lane@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (Christopher Lane) (11/13/90)
As much I appreciate the quality design of NeXT's new offerings, I'm looking forward to our NeXTstations whenever they arrive, I've two glaring "why didn't they"s that have been bothering me: When I asked a NeXT marketing person why they chose to include 10 base T Ethernet but not SLIP in the new product release, they replied, "Because that's what our customers asked for". I've been following comp.sys.next since January of '89 and I've seen lots of questions about putting NeXTs on thick coax and why weren't there both thick and thin net connectors. And every other week or so, someone asks about SLIP. But I have never seen anyone ask about 10 base T! My estimate of this situation is that NeXT listened to what its 'potential' business customers wanted and ignored its 'actual' customers, who had already pledged an investment. Unfortunate since the slab is a perfect remote host and could really use well-integrated SLIP. Why hasn't the optical drive been upgraded to a SCSI device? Since it's become a second class peripheral in the current offerings (only peripheral whose price has gone up and not available on all models), why not move it's electronics off the mother board (making more real estate available for new features) and make the optical an external device that you can hang off the SCSI port of either a cube or slab. Since it's great for installation, repair and backup, making it 'portable' would be a major win. One could even have two models, cleaper internal that uses electronics on mother board and SCSI external, depending on your needs, hardware and economics. Either of these could still be corrected and made available in the coming year. (I guess the time to start bugging your local NeXT marketing person is now -- just say you represent 'business' ;-) - Christopher PS: If you really want a long laundry list of "why didn't theys", ask me about the shortcomings of the recent offerings from Apple... -------