stefan@lbl-csam.arpa (Stefan gottschalk) (11/22/89)
Hmm. Everyone who experiences it says the NeXT has the best user interface around. After all, just about everyone is accustomed to the Mac interface, so the NeXT comes across like an old friend. But some of my peers are doubtful of the NeXT's value- "it's too slow," or "it's too expensive," or "it doesn't have any software," or "it doesn't run X or any other window system anything's written for." Well, frankly, I love my NeXT. But many of the people whose opinion I respect most are very critical of the machine. They say it won't (or shouldn't) survive. This upsets me. I need something to rebut with. So, I'd like to know who out there believes the NeXT has a future in a world of Macintoshes, PCs, Sparcstations, etc., and why. E-mail me at stefan@csam.lbl.gov, or post if this issue is of common interest. thanks, stefan
chari@nueces.cactus.org (Chris Whatley) (11/22/89)
stefan@lbl-csam.arpa (Stefan gottschalk) writes: >Hmm. Everyone who experiences it says the NeXT has the best user interface >around. After all, just about everyone is accustomed to the Mac interface, so >the NeXT comes across like an old friend. But some of my peers are doubtful >of the NeXT's value- >"it's too slow," Compared to what? My machine is slow compared to the sparcstations I use. The difference is, however, that I USE my NeXT more than I use the sparcs. There are always four or more apps running on my system at home at one time while, but, when using a sparc, I never have anything more than a few xterms going. I think the speed is adequate and that it could be faster but, it is nothing to cry about. It is like that because it is churning away on a very nice and powerful object oriented illusion to keep us sane and happy. >"it's too expensive," Hah. I sold my Mac II and software for about $1000.00 less than what I paid for this machine with a 330 meg drive. I would have to say it is relatively inexpensive. (then again, you should have seen my mac!) >"it doesn't have any software," Yeah. I guess all that useful stuff in /NextApps is just a bunch of zeros taking up filespace. I find I am missing three applications. Illustrator, FrameMaker and a good Terminal program. Frame is out, Illustrator is coming and hopefully NeXT will dump Terminal and Shell and give us a decent emulator. In the mean time, I'm looking forward to X on the NeXT so I can run xterm. (see below) >"it doesn't run X or any other window system anything's written for." Well, just wait a few weeks. There was an announcement on BIX (Byte's bbs) stating that NeXT X was finished and almost ready for release. I'm pretty sure it is R3 and not R4 but, that R4 is coming soon. Apparently, a window on the NeXT becomes an x root window. I don't really know anything more than that. >Well, frankly, I love my NeXT. But many of the people whose >opinion I respect most are very critical of the machine. They say it won't >(or shouldn't) survive. This upsets me. I need something to rebut with. So, >I'd like to know who out there believes the NeXT has a future in a world of >Macintoshes, PCs, Sparcstations, etc., and why. Well, I say 'like what you like'. It is silly how we get into these product wars al the time. I have a hunch that NeXT is not going to crash and burn in the near future. Hell, they've even made it into a music video along with many other indulgent little devices (Paula Abdul's "The Way That You Love Me"). The NeXT is hardly in a postition to fail with a marketplace full of sub-flakey systems like Suns but, that's another story. Chris -- Chris Whatley Work: chari@pelican.ma.utexas.edu (NeXT Mail) (512/471-7711 ext 123) Play: chari@nueces.cactus.org (NeXT Mail) (512/499-0475) Also: chari@emx.utexas.edu
aisl@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Lawrence Landry) (11/22/89)
In article <4275@helios.ee.lbl.gov> stefan@csam.lbl.gov (Stefan gottschalk) writes: > >...the NeXT's value- "it's too slow," or "it's too expensive," or "it doesn't >have any software," or "it doesn't run X or any other window system anything's >written for." ... I am tired of hearing this argument. In 1984 an 1985 I heard these same arguments about the Macintosh. Noone is arguing that it won't succeed now. When the PC was first introduced, lots of people were saying it wasn't worth the money because it couldn't run "REAL" programs (like SAS) but now it does run them. Look at the NeXT for what it provides. A nice user interface with a powerful operating system and hardware underneath. The only system that has as nice a userinterface is the Macintosh but it doesn't have the hardware that the NeXT has. SUN & co. are ~18 months behind on the user interface so the biggest threat to the success of the NeXT is how quickly Apple can upgrade their operating system to have some of the features of mach (IPC, etc.) Right now, it is not a machine for everyone. However, as more software is developed it will solve the needs of more people; this should cause more developers to write programs for it and then the cycle begins. -- Larry Landry University of Rochester
