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From: jad@lanl.gov (John De Vries)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: A small gripe
Message-ID: <5673@lanl.gov>
Date: 12 Nov 90 05:54:38 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 44


I just got back from the NeXT Registered Developer's Camp (which, once
again I'll say was worth the money).  I did see something there that
rather disturbed me, and that was a videotape of Steve Job's
performance at Davies (sp?) Hall in San Francisco.

Specifically, Steve was playing around with Interface Builder and
showed how typically easy it was to hack out a useful interface in
very little time.

However, he was using a particular bunch of objects -- namely the
database object -- to show things off.  We've got a fanatic around
here that has been going around saying "hay, just wait -- they've got
this database object that'll make things really neat."

Well, I asked a number of folx at camp (they gave the students
wonderful access to the worker-bees) about these objects.  Like, I
want them NOW (as did a largish banking/investment firm), and seeing
Jobs performance, one might think he wasn't touting vaporware.

Well, he was, unfortunately.  They are indeed working on these
objects, but they are not coming out in 2.0 (which is not released as
of this writing -- they are using release Fuschia, level T in-house).
Supposedly they will be a part of version 3.0, but I got the
impression NOT to expect that Real Soon Now (more like a year from
now).  These words were from "Dr. Mach" and Kate Smith...

Anyhow, this is only a small gripe.  Jobs was selling big with
something he could not at that time deliver.  Just the same, the
concept is valid and will be no doubt incredibly useful when it gets
to The Rest Of Us.  On the other hand -- if you've got some ideas
about this field, this would be the time to hit NeXT up with ideas.

Oh yeah -- it was interesting to hear the NeXT training folx calling
1.0 the "version without features".  I've got to admit that 2.0 is a
lot more fun to work with.  Also, we had a '040 running the
fileserver, so although they aren't shipping until the date you've no
doubt already read about in this group, they are coming along. "Sneaking"
on to the '040 to do my compiles and loads <grin> sort of made things
a little bit faster for me... 


John deVries
jad@lanl.gov