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From: dar@belltec.UUCP (Dimitri Rotow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Next and the competition
Summary: Reality check ...
Message-ID: <315@belltec.UUCP>
Date: 23 Dec 88 02:51:53 GMT
References: <2405@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <5725@polya.Stanford.EDU> <17911@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Bell Technologies, Fremont, CA
Lines: 45

In article <17911@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes:
> 
>       The problem NeXT must face is that they've shot their bolt long before
> they can profit from it.  Everyone now knows what the NeXT machine can do,
> and can get busy in providing similar capabilities for the Mac, Amiga, and
> 386-based architectures.  It's entirely possible that many of the capabilities
> of the NeXT machine will be working on other machines before NeXT is shipping
> iron in serious volume.  As of right now, their window of opportunity gets
> a day shorter every day until volume shipments to commercial customers start.

I enjoy John's pragmatism (almost alone in this group, it seems), but here 
even he may be too generous.  This bit about "providing similar capabilities"
to machines that already have capabilities *superior* to NeXT is a real slur
on what people are shipping on a daily basis in the existing industry.

The Amiga is hot and has been shipping for some time now (likewise Mac).  It's
just fine at providing text, graphics, sound, and all of the other gee-whiz
stuff.

Optical disks are old hat on PC's.  Why do you think the Japanese always 
introduce the new models at Comdex with AT compatible interfaces?

I don't understand the viewpoint in this group that PC's only run DOS or
OS/2.  Don't netfolks realize that half of the UNIX market these days 
(by number of units) ships on '386 AT clones?  Why do you think 386 boxes
have eaten up the low half of the UNIX market?  What do you think '386's 
will do to the workstation market?

Just about anybody's plug in graphics board for UNIX and X will easily
outperform the NeXT machine in resolution, "look and feel" display speed,
or any other measure.  Slam a low-cost Maxtor or CDC at 380 MB into your
low cost 25MHZ 80386 machine (not to mention the new 32 MHZ '386 machines
or even '486 machines people are announcing) and you will eat the NeXT
box alive in speed, quantity of *UNIX* software, low cost, and industry
standardization.   Try a $2500 25MHZ 386 zero wait state machine with a
$1200 380MB Maxtor (Advertised at Fry's at retail here in Fremont), and 
a $2000 co-processor based 1660 x 1200  19" display, and *then* talk 
about what a great "deal" the slow-poke NeXT machine is.

You know, they may not be elite, but it sounds like Intel processor AT bus
machines have already won.   If Mac is coming on strong, that's great
because it's a real product with a real future and it makes the 
PC/workstation issue at least something of an interesting race.

- Dimitri Rotow