glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (01/22/91)
I'd like to point out a few things relative to the X-window discussion,
the "unhappy NeXT customer" issue, and a few of the other hot topics
that have been bouncing around here recently.
These are just intended to provoke a little thought, and to cause people
to pause momentarily before hitting the "F" key again. Please feel
free to disagree with me and/or to wish I hadn't posted this, but please
feel that way quietly, without the "F" key, if possible :-)
First of all, I note that the traffic in comp.sys.next is very strong
(bordering on very heavy). I would say that there are roughly ten
times the number of postings that there are in comp.lang.postscript, a
fairly busy newsgroup to which I subscribe. This implies several
things to me:
* There are a lot of people interested in NeXT computers
and/or buying them.
* Flame wars are naturally proportionate to the readership
of any group, partly because the odds of having "flamers"
in that newsgroup go up sharply.
* Many of these postings are started by the generalization
"I now have a NeXT computer and I have the following
good/bad things to say...." That also implies an
increasing user base, a good thing.
Second of all, I note that the recent messages about dissatisfaction
with NeXT seem mostly to be of the form "I want my NeXT computer now,
and I haven't gotten it yet," rather than "this computer doesn't do
what it claims to do, and I want my money back." I have yet to see a
posting from someone who wanted their money refunded. I take this to
be a good sign. Also, supply-and-demand issues (whether for machines
or for customer support) tend to have some hysteresis in them, and in
a short-term crunch you can always expect a little bit of
short-handedness.
Third of all, I note that a lot of people want X (the window system).
I could care less about X, but I'm glad that a lot of people want it.
That indicates that the level of seriousness is increasing, and that
people have machines and want more functionality, increased capability
in a networked environment, and so forth. I think that's great.
I have lots of gripes, I file lots of bug reports, and I think that
the optical disk/floppy disk mess is a nightmare. And I hate it, like
everybody else, when I can't get any information about an issue that
is near and dear to me (often representing $$ of mine). But the very
fact that I care enough to be pissed off occasionally--the fact that I
am serious enough about it to be concerned about optical disk
availability--is a good sign, in the long run. If I really thought
the NeXT marketplace was screwed up beyond repair, if I really thought
that NeXT was going to be a problematic company to deal with and that
their support would be questionable, I wouldn't flame on the net, I
would quietly post a "NeXT machine for sale" message, and do something
else. We do see a few of these from time to time, but nobody gets
nervous and asks "why are you selling your cube?" Partly this is
because nobody is really-really worried about the market (at least
that's my interpretation).
I used to work at NeXT, and I left my job there to start a NeXT software
company, so I am more than somewhat involved in all this (and undoubtedly
slightly biased). But what I saw at NeXT was incredible dedication, a
lot of really great people, and some tough compromises that had to be
made. To NeXT's credit, they do a very good job of drawing a line in
the sand and writing "Ship" on one side of it, and piling the right
kinds of things on that side of the line. If you think things are bad
with NeXT, you should try to convince Sun or Apple that they should do
something different in their system software. It takes years, and they
don't do it right when they finally do get around to "fixing" it.
But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
To NeXT's credit, they now have a "customer support problem" instead
of a "lack of customer problem". As with any company, there will be
local variances in levels of support, choices made in applying a
finite number of human beings to an infinite number of problems, and a
constant sine wave of experiences both positive and negative. But the
biggest issue for all of us is the five-year problem, not the
five-week problem. I think we'd all be more upset with the customer
service if NeXT folded up the tent. I think we'd be less interested
in X if NeXT folded up the tent. But I don't think NeXT is going to
fold up the tent, and neither do any of you.
Glenn
--
Glenn Reid RightBrain Software
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us NeXT/PostScript developers
..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785 (fax 851-1470)