2FHGKINGLY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (11/21/89)
Was NeXT at COMDEX? Anyone from NeXT care to comment?
sharon@asylum.SF.CA.US (Sharon Fisher) (11/21/89)
In article <18383@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 2FHGKINGLY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >Was NeXT at COMDEX? > >Anyone from NeXT care to comment? I'm not from NeXT, but I was at Comdex. NeXT was not a formal exhibitor at Comdex, so they did not have a booth. It is conceivable that they had a suite in one of the hotels to which they invited potential customers, but I didn't hear of any, and I was hanging out with pressoids who I expect would have heard of such a suite. They had a big showing at Educom a month before, though...
evan@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Evan Grossman) (11/23/89)
In article <8620@asylum.SF.CA.US> sharon@asylum.UUCP (Sharon Fisher) writes: >In article <18383@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 2FHGKINGLY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >>Was NeXT at COMDEX? >> >>Anyone from NeXT care to comment? > >I'm not from NeXT, but I was at Comdex. NeXT was not a formal >exhibitor at Comdex, so they did not have a booth... Some vendors did have a cube up and running in their booths. Informix, for example, was demonstrating the WingZ spreadsheet and it looked like it was almost ready to ship. I didn't notice whether IBM was demoing NextStep on an RT workstation, but they haven't been showing this demo much since the spring. (At Siggraph, for example, there was no IBM NextStep demo.)
rogerj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda) (11/28/89)
In article <18383@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 2FHGKINGLY@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >Was NeXT at COMDEX? > >Anyone from NeXT care to comment? Well, I can't comment on COMDEX, but I was REAL surprised that NeXT blew of UNEXPO. I mean Informix was there to show WINGZ on their NeXTs, a few other vendors with NeXT products there too, but no LEADER. Funny, NeXT's major competition was there and saw no problem with showing their wears. SUN, DEC, Apple...especially SUN..these guys had their act in gear. A lot of people were surprised. Some SUN folks theorized it this way: Steve doesn't want the "market" to think of the cube as being just a "unix" box BUT he also doesn't want to miss too much of that market either because many of the initial users will come from that croud. Makes sense I suppose. But, from talking to the ISVs there, I think the NeXT world has a BIG problem. Most of these guys (people like WordPerfect, Fox, Lotus) are waiting for the OSF/Open Look outcome. Then they'll develope under that environment because it's under X which is JUST a bit more universal than NeXTStep. One guy from WP said "Look, SUN sells more SPARCs in a month than NeXT will sell this quarter. Well, he may be right. From what I could gather, poeple who ARE looking at the NeXT aren't putting their "Main-line" development efforts into it because of the low installed base. SPARCs sell so that installed base is where the porting effort goes first. If the ports work under a standard like X/Open Look then so much the better because of the installed base. Yes, you can lisence NeXTStep but only IBM chose to do so. Even SUN abandoned (many say for the worse) their proprietary windowing system, NeWS, good though it was, for something that was X11 compliant. I know Steve said "X is brain- damaged," and he may be right, but the ISVs will make or break this platform and right now, they're paying attention to more main-stream unix platforms. I hope someone who works for NeXT will take this message to Steve....they missed the chance to hear it from the source 'cause they don't think shows like UNEXPO are worth making an appearance at (nor COMDEX also apparantly). Just MHO folks. Roger Jagoda Cornell University FQOJ@CORNELLA.CIT.CORNELL.EDU
bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) (11/30/89)
In article <9360@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> rogerj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda) writes:
Even SUN abandoned their proprietary windowing system, NeWS, good
though it was, for something that was X11 compliant.
No, they added X11 protocol capability to the other stuff in the NeWS
server. Architecturally, was a relatively clean and straightforward
thing to do. Nothing was abandoned except perhaps aesthetic purity.