Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!apple!bionet!ig!relph
From: relph@presto.ig.com (John M. Relph)
Newsgroups: alt.next
Subject: Re: The NeXT Problem
Message-ID: <6809@ig.ig.com>
Date: 15 Oct 88 01:53:27 GMT
References: <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: relph@PRESTO.IG.COM.UUCP (John M. Relph)
Organization: IntelliGenetics Inc., Mtn. View, Ca.
Lines: 68

In article <26435@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> pchris@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU
(Chris Perleberg) writes:
>
>It seems that the NeXT machine may have a few problems:
>
>2) Non-Standard NuBus Implementation: A small company like NeXT can't hope to
>   create a competitive 3rd party board market for a non-standard bus.

True.  However, they have developed a NUBUS controller chip which they
will be selling to 3rd party developers for ~$25.  This implementation
of NUBUS is compatible with the standard in all but clock rate (25 MHz).

>3) Non-Standard Software: What software company would develop software for
>   the special features of just one computer (NeXT Step)?  How many copies of 
>   this software can they possibly sell?

NeXT Step is the development environment for the NeXT computer.  This
entire environment has been licensed to IBM.  IBM has also licensed
PostScript from Adobe.  They will probably use it on their machines
running AIX.  You should have seen this announcement by now.

>4) Slow Optical Drive: In the past, optical drives have been significantly
>   slower (seek times) than magnetic drives.  What is the advantage of the
>   optical drive?  Cost must be less than that of the larger 330Mbyte $2K
>   magnetic drive.  But NeXT will be hurt once benchmarks come out for its
>   i/o performance (using the optical drive).

>4) Give users the option of scrapping the optical drive and replacing it with
>   the 330 Mbyte winchester.

Unfortunately, you can't just eject a Winchester and pop it in your
pocket.  The optical disk is the size of a CD, so you can pocket-
switch to another machine or mail it very easily.  That is the major
advantage to an optical disk.  You can probably fit most of your stuff
on one disk and have it all with you whereever you go, on whatever
NeXT machine you're using.

It's also cheaper to distribute software on a $50 optical disk than a
Winchester.

>5) Software Not Ready: The 9 month delay (optimistically) until solid software
>   exists could kill NeXT, as Sun & Apple prepare competitive systems.  Sun
>   will probably keep to open systems and set some new standards, while Apple
>   will probably stay proprietary.

Existing 4.3 BSD applications should work almost immediately on the
NeXT machine, with little or no modifications.  The folks who did the
port of WriteNow say that a well-designed Mac application should
probably port over quite easily.

>6) Sun (I have heard) has sold 15,000 workstations to universitys.  How many
>   can NeXT expect to sell with its slow processor, non-standard bus/software, 
>   slow drive, and late software?

Bad analysis.  Consider how many of those 15,000 workstations are
actually running the 68030 and below.  Consider how few of those
15,000 workstations run faster than the NeXT machines.  Consider also
the price/speed price difference between the NeXT machines and the
fast Suns.  Our fast Suns don't even have displays; they are being
used as compute servers running jobs on ttys.

Also, my Sun 3/50 looks like shit compared to the NeXT.

	-- John
----
John M. Relph
IntelliGenetics, Inc.
Internet:  relph@presto.ig.com