kdp9565@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Keith D. Perkins) (11/23/89)
In article <4275@helios.ee.lbl.gov> stefan@csam.lbl.gov (Stefan gottschalk) writes: > "it's too slow," Only in comparison to some of the newer PC that have very recently come out. Run any GUI on a PC and I'll bet it runs as slow or slower than the NeXT. > "it's too expensive," Depends on what you are looking for. If the NeXT has the programs you need, it is probably the best buy on the market. > "it doesn't have any software," This is stupid. The NeXT has lots of software, and all of it is good (Something That cannot be said for most machines). The only software I see that is missing is a good spreadsheet (Lotus compatible would be nice for all those Lotus users, and a good CAD program (AutoCAD reccomended). Color display would almost be a necessity for both of those (graphs are easier to read), so the new NeXT that had been rumored should easily be able to support them. > "it doesn't run X or any other window system anything's programs" They're working on it. Last I heard it was about 80% complete on a running Beta version. > >thanks, > stefan Keith Perkins The University of Texas at Austin
jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (11/23/89)
The real question is not whether the NeXT will succeed or not, it's what can it succeed as? 1> It has created a new standard for workstations. One that will last quite a long time. 2> The company tech support and user support will also set standards for excellence. 3> It quite possibly may become the first reasonably priced distributed process object-oriented mainframe. (That means a bunch of them in a network all doing the same things) (very oversimplified :->) Will it be a success at workstations, most likely. Will it be a success at user support, It won't hurt it. Will it be a success as a distributed processor, most likely. Will it be a success as a personal computer, quite unlikely in the near future. BTW-it actually has quite a large software base. Anything that runs under Un*x will run, and I heard a rumor about SUN 68030 binaries can be atomed over. MiKE RuTMaN SoFTMeD
blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) (11/23/89)
In article <21327@ut-emx.UUCP> kdp9565@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Keith D. Perkins) writes: |In article <4275@helios.ee.lbl.gov> stefan@csam.lbl.gov (Stefan gottschalk) writes: I think these are the wrong questions. Does anyone know of a large-scale purchase where NeXT has beat out the competition (Macs, Suns, or PCs)? I don't, and I'm willing to bet that there haven't been many. If not, why not? Well, it either doesn't have the price/value to beat the competition, or it does but purchasers don't know that it does. We can look for additional software, cleaner software, more bang for the buck, or configurations for fewer bucks to address the first problem. NeXT apparently thinks there are problems in the latter category also, hence the announcement some time ago (but not mentioned in this newsgroup) that Jobs had taken over the marketing of the box. One way that I think the NeXT is unlike the Mac is that the Mac was bought by the person on the street, who convinced himself/herself that it was worthwhile and became an evangelist. Apple is reaping the rewards today. I don't think this is going to happen (on any scale) with the NeXT in the forseeable future. While I'm under the impression that NeXT has plenty of cash, they can't play indefinitely in this market (however it's defined) unless they have volume. I don't think they've figured out how to get it yet. Tom
mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (11/23/89)
In article <6431@cs.yale.edu> blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes: >While I'm under the impression that NeXT has plenty of cash, they can't >play indefinitely in this market (however it's defined) unless they >have volume. I don't think they've figured out how to get it yet. Here is one sure-fire way for NeXT boxes to take off. Let's face it. There's a whole lot of Unix groupies who'd kill for a Unix box of their very own. I know the feeling; I was in a similar position as a DEC-20 groupie. Many of these guys and gals have no chance of getting enough cash to buy a NeXT. On the other hand, they're pretty good programmers and with the right motivation would work for virtually nothing. NeXT should identify 100 or so of these individuals (note: I said *individuals*, not schools), and loan them NeXT machines for free in return for work on a particular project. They would be registered developers, and all that. Possible criteria may include academic status (e.g. undergraduate students only). The loan would be for some period (e.g. 6 months) and would end either with the return of the machine to NeXT or transfer of title of the machine to the individual, based upon a pre-agreed set of criteria (e.g. getting the project finished to NeXT's satisfaction). This program would be amazingly cheap -- a couple of hundred kilobucks at most -- and would instantly generate 100 NeXT fanatics. It would certainly get a lot of software development work at a much lower price than salaried employees would cost. Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098 mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU -- MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM -- (206) 842-2385 Atheist & Proud -- R90/6 pilot -- Lum-chan ga suki ja!!! tabesaserarenakerebanaranakattarashii...kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru
jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) (11/23/89)
In article <4275@helios.ee.lbl.gov> stefan@lbl-csam.arpa (Stefan gottschalk) writes: >Hmm. Everyone who experiences it says the NeXT has the best user >interface around. After all, just about everyone is accustomed to the >Mac interface, so the NeXT comes across like an old friend. You hang around with different people. Almost every day, I hear complaints about aspects of the NeXT design, quite a few related to the user interface. Comments about manual sections stained brown with design philosophy are among the milder things I hear (and say :-)). Once people get past the "gee, whiz" stage, they seem to find things a bit off-kilter. As for the Mac-to-NeXT transition being simple, don't bet the rent. I've watched experienced Mac users go nuts trying to figure out a NeXT, even if they also had substantial Unix experience (hi, Elizabeth!). The only place where a NeXT is clearly superior to the other machines in our environment is as a DTP workstation, and that's due in large part to Tomas Rokicki's TeX distribution. Even for that, the user has to learn yet another set of window system conventions, which resemble the Mac's only superficially (scrollbars, anyone?). >Well, frankly, I love my NeXT. But many of the people whose opinion I >respect most are very critical of the machine. Good for them! There's lots of room for improvement, and I have this recurring nightmare about what NeXT might do if no one complains when they find something they don't like (thank GHOD they let 0.8 out when they did!). I'm critical of the machine because it doesn't fit in with our environment well. It's gotten a lot better since 0.8, but there are still rough spots (some of them, oddly enough, brightly polished; I guess albedo is also in the eye of the beholder). >They say it won't (or shouldn't) survive. This upsets me. I need >something to rebut with. My usual response is that the only thing that could kill the company is the fall of western civilization (half :-)). The money and the names involved just aren't going to roll over and die. Even if a lot of people think they should :-). >So, I'd like to know who out there believes the NeXT has a future in a >world of Macintoshes, PCs, Sparcstations, etc., and why. Ask me again when the system is finished (1.1? 1.2?). -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)
fellman@celece.ucsd.edu (Ronald Fellman) (11/24/89)
I also like my NeXT and I think that most of the criticism is unwarranted. 1) Price: for $6500 you get a 17" monitor, a DSP chip, an R/W OD, and a significant amount of software (Mathmatica, WriteNow, a Draw prog., etc.) Even if you forget about the OD, you can buy a system for $5000 A Sparcstation is >$6000 and a Sun 3/80 is (I think) $5000. Neither has the free software or DSP (which IS useful as a math co-processor). In fact, run the Mandelbrot demo using the DSP and compare that to the Sparcstation. I think that they are about the same speed. Even if you compare it to the Sun 3/80, and you ignore the DSP, then I feel that the user interface alone makes the NeXT a clear winner over the Sun. I won't even bother to compare this to a MacIIci since that is so outrageously overpriced. 2) software: It is really very close to being here (like a couple of weeks away). For example: TopDraw (and Artisan) can be purchased around Dec. 1 for about the same price as MacDrawII (but it is MUCH MORE powerful). FrameMaker is already here and the Sun version won't be out until after January. Wingz is due out by January. DaynaFile will be ready by mid December. These programs represent most of the applications people buy for Macs. Of course, Macs DON'T have the UNIX tools that NeXT has. This includes programming tools like cc, lisp, an editor, grep!!!, awk, sed, tex, etc. You can get some of these things but you have to PAY extra. I have heard that X-windows for the NeXT is also almost ready. MIT is just holding off for the latest version of X to be officially released before we can get it. I've also heard people praise the previewer for tex on the NeXT. Of course Suns don't have many of these applications programs yet either. However, if you wish to do CAD work, I would easily agree that NeXT would NOT be the right choice. (I am getting a DECStation 3100 for that). NeXT doesn't have the speed or color required for that. BUT, NeXT has the networking capability to live very comfortably in a heterogenous environment. I view NeXT as a great general purpose workstation as opposed to a CAD workstation. 