Path: utzoo!hoptoad!uunet!husc6!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!e260-3b.berkeley.edu!128a-3aj
From: 128a-3aj@e260-3b.berkeley.edu (Jonathan Dubman)
Newsgroups: alt.next
Subject: Monitors: What Next?
Message-ID: <15572@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 17 Oct 88 04:03:36 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: 128a-3aj@e260-3b.berkeley.edu (Jonathan Dubman)
Distribution: alt
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

I would never want to get stuck with any one monitor.  If it is black and
white, maybe I will want color later.  If it has two bitplanes, maybe I want
8 or 24 later.  If is is 1120x832 resolution, maybe I want a greater
resolution, or perhaps I will settle for decreased resolution to get one of
the other qualities.

The point is, I hope NeXT has left hooks for all these.  I hope nothing is
hardwired, both in hardware and software.  That is obviously the way of the
future, so that's probably the way it is.  I am a little skeptical about the
color and grey-scale support in Display PostScript, especially color, since
regular PostScript leaves that out completely (correct me if I'm wrong.)

Ideally, in the future, one will be able to get the cube without the monitor
and one could then choose among competing monitors of varying price and
features.

One thing that REALLY bothers me, unless someone jusitifies it soon, is that
the mouse and keyboard plug into the monitor.  This is the source of my
worry about proprietary monitors.  What's the idea?  I don't accept the
argument that it saves a foot of thin cable.  Why don't run all the display
connections through the mouse, or have the ethernet connector below the
space bar?  It just doesn't make sense to me.  Someone please explain.
 
I have a feeling that there are many more "secrets" being kept in the form of
unannounced plans for the above.  We've heard tidbits about RISC,
multiprocessing, etc.  Ideally, one could predict at least some of the
future developments by thinking, "what should be done?"  I think factoring
computers into less-dependent components is something that should be done,
unless it's a wristwatch.

Also, knowing Jobs' strong opinions on the matter, I suppose the pixels are
square.  Damned square.

     -Jonathan Dubman