declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) (03/13/91)
NeXT SHIPS 68040 COLOR WORKSTATION
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 12, 1991. NeXT Computer, Inc.
announced today that it has begun shipments of its $7,995 NeXTstation
Color computers, on schedule.
NeXTstation Color uses 16 bits per pixel to achieve
"true-color" images on its 17-inch color display. NeXTstation Color
offers automatic color dithering, so that the computer can display
32-bit-per-pixel images in 16 bits per pixel. With this feature,
most users will be unable to distinguish between the 16-bit image
displayed on NeXTstation Color and a true 32-bit image.
"NeXTstation Color offers customers fast, 'true-color'
Display PostScript on a large, megapixel display, for $7,995. This
far surpasses the 8-bit, limited color on small screens offered by
our competitors for the same price," said Steven P. Jobs, president
and CEO of NeXT. "NeXTstation Color is the computer that will bring
'true-color' Display PostScript to the masses."
With a suggested retail price of $7,995, NeXTstation Color
features 4,096 colors (12 bits) at any one time, plus 16 levels (4
bits) of transparency, displayed on its 1120 x 832 pixel,
high-resolution 17-inch MegaPixel Color Display.
"With NeXTstation Color, NeXT brings much needed
workstation-level performance to the emerging computer-based graphic
arts market at an affordable price," said Sanjay Sakujah, president
of Digital Prepress International.
NeXTstation Color, as with all NeXT computers, uses Display
PostScript to draw on-screen as well as printed images, resulting in
a much more powerful graphics platform for applications, especially
publishing applications. With Display PostScript, which makes the
full capability of PostScript available to all software developers
for their display graphics, users of NeXTstation Color and all other
NeXT computers gain more powerful and more WYSIWYG applications. In
addition, all NeXT computers incorporate JPEG software, which
compresses and decompresses still color images. This built-in
feature allows users to store more and larger images on their hard
disks, and to transmit images over networks without bogging them
down.
Like all the other members of NeXT's product family,
NeXTstation Color offers an unsurpassed range of capabilities as
standard, such as the NeXTstep user interface and application
development environment; the ability to run the same application
software package, unmodified, on any NeXT workstation; true
multitasking with the UNIX operating system; built-in
high-performance Ethernet and TCP/IP networking, for sharing large
color images over a network; built-in digital signal processing (DSP)
capabilities; a 2.88 MB floppy drive and at least 105 MB of hard
drive storage; and the unprecedented amount of system and bundled
software under NeXT's system software, including NeXT Mail
(multimedia electronic mail), integrated fax support and much more.
NeXT's high-end, 32-bit color product, NeXTdimension, will
ship in April.
NeXT Computer, Inc., headquartered in Redwood City, Calif.,
designs, manufactures and markets professional workstations, which
combine the power and networking of today's most advanced
workstations with the ease of use and productivity applications of
today's best personal computers. NeXT's professional workstation
systems promise to enhance the way groups of people work together in
the 1990s. The company sells its products through its direct sales
force and selected retail and VAR channels in North America, Asia and
Europe. NeXT is headquartered at 900 Chesapeake Drive, Redwood City,
California, 94063.
---
So the NeXTstation Color is finally shipping along with Improv...
I hope they do ship the NeXTdimension next month; I'm about to order
mine.
-Declanmcgredo@prism.cs.orst.edu (Don McGregor) (03/14/91)
> >NeXT SHIPS 68040 COLOR WORKSTATION >[...] > Like all the other members of NeXT's product family, >NeXTstation Color offers an unsurpassed range of capabilities as >standard, such as the NeXTstep user interface and application >development environment; the ability to run the same application >software package, unmodified, on any NeXT workstation; true Just to engage in some tea-leaf reading: The fact that NeXT is touting the ability to run the same application package on all platforms without modification suggests that RISC is a ways down the road. A RISC chip wouldn't be binary compatable, and they wouldn't be extolling their binary compatability if they didn't intend to keep it that way. Here's to hoping they get a multi-processing 68040 out sometime soon... Don McGregor | If you're not having fun, you're doing mcgredo@prism.cs.orst.edu| something wrong.
smithw@hamblin.math.byu.edu (Dr. William V. Smith) (03/14/91)
mcgredo@prism.cs.orst.edu (Don McGregor) writes: >>NeXT SHIPS 68040 COLOR WORKSTATION >>[...] >> Like all the other members of NeXT's product family, >>NeXTstation Color offers an unsurpassed range of capabilities as >>standard, such as the NeXTstep user interface and application >>development environment; the ability to run the same application >>software package, unmodified, on any NeXT workstation; true > Just to engage in some tea-leaf reading: The fact that NeXT is > touting the ability to run the same application package on all > platforms without modification suggests that RISC is a ways down > the road. A RISC chip wouldn't be binary compatable, and they > wouldn't be extolling their binary compatability if they didn't > intend to keep it that way. > Here's to hoping they get a multi-processing 68040 out sometime > soon... This sort of talk is "fly by night" Binary compatibility was a big thing with SUN but was lost in the sparcblitz. Anyway, just to add some fuel to the speculation fire, I have it on some good authority that at least two machines at NeXThome have multiprocessor 68040 boards in them now. There is debate about whether this will be part of the new product announcement this fall. Hope it is. -- EMail: smithw@hamblin.math.byu.edu or uunet!hamblin.math.byu.edu!smithw SMail: Math Dept. -- 314 TMCB; BYU; Provo, UT 84602 (USA) NeXTmail: smithw@mathnx.math.byu.edu Phone: +1 801 378 2061 FAX: +1 801 378 2800