3) service: NeXT clearly has the BEST servicing around!! Whenever we have had any problems, they have responded IMMEDIATELY. In ALL cases they shipped out the replacement part first, no hassles, then we shipped the bad part back. In the first case, a Maxtor Drive had SCSI problems and a new disk was sent here. In the only other problem I've seen, my mouse button was sticking and again another mouse was sent out on the same day that I called. (Thank you NeXT!!) My experience is with four eXT computers. Three of them have been here since March. Now for Sun: I have heard of a 3/50 CPU going bad in another dept. on campus. Sun required them to first send in the old board for servicing. They then lost that board and are denying it. In fact, I have NEVER heard a good word about Sun service or reliability. Apple: They have had incredible problems with their internal drives lately. After a few months the drives would get stuck due to lubricant problems. The 'fix' was to send the user a new ROM (assuming that the drive was still under the 3 month warranty), that beefed up the power to the servo. This caused the disk to become MUCH slower as a side effect (almost unusable in at least one case). To summarize: I think that NeXT definitely has a fighting chance. The next few months will probably be crucial depending upon how much software comes out and how well it is accepted. Mac won't have a comparable UNIX at least until the summer and is much more expensive. Sun, HP, and DEC, will not have the general-purpose applications or user interface also until the summer (if then). The cost of their software may be MUCH more than for the NeXT. (Frame for the Sun is twice the price as Frame for the NeXT. Mathmatica is also expensive.) -ron fellman (rfellman@ucsd.edu)
phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (11/24/89)
> NeXT .... can't play indefinitely in this market > (however it's defined) unless they have volume. > I don't think they've figured out how to get it yet. How about going to the COMDEX to show themselves ? That's to lowlife a place for them to show up ? What's wrong with these guys ?
rca@brunix (Ronald C.F. Antony) (11/27/89)
there are a few things to say:
a) "It's too slow"
it is not that much slower than a sparcstation with X, although
many say NeXT's window system is slow. It may have less MIPS,
but when a lot of programs run, a RISC machine comes down in
speed pretty soon (context-switching). Read just what (was it
UNIXWORLD ?) wrote about the DECstation 3200 which is faster
than a SPARCstation: if it comes down to 'real'-applications
and not just benchmarks, it is about the speed of a good 386.
But if we are talking about speed, then look at the future:
not only 68040 and the new DSP are coming, MACH has support
for multiprocessing, which other UNIX-worksations can't offer
in such a way. Drop in a few CPU's and then talk about speed
again.
b) "It's too expensive"
just BUY (not steal) a good wordprocessor, LISP, SQL-database
server, Mathematica etc. for the SPARCstation and compare
then the price. Look what a reasonable amount of disk-storage
costs for the other machines. The optical drive is the ultimate
thing if you can't afford a 2Gigabyte tape streamer plus huge
disk storage. You can use it for backup as well as for data/
programs you only need occasionaly. And 50$/256MB....
The next NeXT will anyway have 512Mb and a shorter access time
(fingers crossed).
c) "It doesn't have any software"
Seldom a brand new machine has had more software than the NeXT
(of course I do not talk about the 86,286,386,486 PC-clones,
but they never are really new machines)
A lot of the big software houses are developing for the NeXT.
What is here is impressive, and what is said to come is even
more. (Seen beta versions of WingZ e.g.?)
Most of the standard UNIX-stuff can be ported, if you need not
the graphical userinterface.
d) "It doesn't run X"
Well who want's X? Even on 12MB SPARCstations WITH graphics-
accelerator this thing just creeps! Besides X is in the works,
if you really need it. That it is not already here is due to
the fact, that MIT want's first X11R4 to be done and then port
the newest release to the NeXT, instead of porting it twice.
So it even might be one of the first machines with the NEW X on
it...
e) "does not have color"
well early next year we'll see 32-bit color:
24 color + 8bit transparency, probably we will also see the
renderman language on the NeXT pretty soon.
If you want to see where NeXT is going, then look at what NeXT
does with release 1.0 and compare it to SUN-OS 1.0 or MS-DOS 1.0
Then you will see that it is only a starting point, with plenty
room for growth.
Ron
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." - Bernhard Shaw
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> rca@cs.brown.edu / antony@cogsci.cog.brown.edu / st502509@brownvm.bitnet <<
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." - Bernhard Shawgeoff@ITcorp.com (Geoff Kuenning) (11/27/89)
> b) "It's too expensive"
Boy, not in my eyes. I've been looking at the NeXT at the UCLA Students'
Store, and comparing it to educational prices for the SPARCstation 1 and
one of the DECstations (the salesperson was sufficiently confused/ing that
I'm not sure exactly which DECstation I was looking at!).
