Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!asd
From: asd@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Some thoughts about the NeXT machine
Message-ID: <1039@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 28 Jan 89 00:34:06 GMT
References: <8948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: asd@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 30

In article <8948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) writes:
[lots of deleted stuff about NeXT doing the wrong thing with the cube]

>I believe one of the reasons why the IBM PC was so successful is that
>IBM (surprisingly) freely released all the details about the machine,
>so that hackers wanted to play with it, and, in the process, they
>created all sorts of neat programs that users wanted to use --- and so
>lots of people bought IBM PC's.
And for that matter, the original PC (the one that got this whole computing
craze going), the Apple I.  Full schematics were just a PART of the
documentation Apple used to hand out in the manuals you got as a first time
buyer.

>with a few whizzy toys like the sound chip.  I hope that Jobs won't
>throw away this advantage by being needlessly ideological about the
>NeXT interface being the only one true, Holy, way of accessing the
>NeXT, and about not releasing source code.

Well, I'd be a NeXT junky right now if it weren't for one thing: Jobs.
Hopefully, he has changed and no longer is into, "You do it my way, period."
idea that seems to have booted him from Apple.  People kept screaming they
wanted slots, color, etc. for the Mac.  Didn't come out until he left.  But I
must admit, he does seem to brought about what looks like a fairly, not
completely, thought out new wave in computing.  If only Perot would step in
now and say, "Go commercial!  Sell those cubes to the public!"  And if they
could do it for less, that'd be great!  After all, general public wouldn't
need all the development tools, and if they wanted em, they could get em any
time.

kareth.