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From: 39clocks@violet.berkeley.edu (Peter Marinac;;;4159743128;KL75)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: CD-ROM Drives
Summary: Just say no!
Keywords: cd-rom
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.050537.14437@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 24 Jun 91 05:05:37 GMT
References: <1991Jun22.084101.4019@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> <1991Jun22.144502.17475@umbc3.umbc.edu> <1991Jun23.105112.23110@gmuvax2.gmu.edu>
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In article <1991Jun23.105112.23110@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) writes:
>I am saying that OD are getting cheaper, smaller(3.5in drives), & faster 
>& most of all its writable ! I see CD-ROM as a interim solution until 
>OD technology matures. 
Good point!
>I'd much rather see NeXT devote its energies to bringing us the next 
>generation Read Write Optical Disk Drive.
Agreed, as long as it has the potential to become a storage media for other
forms of data.  I don't know about you guys but the numbers and types of
storage media out there are about enought to drive a person bonkers.  Take
the average person who has been buying into PCs and/or workstations over the
past few years.  My case for example.  I've got data and programs on 5-1/4"
floppies, 5-1/4" high density, 3-1/2" single and double sided, and 3-1/2"
high density floppies (No EDs yet!), CD-ROM (in whatever format a Mac
recognizes), and magneto-optical disks.
Switch to music; forgetting about vinyl for the sake of this argument, I've
got cassettes, CDs, 15ips reels and HiFi VHS.  I wouldn't mind a DAT but
they don't seem to be selling to well.
Switch to video; damn good that I didn't buy into Beta. I've got VHS.  But
if I wanted a cam corder I would probably have to buy 8mm.  If I was a stickler
for quality I would probably pick up a laser disc player. 
                
Now when I saw Steve Jobs give his intro to the cube I remember him saying
about the MO disk that a person could carry his whole world around with him
on one of these disks, and at the time it really didn't seem all that far
fetched.  Here was music, digitized at CD resolutions, or synthesized, and
data and programs, all in a convenient package.

You can argue that any of the above media, hell, even an eight track tape, 
is capable of doing the above.  But it has a big problem...speed.  CD-ROMs
have the same problem.  CD-ROMs are slow because of "standards" that limit
the speed at which they can be spun, and hence limit maximum transfer rates.
Unless the standards are revised when read/write CDs are made available, their
usefullness will remain limited to music.  Apple has tried, rather unsuccess-
fully outside of the developer community, to make CD-ROMs a big thing.

Some day I want to be able to go to sleep having given my computer instructions
to search network databases for information on "spontaneous predicate oriented
programming", and record about a 1/2 hours worth of a late nite radio show.
Take the media out in the morning and pop it into my car unit for the drive
into work.  Check out the tunes from the late-nite radio program.  Then have
the text-to-speech converter read me what the computer found last night.
Dictate back to it a few of my thoughts.  Get to work and pop the media into
a computer running an entirely different operating system than my home
computer, and whip up a presentation for my 11 o'clock meeting with my boss.
Now if the cam-corder utilized the same media I would really be set!

                                         Peter Marinac