Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!lbl-csam.arpa!antony
From: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Next computer (Re: CISC Silent Spring)
Message-ID: <4791@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 7 Feb 90 10:15:50 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <20571@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <49956@sgi.sgi.com>
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Reply-To: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
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X-Local-Date: 7 Feb 90 02:15:50 PST

In article <49956@sgi.sgi.com> daveh@xtenk.sgi.com (David A Higgen) writes:
>On a totally flippant note... after the XT in the IBM_PC world came,
>of course, the AT. Now, if you apply the same substitution to NEXT, you
>get... NEAT!! Can this be an accident??
>
>
>				daveh


More relevant to the discussion of the NeXT is probably the comparison of the
Lisa to the Mac.  The Lisa was slow, overpriced, and uncompetetive.  That
wasn't of much importance.  The machine was important because it was a machine
which people at apple could do R&D for.  The Macintosh embodied the design
concepts of the Lisa, but it was very clear that the fundamental mistakes the
engineers made were not repeated in the Mac.  If you look at the NeXT as a Lisa
of sorts, then it is a very good machine.  

The NeXT is also good because it embodies certain ideas which are very
important.  Sure, the NeXT has a DSP whether you want it or not.  That means
EVERYONE has stereo sound.  Sure, everyone may not want it.  But history has
shown that the best way to bring technology to the people is by REQUIRING it.
May be fascist, but it works.  Just look at what a mess things were in for a
while when PCs didn't come standard with a mouse.  Designers couldn't ASSUME
the user had a mouse, and that made the overhead of application writing very
extreme.  And look at workstations:  Every Sun has a 19" screen.  Imagine if
there were other screens available?  Do you think everyone would have bought
a 19" screen?  No way.  And what would that have done to the development of
window systems?  I suspect it would have hampered it severely...

In general, the Lisa idea is a very important one.  I think it is a very sound
practice to design something new and exciting and then do it again from the
ground up, once the engineers involved have learned a few things.  I think the
bext possible thing to do in the window system arena is to rm -rf
/usr/local/src/X and start over.  X is slow, clunky and it is a mess.  The
protocol is overly complex and there are several fundamental design errors.  I
think a lot of people recognize this.  But because everyone wants to
'standardize' X, there isn't any way to get away from it.  This same principle
is also what made UNIX so spiffy.  Researchers wrote Multics.  It sucked.  But
people learned an awful lot about what should and shouldn't be in an OS and
how to implement OSs.  Then people scrapped it and wrote UNIX based on things
which had been learned from previous OSs.  Imagine what the world would be like
if UNIX and any other technological developments in the OS arena had to conform
to a SMID--'Standard Multics Interface Definition'. :-)

I'll admit it isn't clear whethewr or not NeXT looks upon it's current box as a
Lisa.  If so, I look very forward to the next NeXT. :-)

		antony




--
*******************************************************************************
Antony A. Courtney				antony@lbl.gov
Advanced Development Group			ucbvax!lbl-csam.arpa!antony
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory			AACourtney@lbl.gov