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From: knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!!
Message-ID: <1990Nov10.020441.5331@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 10 Nov 90 02:04:41 GMT
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Here we go again.  We're back to misconception #1 about the NeXT:  the NeXT
is a typical Unix box.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It is not
like the Sun or any other Unix box, because the NeXT HIDES Unix from the
user.  

Norm Goodger writes,
>Raymond, wake up and smell the coffee, come out from behind the workstation
>and notice that there are people around you that are not going to comprehend
>using Unix.

True.  But that's why the NeXT is so great.  You would swear that it was a
Mac with a larger screen and nicer looking interface.  To browse through
files, you can use a window that strongly resembles a Mac desktop, or you
can use a file directory that is kind of the way you do things on PCs.

The point I've made over and over again is that the NeXT allows you to
TOTALLY ignore Unix if you want to.  Sit a Unix expert in front of a NeXT
and he/she would be hard pressed to figure out Unix was running under
NeXTStep.  

Think of it this way.  Do you have to know low level Mac OS to use a Mac?
Absolutely no.  Unix on a NeXT is like the Mac OS on a Mac.  It is in the
background and away from the sight of the user.  The nice thing about the
NeXT though is that, if you WANT to, you can access Unix through a nice
shell and use it.  

>...just the fact that a NeXT owner will "need" to know Unix prevents
>a large number of people from ever thinking about getting the machine

A NeXT owner will NOT "need" to know Unix.  However, perhaps because people
have the misconception that the NeXT is like a Sun or some other Unix
workstation, they may not give the NeXT a fair shake.

It is now very clear to me why NeXT does not attend many Unix expos.  NeXT
has been unfairly branded as a Unix box by many people, and NeXT is trying
to combat this gross misperception.  

Think hard about this:  NeXTStep (NeXT's user environment) does not have to
run on top of Unix.  It already runs on top of OS/2.  It could conceivably
run on top of the Mac OS.