declan@portia.Stanford.EDU (Declan McCullagh) (08/29/90)
In an earlier message, Bob Sutterfield (bob@MorningStar.Com) writes in reference to the newspaper article I posted: >The NeXT is incompatible with MS-DOS IBM-compatible Personal >Computers, and that's a Good Thing (aesthetically, if not yet in the >market). Their use of (something with the flavor of) UNIX puts the >cube in a different class of competitors, and a different class of >interchangeability. I'm sure that most people reading this newsgroup recognize the benefits of being able to start out with an entirely (or almost entirely) new architecture, and tailoring your software to match. NeXT was able to do that, and so were the original Macintosh designers. I seem to remember frighteningly familiar comments about the Macintosh when it first came out: underpowered (for the price), lack of expandability, and - most importantly - lack of software. At least now, these arguments are somewhat less than meaningful. I'd expect NeXT to address two of those three areas by the end of the year; lack of expandability has never been that serious an issue. And, or course, the NeXT has an advantage over the original Mac in that it has access to the wide base of BSD UNIX software... Then again, the computer industry is more mature, and the same arguments may no longer apply... Only time will tell. -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Olympic Technologies / Registered NeXT Developers \ declan@portia.stanford.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------