Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Announcement vs reality
Message-ID: <5900@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 16 Nov 88 19:43:46 GMT
References: <17846@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 48

In article <17846@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B.
Nagle) writes:
>     Well, now we have a good handle on what the reality of the product is.
>     Yes, I know it will be better next year.  But you have to compare real
>products with real products, not vapor ones.  So you line up the reality of
>the Next machine against the Mac IIx, the various current Sun models, and the
>new Amiga annouced at Comdex, and see how it looks.   Undoubtedly all the
>other vendors will have new iron out by the time Next is shipping something
>that works and costs like what they announced.

I think a fairer comparison would be to the Sun-1, the Mac 128K, and
the original Amiga.  (Even the last is a little unfair, because it's
really a second-generation example of its class, while both the Sun-1
and the original Mac defined new classes.)  I think it would probably
be foolish to buy the first version of such revolutionary hardware, but
people will anyway, and that will give the company money and
information with which to make a totally killer version 2.  For Apple,
it was the Mac+ and Mac SE, still fine low-end microcomputers, and for
Sun, it was the Sun-2 and Sun-3, also fine machines.  I expect the
Next-Next or Next-2 will have two optical drives, even more great
built-in software, an operating system to die for, a few more minor
revolutions (my money's on basic speech recognition and four-way
parallel processing, though these may be version 3 instead), and bunch
of improvements that we won't know are useful until after people start
hitting the limits of the current model.  I'm sure that the Next-Next
will pose a very serious challenge to whatever Apple, Sun, or (pfffft)
Commodore have out by then.

>      The exciting thing about the Next machine, other than the really nice
>case by Frogdesign, is the software suite.

Agreed!  One of UNIX's real strengths is the amount of bundled
software, and Next is going that one better.  It's been a real
disappointment to see Apple backing off from bundling -- a computer
should exercise all its basic user functions when it comes out of the
box, and if you find the built-in software inadequate, go to a third
party.  I'll be eager to see what kind of software suite comes with the
thing in 1990.

(An even better solution is bundled software which can accept
third-party software modules, but that's still a little ways off.
But both Apple and Todd Rundgren claim to be working on it,
independently of each other.)
-- 
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"I've got troubles of my own, and you can't help me out.
 So take your meditations and your preparations and ram it up yer snout!"
    - Frank Zappa, "Kozmik Debris"