Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wucs1!conrad
From: conrad@wucs1.wustl.edu (H. Conrad Cunningham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT not revolutionary enough?
Message-ID: <482@wucs1.wustl.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 88 17:49:53 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <354@auspex.UUCP>
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 42

In article <354@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>This sounds like one of those annoying oracular pronouncements - often
>made, to use Dorothy Parker's line, "without fear and without research" -
>that computer types are occasionally prone to.
	I probably over-dramatized a portion of a hallway conversation.
Like many such discussions the content is as much ideological as
technical. :-) I will try to respond to a few of the points.  By the
way, I tended to take the side in the discussion that said the UNIX
base was a good, pragmatic choice.  I am not a visual programming
advocate (nor a Mac user), but I thought these ideas were worthy of
discussion. 

>1) What does he mean by "a text-oriented UNIX base"?  What is the "UNIX
>   base"?
	NeXT uses Mach; Mach is essentially UNIX.  UNIX's primary view
of the world is one-dimensional:  files as streams of bytes (mostly
textual) and textual user interfaces (as text files or user
interactions).  The simplicity and portability of this view is one of
the reasons for UNIX's success.  (Along with the fact that AT&T made
the sources available to universities and research institutions very
cheaply--at least in the early days.)  UNIX is good example of 1970's
technology.

>2) How does he consider these notions "incompatible"?  I had the
>   impression that the Mac's moral equivalent of the UNIX OS intrinsics

	Trying to build systems which integrate two- (or three-) dimensional
and/or multisensory (e.g., sound as well as sight) concepts on top of
an inherently one-dimensional, textual environment probably result in a
non-standard kludge.  For consistency, the basic operating environment
should be built with such concepts assumed as basic elements. 

     The Lisa/Mac was somewhat revolutionary for the mid-1980's.  Although
not all aspects were revolutionary or even "state of the art", it was
the first system to bring a visual (iconic, nontextual) user interface
into wide usage--into a personal computer class machine.  The usage
style of computers has been greatly changed as a result.

	Is NeXT a comparable revolutionary system for the early-1990's?
I guess we'll see in a few years.