Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucla-cs!ucla-ma!news
From: barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: NeXT in June issue of BYTE
Message-ID: <1991May27.033207.28372@math.ucla.edu>
Date: 27 May 91 03:32:07 GMT
Sender: news@math.ucla.edu
Organization: UCLA Dept. of Math, UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
Lines: 63


NeXT makes a big appearance in the latest (June 1991) BYTE 
magazine.

First, they have a nice pic of Steve Jobs in the "News"
column, announcing the receent good sales figures.

Then, they have a big article comparing the major GUI's,
in which NeXTStep is presented quite favorably (compared
to Windows, Mac, OS/2, GeoWorks, Amiga, Motif and Open Look).
Of course, these GUI's are very different, and the purpose of
the article is to informally compare them on a variety of aspects
(user issues, networkability,
developer issues, apps available, resource requirements, etc).
The author doesn't go so far as to pick a ``winner'', but
its clear that, other issues aside, he feels NeXTStep is the
superior GUI (which would be difficult not to conclude, given
all the industry awards its won, compared to none for the others).
His recommendation is that those not already
tied to a machine, or who want a GUI for unix, seriously
check out NeXT. The only downside mentioned for NeXTStep (aside from
it running only on NeXT and IBM RS/6000) is the lack of apps---but
the author correctly points out that the Apps that do exist 
are all true NeXTStep apps (making full use of the NeXTStep 
toolkits), unlike many of the Apps for Motif, Open Look,etc.

Finally, there is the long awaited BYTE review of NeXTStation,
which is very positive. It blows away 386 and 486 boxes
on BYTE's benchmarks, as well as the Mac fx and Sun IPC. The author 
doesn't even bother to make a detailed price comparison to 
other comparable machines, becasue he does some
rough calculations that show similarly functional Mac, PC, or Sparc
would cost at least twice as much (list prices). The overall tone
of the article is that NeXT has made up for the sins of
the original cube, and that there is no comparable 
buy in the high end PC or low end workstation market.

So, finally NeXT gets some good PR from BYTE
(which normally writes as if an "ALR FlexCache 486" PC clone were the 
state of the art in computers)---that should make a bit of bump
in their already healthy sales figures.

PS: The lead story in the News column is on the ACE Consortium,
which consists of Microsoft, a bunch of PC cloners, and DEC,
and whose stated goal is to define an Industry Standard Workstation,
in order to ease future networking and software engineeering.
Since MicroSoft is one of the leaders, its no surprise that 
the standard CPUs have been chosen as Intel 386/486/...(hey, quit 
laughing :-) and MIPS 64 bit RISC chips (a thankful DEC influence).
Their standard OS's include SCO UNIX, and, I think, Sys V (?).
But, on to the punchline: one of the key networking 
issues they want to address is easy networking of their workstations
with machines running DOS, Windows and OS/2! (ha, ha, ha, .... :-)

I think I once had a nightmare about such a network :-)

O' Brave New Workstation! :-)

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)   barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (NeXTMail)