carlos@tybalt.caltech.edu (Carlos Salinas) (08/09/89)
NeXT marketing strategy. The "world on a disk" idea is the whole reason why the NeXT appears to have such a lack of security. Apparently NeXT wanted the user to be able to reboot the machine (the NMI feature) and have complete control of the workstation. However, the speed of the OD tends to limit "real" work and the time the NeXT takes to boot is also quite a nuisance. Comments and suggestions Instead of trashing the "world on a disk" concept NeXT could implement an operating system in which the system files would remain in the machine and files needed to customize and run the system would be on the users floptical. This would allow Joe user to be king of his environment, and would let the workstation retain enough integrity to be a functioning, secure member of the network. Whenever Joe NMIs however, it would only dump his customizations, the system would remain intact. Thus Joe gets all the power of being standalone yet has access to the network. Carlos Salinas