[alt.next] Is today the day?

mcintyre@turing.cs.rpi.edu (David McIntyre) (10/12/88)

If there is an announcement today, can someone please post it
somewhere, so that all of us impatient folks can see what is
what?

		thanks,
			Dave


Dave "mr question" McIntyre     |      "....say you're thinking about a plate
home   : 518-276-5842	        |       of shrimp.....and someone says to 
office : 518-276-8633		|	you `plate,' or `shrimp'......"
mcintyre@turing.cs.rpi.edu      |

tim@crackle.amd.com (Tim Olson) (10/13/88)

In article <1392@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> mcintyre@turing.cs.rpi.edu (David McIntyre) writes:
| If there is an announcement today, can someone please post it
| somewhere, so that all of us impatient folks can see what is
| what?

I haven't seen another posting yet, so here it is:

The next box is a black cube, about 1ft square.  Inside, it has 5 NuBUS
slots, one of which is populated with the main processor card.  It
holds:
	68030 @ 25MHz
	FP coprocessor (68882?)
	DSP chip
	8MB memory (expandable to 16)
	Custom processors for peripheral control (gate arrays?)

The implication here is that since the processor is on a standard card,
more than one can exist in the system for multiprocessing.  This matches
with the OS, which is the MACH kernel and BSD4.3.

On top of MACH is something called "Next STep", which is their
presentation interface (standardized "look and feel") that has been
licenced to IBM.  This greatly simplifies the building of applications,
which sit on top of Next Step.

Back to hardware, The mass storage is a single, 250MB *optical* (yes, as
in CD-like) drive, with optional SCSI drives available (300MB, 600MB). 
The display is a mega-pixel (1024x1024) monochrome monitor which runs
display Postscript (quite fast, too!).  A 400dpi laser printer will also
be available.

Software included:
	MACH
	Next Step
	lisp (Franz, I think)
	Mathematica
	WriteNow word processor
	Webster's dictionary and Thesaurus
	works of Shakespeare
	Oxford Quotations
	On-line Unix and Next Manuals
	(probably some others)

Price:
	$6500 for all of the above, excluding the laserprinter, which is
	$2000.

Availability:
	Version 0.8 ships to developers this month, with 0.9 shipping
	first quarter next year.  General shipping begins second
	quarter.


Disclaimer:
	I got this information from someone who just got back from the
	show (and was greatly impressed!)

By the way, one of the things that Jobs has done to the user interface
is to get rid of the trash can.  In its place is a "Black Hole" icon,
which sucks up anything that is moved over it!


	-- Tim Olson
	Advanced Micro Devices
	(tim@crackle.amd.com)

papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (10/17/88)

In article <4433@polya.Stanford.EDU> aozer@NeXT.com writes:
>Yes; Objective C 4.0 (Stepstone), GNU C and debugger (Free Software
>Foundation). NextStep is accessed through the "appkit" using Objective C. 

I have to read another 100 messages, so I apologize if this has been answered
before, but here it goes: Is the "standard" Software Foundation license
shipped with GNU C ?  This license does not allow commercial use WITHOUT 
agreeing to ship sources with the commercial program.  Ali? Next? FSF?

-- Marco Papa 'Doc'
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uucp:...!pollux!papa       BIX:papa       ARPAnet:pollux!papa@oberon.usc.edu
 "There's Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Diga!" -- Leo Schwab [quoting Rick Unland]
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jdn@mas1.UUCP (Jeff Nisewanger) (10/17/88)

In article <4858@louie.udel.EDU> you write:
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (paging to an optical disk? right.) xxxxxxx

	I think this critisism is a bit unrealistic. There are thousands
of Sun and other workstations out there that do paging over the
ethernet at an effective rate of 100k per second. The specs on the NeXT
optical disk say it does 1mb reads and 400k writes per second throughput.
It ought to do just fine.

	Jeff Nisewanger
	Measurex Automation Systems Inc.
	......apple!mas1!jdn

ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (10/18/88)

In article <12853@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>I have to read another 100 messages, so I apologize if this has been answered
>before, but here it goes: Is the "standard" Software Foundation license
>shipped with GNU C ?  This license does not allow commercial use WITHOUT 
>agreeing to ship sources with the commercial program.  Ali? Next? FSF?

NeXT wrote its own libraries; thus no need to ship the sources
to the system software. The sources to the NeXT versions of
gcc and gdb will be shipped, though. 

Ali Ozer, aozer@NeXT.com