rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (10/14/88)
To calm the masses . . . Yes, the NeXT machine has some nice features, but don't sell that Amiga yet! You see, the Amiga is a mass-market machine, with a nice fat low-end market, and a fairly large middle market. The NeXT machine will sell for $6500 up, which places it out of reach of probably 90% of the Amigans. Add to that the fact that the machine will *not* be available for public purchase until maybe midyear 1989. Plus, the $6500 price is to selected developers and educators *only*, and the public and commercial price will probably be quite steeper. The $2000 laser is the only supported printer, so if you want hardcopy, well, there's some more money. Not to mention a way to get software *into* the machine. (What, they are going to distribute software on 20MB SCSI disks, or can you dismount your system optical disk to load a distribution optical disk?) And many people might not like the access time or write time for the optical floppy, so you might need that $2000 Winchester. While NeXT comes with all sorts of neat software, it will most certainly be a while before many mass-market applications are ported. Especially since NeXT is not targetting the mass market yet. And while the display is good, 8xx by 11xx isn't mindblowing, and neither is two bitplanes of monochrome. I don't know about y'all, but VideoScape in grey is kind of boring. Oh, and the 256K dedicated video RAM seems to make double buffering impossible, at least with the current hardware. So smooth animation might not be absolutely trivial. I am not trying to lambast the NeXT machine. I love it. I'd love to have one. But at that price, I think I'll enjoy my Amiga a little longer. -tom
ecphssrw@afws.csun.edu (Stephen Walton) (10/14/88)
I just read the alt.next posting on Steve Jobs's machine. I think it'll give the Amiga a run for its money. Mentally adding up an equivalent A2000 system, I think NeXT gives us a run for our money. Oddly, our advantage is that we *don't* run Unix, and so a 4 MB Amiga has as much RAM for running user programs as an 8 MB NeXT :-). -- Stephen Walton, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Cal State Univ. Northridge RCKG01M@CALSTATE.BITNET ecphssrw@afws.csun.edu swalton@solar.stanford.edu ...!csun!afws.csun.edu!bcphssrw
hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (Hal G. Meeks) (10/14/88)
In article <308@solaria.csun.edu> ecphssrw@afws.csun.edu (Stephen Walton) writes: >I just read the alt.next posting on Steve Jobs's machine. I think >it'll give the Amiga a run for its money. Mentally adding up an >equivalent A2000 system, I think NeXT gives us a run for our money. >Oddly, our advantage is that we *don't* run Unix, and so a 4 MB Amiga >has as much RAM for running user programs as an 8 MB NeXT :-). >-- Three points to consider: 1. Remember that great boing! ball demo we all saw a few years ago? Think of how far we have come since then. The NeXT machine is going to undergo the same amount of change, in possibly a little less time. There are still areas in which the amiga can be improved, but the key fact is that there is room in overall design of the machine for them to occur. We may not grow at the same rate as in the past, but possibilities do exist. 2. $6500 is a discount price for universities and developers. The "general user's" price is going to be signifigantly higher. 3. The NeXT machine and the Amiga are drastically different machines, in their design goals and targeted market. I don't think I would be happy with one at all, as my single computer at home. At work, though, it might be nice. However, I suspect that people will look at what the NeXT machine does, pick out the features that they like about the machine, and think of ways to do similar things on the Amiga. And the Amiga remains less expensive. --hal hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/14/88)
in article <308@solaria.csun.edu>, ecphssrw@afws.csun.edu (Stephen Walton) says: > Keywords: NeXT 68030 unix amiga > Summary: It actually looks pretty nice > I just read the alt.next posting on Steve Jobs's machine. I think > it'll give the Amiga a run for its money. Apollo makes a nice $10,000 68030 machine with windowing and UNIX. They probably don't have an educational discount (though you never know), but I'm not in school anyway. I can have a 68030 Amiga for considerably less. > Oddly, our advantage is that we *don't* run Unix, and so a 4 MB Amiga > has as much RAM for running user programs as an 8 MB NeXT :-). Neither does NeXT, it runs Mach. So take the amount of memory necessary for a nice System V machine, double it, and you get the amount of memory necessary for a nice Mach machine. Which is precisely why NeXT machines are standard at 8 megs, though they apparently will have a 4 meg version available. We have 3 and 5 meg A2500s for similar configurations (cheaper, slower) under System V. If you really want UNIX. The press release claims that 3 or 4 applications should run on the NeXT with out undue disk paging (to that SLOW optical disk). Under the Amiga OS, 3 or 4 applications run pretty nicely in 2 megs of memory, though of course we don't (yet) have virtual paging. > Stephen Walton, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Cal State Univ. Northridge > RCKG01M@CALSTATE.BITNET ecphssrw@afws.csun.edu > swalton@solar.stanford.edu ...!csun!afws.csun.edu!bcphssrw -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (10/17/88)
Speaking of optical drives, does anybody have the performance specifications of the Canon drive used in the NeXT computer? All I've heard thus far is that it is 256 MB per side, and that the media costs $50. Apparently, each disk can hold 512 MB, but must be flipped over to access the B side. It would be interesting to know what the access times were. Apparently, Canon had their optical drives ready about a year ago, but could not market them independently becasue they had an exclusive contract with NeXT that stipulated taht Canon could not sell the bare drives before the NeXT computer was introduced. If Canon makes one with a SCSI interface, it could be a nifty add-on to use with our Amigas. --Bill
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (10/18/88)
In article <1372@neoucom.UUCP>, wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) writes: > > What is the access time of the Canon dtive? According to a blurb in Infoworld, the access time for a 1/3 stroke seek is average 93 mS. They cite that NeXT claims that their averave access time is 60 mS. Even 60 mS, isn't exactly stellar performance, so that optional $2K (US funds) add-on Winchester looks more like a reality for people that want to do some serious hacking. There was also an article in this news group that intimated that the display was hard-wired into one frame buffer. Infoworld intimated that the display is double-buffered. They are journalists rather than computer scientists, so anything they report should be given an appropriate amount of skeptacism. --Bill
lbruck@eneevax.UUCP (Lewis S.Bruck) (10/20/88)
In article <1372@neoucom.UUCP> wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) writes: > >Speaking of optical drives, does anybody have the performance >specifications of the Canon drive used in the NeXT computer? All >I've heard thus far is that it is 256 MB per side, and that the >media costs $50. Apparently, each disk can hold 512 MB, but must >be flipped over to access the B side. I saw a figure of about 91 ms access time. I haven't heard what either NeXT or Canon are using for interface, but a SCSI drive will probably be available soon, if at least to satisfy the Mac market, which for better or for worse is the driving force behind microcomputer SCSI >--Bill Lewis Bruck Who is officially not even here or anywhere
chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) (10/22/88)
In article <73828@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
) .
) .
) Can Jobs turn
)Universities into dealers?
) .
) .
Well he can turn university presidents into dealers. Georgia Tech has
already ordered 100. Its new and beloved president, Pat Crecine, is on
the NeXT board of directors. Of course Jobs can't get all university
presidents on the board but since it only has three members right now
there's room for quite a few.
Of course I wouldn't even begin to suggest that any conflict of interest
is involved.
--
- It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be -
- coming up it. -- Henry Allen -
Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332-0430
UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu