STENGEL@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Robert F. Stengel) (04/24/91)
Although the Version 2.0-compatible ACL is now available from Franz, NeXT has y et to ship this version to Cube owners who wish to upgrade from the 030 to the 040. Although we bought the 040 upgrade several months ago, we have not instal led it because one user MUST have ACL. What's holding the distribution up? I understand that NeXT wanted to bundle the ACL upgrade with one or two other upg rades that are not ready yet. Trouble is, we don't need those other upgrades a nd we DO need the ACL upgrade NOW. Calls to NeXT tell us it is coming "real so on now." Calls to our local sales rep (Forrestal Village, Princeton, NJ) are n ot returned. Just who is minding the store?
cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu (04/24/91)
In article <12691@pucc.Princeton.EDU> STENGEL@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Robert F. Stengel) writes:
Although the Version 2.0-compatible ACL is now available from
Franz, NeXT has yet to ship this version to Cube owners who wish to
upgrade from the 030 to the 040.
[... stuff deleted ...] Just who is minding the store?
Perhaps NeXT intends to ship the app on the new 2.88MB floppies and is
having trouble with their suppliers for this part? NeXT has taken the
rap for late-shipping a lot lately when actually, some of their
suppliers have not been able to keep pace with NeXT's demand.
This sounds like a "good news, bad news" situation to me. It's good
news that lots of folks want NeXTs and bad news that the suppliers
can't keep pace with the demand.
--
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,
and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzscheagm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk) (04/24/91)
In article <12691@pucc.Princeton.EDU> STENGEL@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: |Although the Version 2.0-compatible ACL is now available from Franz, NeXT has y |et to ship this version to Cube owners who wish to upgrade from the 030 to the |040. Although we bought the 040 upgrade several months ago, we have not instal |led it because one user MUST have ACL. What's holding the distribution up? I |understand that NeXT wanted to bundle the ACL upgrade with one or two other upg |rades that are not ready yet. Trouble is, we don't need those other upgrades a |nd we DO need the ACL upgrade NOW. Calls to NeXT tell us it is coming "real so |on now." Calls to our local sales rep (Forrestal Village, Princeton, NJ) are n |ot returned. Just who is minding the store? I second all of the above. Axel
anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) (04/24/91)
I received the ACL upgrade to 3.1.20 (the '040, OS2 compatible version with no visible enhancements beyond 3.1) from Franz (not NeXT) last week. This also contains Franz's modified version of NeXT's modified version of the emacs-18.55 sources. The situation is somewhat confused by the fact that I have actually paid Franz for a year's maintenance - I was paying them for ACL for my Suns, and I included the NeXT maintenance on the same PO. And nothing on the paperwork that came with the upgrade allows me to determine whether I got this as a result of the postcard I sent to NeXT when I upgraded my cube, or as a result of my maintenance agreement with Franz. Oh - it came on (8) 1.44 Mbyte floppies, so there's no issue of availability of the media. --Steve Anderson
mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) (04/25/91)
In article <ANDERSON.91Apr24075737@sapir.cog.jhu.edu> anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) writes: >The situation is somewhat confused by the fact that I have actually >paid Franz for a year's maintenance - I was paying them for ACL for my >Suns, and I included the NeXT maintenance on the same PO. And nothing >on the paperwork that came with the upgrade allows me to determine >whether I got this as a result of the postcard I sent to NeXT when I >upgraded my cube, or as a result of my maintenance agreement with >Franz. Apparently, you got it because of your maintenance agreement. The folks at 800-848-NeXT say that they haven't started shipping yet, so presumably yours came from Franz. They say they hope to start shipping upgrades in a week or so ("by the end of the month"). >Oh - it came on (8) 1.44 Mbyte floppies, so there's no issue of >availability of the media. When I mentioned this, the NeXT phone-person said, "Oh, then it didn't come from us." I assume this means they'll be shipping it on 2.88MB floppies.
scott@mcs-server.gac.edu (Scott Hess) (04/25/91)
Just to get in a wee bit of public whining (well, not much): In article <CNH5730.91Apr23205539@maraba.tamu.edu> cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu writes: In article <12691@pucc.Princeton.EDU> STENGEL@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Robert F. Stengel) writes: Although the Version 2.0-compatible ACL is now available from Franz, NeXT has yet to ship this version to Cube owners who wish to upgrade from the 030 to the 040. [... stuff deleted ...] Just who is minding the store? Perhaps NeXT intends to ship the app on the new 2.88MB floppies and is having trouble with their suppliers for this part? NeXT has taken the rap for late-shipping a lot lately when actually, some of their suppliers have not been able to keep pace with NeXT's demand. Well, on the one hand, this is true. But, on the other hand, it is an _excuse_ - NeXT is responsible to 'we the people who ordered NeXTs' to have enough of what they need to deliver. It's not so much that the suppliers can't keep pace with an increased demand - I don't even think we are out of the backlog announced last Sept. at the "Big Bash", so they should have been prepared. I do think that NeXT was just in an unlucky position - the stuff just wasn't feasable in the timeframe proposed. But some of the ridiculous time spans I've heard make me wonder . . . [Now, with a completely different set of hands -scott] On the one hand, this is the price we pay for running too close to the leading edge. On the other hand, the business market is not going to care too much for NeXT if this becomes a habit. Hopefully they learn from "this" - "this" being the lack of CPU, the lack of 400M hard disks, the lack of floppy media, the lack of optical media, the lack of JPEG, etc, etc. If NeXT ever plans to be selling >50,000 machines/year, all of the elements will have to be there _before_ the machine is promised. Maybe this is why Apple has more boring machines (side note - Apple also makes more money :-). Please don't take this as anything but constructive criticism. I never really complained (well, not publicly) about my machine, or anything. And I really could care less when LISP ships, or whether I can get ODs or 2.88M floppies. Except to the extent other people do - especially those people out there who just happen to have more money than I do, and thus have more machine- purchase ability than I do. I've got my machine, and I love it, and I hate it when I have to use the old, decrepit machines in the lab here, with their measly 8M/40M/68030 . . . :-> [ <-- Yes, that is an evil grin :-) ] Later, -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad <I still speak for nobody> "Simply press Control-right-Shift while click-dragging the mouse . . ." "I smoke the nose Lucifer . . . Banana, banana."