salzman@randvax.UUCP (Isaac Salzman) (10/14/88)
This *really* looks like the machine I've been waiting for (for home use)!!
Now how many times have I said that before (Mac-II, Sun 3/60, Sun386i :-)
Some questions:
Exactly how much of MACH is being used? How much has it been
modified from the CMU distribution (i.e. the Sun version)?
Will source liscensing be available w/o AT&T liscensing b.s.?
I'm told that MACH is striving for complete removal of any
AT&T code so they can virtually give it away (the MACH kernel
may eventually be the GNU kernel).
MACH for Sun's comes with X11. I assume NeXT will be able
to run X11 even though it has it's own window environment,
which is probably a lot nicer. Wether or not you'd want to
it would be nice to know if the capability is there.
It's got sound capability, and quite good from what people are
saying (yeah!!!). Does it have MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface) capability built in? A reliable source mentioned that
there's a company working on MIDI sequencing software for NeXT
(I'm a musician, so this is a particularly attractive feature).
Can someone give us some spec's on the optical disk's performance?
I realize that this is not the same technology as CD, but there are
probably similarities. Apperently CD's make for great sequential
devices but random access is somewhat slow due to the way the tracks
and sectors are layed out. Does this Sony drive exhibit this
behaviour as well? How's the performance relative to a CDC Wren-IV,
for instance (we have several of those on Sun 4/110's - nice
drives). Who makes the SCSI disks they're selling as add ons?
Sounds like they may be CDC's....
How big is the initial s/w distribution (in other words, how much
disk space do you have left to work with)? Is any source code
provided. Source to some of the Objective-C class libraries would be
nice!
I think many people (including myself) were very sceptical about NeXT as to
wether or not they'd bring a real product to market. I'm truely impressed! I
can't think of any other computer system that was as well thought out as
this one is. For $6,500, you get a complete, and I mean *COMPLETE* computer
system!!! That's amazing. I realize that this is the University price, but
that's important. How I wish I had tools like this to use when I was a CS
student (which was only a couple years ago!). And this isn't just for CS
students - it's for anyone!! I would assume (though I could be wrong) that
they will offer this system to students for home use as well as Universities
at the same cost (time to start grad-school :-). Of course we won't really
know if it will live up to it's advertised capabilites until someone gets
their hands on one - but I have faith that it will....
"So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It's hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while" - RUSH: "Grand Designs"
--
* Isaac J. Salzman ----
* The RAND Corporation - Information Sciences Dept. /o o/ /
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