18 GMT References: <1990Nov6.222023.8572@midway.uchicago.edu> Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 82 gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >How easy is it to add an extra hard disk to a NeXT? Depends on the manufacturer. If you're adding a NeXT hard disk it's trivial. If you're adding a third-party drive, you may have to find or write the disktab entry for the drive. If you listen to the discussion in the NeXT news group, you may get the impression that it is complicated to add on to a NeXT. The thing is that the NeXT is an open Unix box that lets you add peripherals not specifically designed for the NeXT. So you'll see a lot of people adding all sorts of nice but nonstandard things to a NeXT: tape drives, gigabyte hard disks meant for minicomputers, etc. If you're doing that sort of thing, you do have to be familiar with Unix system administration. However, this situation is much better than the situation with the Mac, on which you cannot use hard drives at all if they were designed specifically for Mac compatibility. And hard drives for the Mac are outrageously expensive to boot. >How about copying from one floptical to another...Is it just of matter >of inserting them and click-n-drag? Yes. In general, all devices mounted on a NeXT show up as directories which you can drag around, copy from, delete, etc. And "mounting" a floptical merely means inserting a floptical into the drive. >...could you say that it [the NeXT] was a good attempt at improving the >Mac interface that just didn't succeed, that was far too baroque. The NeXT succeeded in improving the Mac interface in spades. It IS an easier and more enjoyable interface to use. This is coming from a person who has owned a Mac for four years and loved the Mac's interface. The NeXT's interface is just better. As for being "baroque," the NeXT IS easier on the eye. And everybody (Microsoft, OSF/Motif, OpenLook, and even Apple) is trying to emulate the look of the NeXT. Notice the sudden proliferation of 3-D buttons and scrollers. >..if you're referring to some of the main creators of the Mac software >...they included folk like Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. They had -- >as far as I know -- nothing to do with NeXT. As detailed in West of Eden, Steve Jobs took 5 key people from Apple with him, including several that worked on the Mac. One was Bud Tribble, who designed NeXTStep. The Macintosh interface, by the way, is based on the stuff Steve Jobs saw at Xerox PARC. Several Xerox PARC engineers are now working at NeXT. >I know of little on the Next _with the exception of Improv_that_"outclasses" >_their Mac counterparts. I'm sure that such exists, just as the inverse >must also surely exist. You know very little about NeXT software then. Program by program, almost every NeXT application available today is as easy to use or easier to use than an equivalent Mac application. By and large, NeXT programs are also more powerful (this is what you can do with a minimal configuration of 8 MB RAM, virtual memory, multitasking, and lots of hard disk space). >...they can argue that it's a better business machine than the Mac... Except for quantity of already available software, the NeXT and the Mac really don't compare as business machines. The Mac is too limited in hardware to do the job in terms of database and networking in a large heterogeneous business environment. >...to claim that the Next is a better HOME machine than the Mac for the >average user is ludicrous!!! The only thing holding NeXT back in this arena is the starting price. However, for a home user with $3000-$5000 to spend, you can't beat a NeXTStation. I'm buying a NeXTStation for home use. As I've said before, the NeXT is as easy to use as a Mac if not easier if you are doing things that the average home user would do. However, if you want to get real fancy, you can do that too with a NeXT with a little investment in learning Unix. The average user doesn't even need to know how to spell Unix in order to get a lot out of the NeXT. I hear Steve Jobs cringes when people say "Unix box" around him. The Unix is there and anyone can use it, but it is virtually invisible to the average user of the NeXT.