clp@wjh12.harvard.edu (Charles L. Perkins) (09/06/89)
Tonight at the NeXT Boston Computer Society Meeting there was a system engineer from NeXT who showed us Release 0.981 (N.B. < 1.0) which is one of the asymp- totic sequence on the way to 1.0 (0.99999....). He said 1.0 was due last week of Sept. or first week of Oct. and sounded serious about the statement). New features: (1) Preferences -- a new timezone setting feature that is super-cool; it shows the world map and allows you to click/drag timezone regions (not just strips, the REAL zone) across the world to set your locale. -- a new Panel that allows you to place ALL application top-level menus at some other location than the upper left, set the default font, etc. -- many new Icons/formats for the old panels (some nice, some strange) (2) Digital Webster and Librarian have a new look but ~ same functionality. (3) Sound editor and voice-edit in Mail app now show your voice "bouncing" a strip in real time so you can "see" yourself recording. (4) Monsterscope plus the Spectrum Analyzer is back in the standard distrib. (5) BreakApp (and others) give you full musical control over sound tweaking in real time (play with timbre, decay, etc.). (6) A really beautiful real-time Algebra front-end for Mathematica was shown that allowed changed a,b,c,d parameters for all sorts of equations and M. would recalculate in real time new results; for educational uses. (7) Saw a beautiful side-by-side demo of Mandelbrot Set being calculated by 68030 and DSP (DSP seemed 3-6 times faster, depending on the complexity of the region of M. Set being displayed). (8) Saw a topology lab tool that displayed 3-d shaded objects from Math. descriptions of their shape; somewhat slow (30-50 polygons/sec) but nice looking and still wonderful for deforming/playing with shapes. (9) Saw a beautiful marbled chess board and 3-d chess pieces as a front-end to GNU Chess; piece movement seemed really nice. [DAMN! I was going to do exactly this as a free software hack....but it's nice to know people at NeXT are serious about GNU, too!] And their were MANY others demos and new things I couldn't play with but saw in the browser... there are claimed performance enhancements in Math. and in the system overall (not all that obvious to me). This release is not generally available, and is only an internal version, but it really encouraged me about the Look and Feel of 1.0.....it was very nice with lots of new good stuff, so I wait with bated breath for my own copy of this and more.... With a NeXT at last, Charles
mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu (Jim McCoy ) (09/07/89)
In article <393@wjh12.harvard.edu> clp@wjh12.UUCP (Charles L. Perkins) writes: >Tonight at the NeXT Boston Computer Society Meeting there was a > system engineer from NeXT who showed us Release 0.981 (N.B. < 1.0) > which is one of the asymptotic sequence on the way to 1.0 > (0.99999....). He said 1.0 was due last week of Sept. or first week > of Oct. and sounded serious about the statement). > Don't they all sound serious ? ;-) I wonder if the hold-ups are due to? >New features: > [stuff deleted] > > (9) Saw a beautiful marbled chess board and 3-d chess pieces as a front-end > to GNU Chess; piece movement seemed really nice. [DAMN! I was going > to do exactly this as a free software hack....but it's nice to know > people at NeXT are serious about GNU, too!] > Okay, everyone who was thinking of doing this as well please raise your hand :-) Now maybe some of us can start hacking the little go board they supply to interact with Gnugo (although it is a VERY weak player). > And their were MANY others demos and new things I couldn't play with > but saw in the browser... there are claimed performance > enhancements in Math. and in the system overall (not all that > obvious to me). This is what i think is of prime importance here. If system speed (at least on the graphics side) does not make a huge leap, i think this system will start down the same road that the Lisa went. I like the system, but i'm not buying unless it gets MUCH faster. > With a NeXT at last, > > Charles jim ------------------------------< Jim McCoy >------------------------------------ mccoy@acns.nwu.edu | "...far too many notes for my taste" #include <disclaimer.h> | -Phantom of the Opera "To thine own self be true"
guerra@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Frank M. Guerra) (09/07/89)
In article <1131@accuvax.nwu.edu> mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu (Jim McCoy ) writes: >In article <393@wjh12.harvard.edu> clp@wjh12.UUCP (Charles L. Perkins) writes: >>Tonight at the NeXT Boston Computer Society Meeting there was a >> system engineer from NeXT who showed us Release 0.981 (N.B. < 1.0) >> which is one of the asymptotic sequence on the way to 1.0 >> (0.99999....). He said 1.0 was due last week of Sept. or first week >> of Oct. and sounded serious about the statement). >> > >Don't they all sound serious ? ;-) I wonder if the hold-ups are due >to? > From what I was remember, 1.0 has already missed it's original ship date of mid-august, but I too am confident in their claim of shipping by Oct 1. There were a variety of problems with the delay of 0.9 not related to the OS that I don't see arising again. I sincerely doubt that NeXT wants to alienate its current following with another late release. >> And their were MANY others demos and new things I couldn't play with >> but saw in the browser... there are claimed performance >> enhancements in Math. and in the system overall (not all that >> obvious to me). > >This is what i think is of prime importance here. If system speed (at >least on the graphics side) does not make a huge leap, i think this >system will start down the same road that the Lisa went. I like the >system, but i'm not buying unless it gets MUCH faster. I saw (perhaps) the same version here, but I couldn't be sure of the version number since instead of the release number in the NeXT icon, a greek Beta symbol was there instead. When they gave their presentation, I *immediately* noticed that it seemed faster than what I was used to. In my opinion, display performance will improve in 1.0 and when I asked the NeXT rep to what extent, he figured that a 20% improvement is close; not staggering, but better. In fact to show it off, there was a Saturn demo that show a moon whizzing around the planet at a fairly brisk pace. Also, both of the sound applications that I saw had a peak level meter that did a very good job of keeping in sync with the audio. My general impression of what I remember is that a lot of nice touches have been added. I eagerly look forward to receiving our copy. Frank Internet Mail : guerra@lll-crg.llnl.gov NeXT Mail : guerra@cae.llnl.gov
cbenda@unccvax.UUCP (carl m benda) (09/08/89)
According to the Wall Street Journal Sept. 7, Steve has announced 1.0 which WILL ship to Business Land and all over on September 18!! That's 1.0 not .9xx /Carl