Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ficc!karl
From: karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer #)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Next and the competition
Message-ID: <2524@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 21 Dec 88 19:14:25 GMT
References: <2405@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <5725@polya.Stanford.EDU> <5816@cadnetix.COM>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 70

In article <5816@cadnetix.COM>, beres@cadnetix.COM (Tim Beres) writes:
> Scott McNealy addressed this point during his keynote address at SUG.
 
> I'm going to paraphrase some of his comments from memory, please politely
> correct me if I get it wrong [my views in brackets]:
 
>     4.  McNealy did shrug off the DSP & sound capabilities of the next box.
> 	[But the pre-announcement and industry reaction may cause this capab.
> 	to be further investigated.]

	Based on this and other remarks, they're also shrugging off what
	the *integration* of all that stuff represents.

>     5.  He remarked that mach is a non-standard and buggy choice of OS;
> 	furthermore, he somewhat denigrated CMU, their efforts and abilities
> 	[Can someone fill in the details, please.  I remember thinking -
> 	hey, BSD.]

	This will probably come as a surprise to the folks at CMU --
	they're running Mach in production on hundreds of machines.
	From my study of their literature, they seem to have done a
	good job at producing a transportable VM model that supports
	tightly coupled (UMA and NUMA) and loosely couple (NORMA)
	multiprocessing in a Unix environment.

	When people start plugging their Next machines together and
	start getting transparent multiprocessing, it will be interesting
	to see what Sun comes up with to do the same -- any whether or
	not it is based on Mach.  Sequent, Encore, Next, Intel and others
	are committed to Mach for the solutions it provides in these
	areas.

>     6.  He slammed them on their lack of standards:  mach, display PS, 
> 	optical format...

	Oh yes, the Sun is *so* open.  Just ask the people who were
	trying to build aftermarket disk controllers for it how open
	Sun is.

>     7.  He said the enclosure was big and ugly.

	Oh yeah, the total reason not to consider buying the machine...

>     8.  Sun doesn't do the bundling of SW that next intends, simply because
>        they don't want to lock their customers into the "one database format",
> 	as McNealy noted of next.

	Great, so by not giving away any free software with their machines,
	Sun is doing their customers a favor by not locking them into one 
	database format.  Look, bundled software is a freebie.  Having lots
	saves users money and is an incentive to buy the machine -- a lesson 
	learned by Osborne Inc, forgotten by all, then relearned by Next.

>     9.  Sun is pushing down and up on the market.  Towards lower cost
> 	desktop machines and higher cost/performance servers.  All running
> 	the same software.  [Bernie LaCroute (sp.) addressed this subject.
> 	Will the lower cost machines in N months be able to compete with
> 	next on a price/performance/features basis -me]

	There is more to the Next than an optical disk, bundled
	software, a DSP, a megapixel screen, 8 MB RAM, 4.2 BSD,
	Objective C, et al.  There is the integration of all that
	stuff.  Even if Sun duplicated the hardware, they would
	have to duplicate all the functionality, like the look-up-a-
	word-from-anywhere stuff that, historically, they're not
	likely to do -- and apparently they'll call not doing it a feature :-)
-- 
-- uunet!ficc!karl	"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious
-- karl@ficc.uu.net	encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without 
			understanding." -- Justice Louis O. Brandeis