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: <484@wucs1.wustl.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 88 18:20:28 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <13148@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: conrad@wucs1.UUCP (H. Conrad Cunningham)
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 26

In article <13148@oberon.USC.EDU> tli@sargas.usc.edu (Tony Li) writes:
>In article <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> conrad@wucs1.wustl.edu (C.Cunningham) writes:
>    
>>    	He maintained that the NeXT computer will be a failure because
>>    it not revolutionary enough.  Its only advantage is a short-term
>>    hardware capability/pricing advantage over the other available
>>    UNIX-based workstations.  
>
>I recall that Sun Microsystems failed for exactly these same reasons. 

There are perhaps two different dimensions of success that I was
talking about:  (1) commercial success and (2) having a revolutionary
impact on computing.  Undoubtedly Sun is a commercial success.
Perhaps Sun could also be could be considered revolutionary as well.
(My historical knowledge may be faulty here.) Sun was the first
company to adopt a industry-standard, open systems approach as the
organizing principle for its product line.  Sun's success at this
changed the industry considerably--other vendors are being pushed to
varying extents toward that approach.

But Sun's revolution began several years ago.  Another company
taking the same approach today probably wouldn't be revolutionary even
if they have some measure of commercial success.

Is NeXT revolutionary?  Will NeXT change the computing in some
significant way?