joe@oregon.uoregon.edu (02/26/91)
For all those of you who've been anxiously awaiting release of the SAS System for the NeXT, some news "from the front..." (1) SAS for the NeXT Announced Jim Goodnight, President of SAS Institute, officially announced during the SAS Users Group International (SUGI 16) Conference that the SAS System for the NeXT would be released as part of Family 4 (other SAS Family 4 members include IBM VSE, OS/2, Windows 3, AIX PS/2, SCO/UNIX for 386 and 486 machines, and Sequents). Releases for Family 4 machines are supposed to be shipping by years end, although Goodnight said that Quality Assurance may delay those dates if the need arises. [Just to give you an idea of comparative timing, Family 1 releases (for the RS/6000, DECStation 5000, HP 9000/300, MIPS, Apollo, and DG Aviion) are scheduled to be shipped in March.] (2) SAS on the NeXT Demo'd (sort of) NeXT Inc was showing their machines at the SAS Users Group Conference in New Orleans last week, but the couple of times I came by they were NOT running a copy of the SAS system -- the demonstrators seemed interested in showing everything BUT the current developmental release of SAS. :-( I suppose that's only to be expected in some ways given that the demo-ers weren't SAS disciples, but it was kind of disheartening to see SAS on Suns, SAS on Digital Equipment boxes, SAS on Data General boxes, SAS on this, SAS on that, only to see NeXT Mail on the cube (or something equally non-SAS-ish). (3) A Surprising Distribution Media Decision... A SAS Institute employee told me that SAS will be shipping SAS for the NeXT *NOT* on floppies, *NOT* on optical disks, but *ONLY* on CD ROM. (Yes, I know this sounds bizarre, but that's what I was told was planned by a SAS Institute employee who should DEFINITELY know what's going to happen...) Those of you who're thinking about SAS for your machine may want to start finding a compatible CD ROM player you can borrow, I guess. Hope this is of some interest, Joe St Sauver (JOE@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU or JOE@OREGON) Statistical Programmer and Consultant University of Oregon Computing Center DISCLAIMER: I don't work for NeXT or SAS Institute, and all I know is what I saw or heard at the conference, which is all probably wrong or outdated or otherwise flawed.