The net of my comparisons is that, for a similar price (the Sun and DEC
are about 4% higher), NeXT gives me 660 MB compared to Sun and DEC's 330.
The DEC machine gives me more RAM, but virtual memory makes RAM purely
a performance issue, whereas when you run out of disk, you're really out.
On top of this, the DEC and Sun must use tape for archival storage and
backup; this means that you must upload a tape to disk before you can
really access the files freely; on the NeXT I'll be able to stuff in an
optical disk and compile (or whatever) to my heart's content.
The bottom line is that, for my purposes, the NeXT is a vastly better
deal. I'm putting money down on one tomorrow.
--
Geoff Kuenning geoff@ITcorp.com uunet!desint!geoffkevin@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Kevin Harris) (11/28/89)
Here is one sure-fire way for NeXT boxes to take off. Let's face it. There's a whole lot of Unix groupies who'd kill for a Unix box of their very own. I know the feeling; I was in a similar position as a DEC-20 groupie. Many of these guys and gals have no chance of getting enough cash to buy a NeXT. On the other hand, they're pretty good programmers and with the right motivation would work for virtually nothing. NeXT should identify 100 or so of these individuals (note: I said *individuals*, not schools), and loan them NeXT machines for free in return for work on a particular project. They would be registered developers, and all that. Possible criteria may include academic status (e.g. undergraduate students only). The loan would be for some period (e.g. 6 months) and would end either with the return of the machine to NeXT or transfer of title of the machine to the individual, based upon a pre-agreed set of criteria (e.g. getting the project finished to NeXT's satisfaction). This program would be amazingly cheap -- a couple of hundred kilobucks at most -- and would instantly generate 100 NeXT fanatics. It would certainly get a lot of software development work at a much lower price than salaried employees would cost. Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2098 mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU -- MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM -- (206) 842-2385 Okay, the line forms here to sign up. |->
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (11/28/89)
in article <21597@brunix.UUCP>, rca@brunix (Ronald C.F. Antony) says: > there are a few things to say: > a) "It's too slow" > it is not that much slower than a sparcstation with X, although > many say NeXT's window system is slow. It may have less MIPS, > but when a lot of programs run, a RISC machine comes down in > speed pretty soon (context-switching). Depends on what you consider slow. The SparcStation certainly has a larger CPU context than anything 68030 based; SPARC is a register-window RISC. There are plenty of RISC machines that aren't much different in context-swap time than a 68030, and a couple that are better. Which really doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you're talking about single-user performance under something UNIX-ish. The SPARC CPU in the SparcStation has about twice the integer performance of the NeXT 68030 implementation, and about 10x the floating point performance. That's one of the main reasons we have SparcStations here at work; they're used for IC design work. Sun's been traditionally bad at making fast displays. Our 7.16 MHz 68000 machines look good compared to Suns as far as display speed goes. I don't think I'd pick a SparcStation for desktop publishing work. I'm pretty happy with that on my Amiga 2500/30. A NeXT might be a good choice too, though it's about twice the price. Lots of folks use Macs for this job too. Obviously for DTP, speed is not the most critical of factors, once you've hit a point of being acceptably fast. > Read just what (was it > UNIXWORLD ?) wrote about the DECstation 3200 which is faster > than a SPARCstation: if it comes down to 'real'-applications > and not just benchmarks, it is about the speed of a good 386. Then again, a good '386 system these days runs at 33MHz, has 32-64k of external 0 wait cache, and beyond that some interleaved SCRAM. That's going to do quite a few things things noticably faster than a NeXT, even given the inherent advantages of an '030 over a '386 at the UNIX OS. > Ron -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough
jj@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (JJSolo (Munsun)) (11/29/89)
In article <6431@cs.yale.edu> blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes: > >While I'm under the impression that NeXT has plenty of cash, they can't >play indefinitely in this market (however it's defined) unless they >have volume. I don't think they've figured out how to get it yet. > I suppose that this might be so -- but more importantly ( I feel ) is that the NeXT has proved a point. Even if NeXT fails, it has shown what a UNIX box can be. With SUN's terrible service, windowing systems that left some things to be desired, and the high price for getting a unix system with comercial software, I feel that NeXT and all it offers, has made a mark -- and hopefully it won't be one soon forgoten. jj -- ** jj@polyslo.calpoly.edu This is your brain, * * * * brain on drugs. Any questions? * * * * ** << Umm yes! Can I have a Brain McMuffin? >> * * * ** * *****************************************************