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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Subject: Re: Will NeXT survive? Grow with the times?
In-Reply-To: sjc@borland.com's message of Sat, 4 May 1991 01:14:56 GMT
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References: <1991Apr29.144421.19819@oakhill.sps.mot.com> <1991May1.160128.1367@sono.uucp>
	<8283@uceng.UC.EDU> <1991May4.011456.25729@borland.com>
Date: Sat, 4 May 91 12:10:30 GMT
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In article <1991May4.011456.25729@borland.com> sjc@borland.com (Steve Correll) writes:

   Two serious observations:

   1. Many NeXT users have said that the performance of the 68K is the main thing
     standing between them and nirvana.

The 68040 NeXT comes pretty close.  The machines with only 8MB of RAM
can drive you crazy when are running large programs, but $400 more
does solve that problem.  With the educational prices running around
$3300, there isn't anything better(IMHO).  As well as having nice
system software, the NeXT still gives a very competitive SPEC/$.

   2. It is an illusion that the 80x86 PC world has fewer compatibility problems
     than the RISC world. 80x86 PC software vendors expend enormous effort to
     preserve this illusion for the benefit of their users: they support multiple
     graphics options, multiple mice, 80386 real-versus-protected mode, various
     add-on memory managers, Microsoft Windows versus straight DOS versus OS/2
     versus 32-bit DPMI, various 80x86 subroutine calling conventions, tiny
     versus small versus huge memory models (and on and on). Graphics, network,
     and mouse differences are often exposed to the application program rather
     than being hidden behind an operating system. QA compatibility testing is a
     big expense in the PC software world.

Don't worry, Microsoft has it all figured out.  OS/2 NT will be binary
compatible with everything :-).  Actually, I hope IBM starts giving
OS/2 2.0 away to straigten out this mess.

-Mike