jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) (12/29/88)
In article <19728@ames.arc.nasa.gov> mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) writes: >Me got one! Well, ahem, WE, got one. Our nExt, magically appeared >in our lab this morning. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, >but here are a few first-hand observations: It is really slick!! Me too, played with it for about five hours yesterday. I agree, very slick. > >"Slick" is a technical term meaning, boffo, neato, keen, etc. A combination >of elegance, fun and grace. > >NeXTSTeP is beautiful. I couldn't get my eyes off of the thing. It'll be >hard to go back home to my Amiga now, if it wasn't for the advantage of color. >NeXTStep makes the Mac interface look like stone clubs, and flint spears, I agree that NeXTSteP is better than the finder/toolbox but I don't think stone clubs and flint spears is a good analogy for comparing the two interfaces. I think it *IS* a good analogy for comparing the hardware, however. The applications that will 'fit' in a NeXT will be much much better than those that will fit in a Mac. That fact the the NeXT has a much better display, more speed, more storage, etc... in the lowest model will make a big difference. (The fact that it uses a *real* operating system will help too). >(read : primitive). The "browser" is as neat as I expected it to be. I'd >like to do one for the Amy, but I'm afraid Steve might call me up. . . I doubt it. It is good but it is also 'obvious'. I'm sure dozens of people have conceived of such a program, there might even be another implementation similar to the NeXT's browser on some other machine. > >Haven't played with the Interface Builder, but it looked good. > Ditto. Anyone know if there are plans to add an interface to C++ in addition to the Objective C bindings? I don't want to learn Yet Another C Derived Language. >One small detail I don't remember anyone mentioning before about the >window motions. When you move a window, you MOVE a window. Not just an >outline of the thing, but the entire window. Also, windows have there own idea of how 'deep' they are. For example normal windows move 'under' the icon dock but over other windows. Torn off menus move over other windows regardless (but also under the icon dock). I haven't used any of the applications extensively yet. I played with the dictionary for a while and I'm very impressed with it. It includes a thesaurus, and it suggests corrected spellings if you get close enough with a word you want defined. There were three songs for the DSP that I could find. Two of them, "Emma" and "Velvet", are documented as having been composed by a one year-old. Either this is blatantly false, a miracle has occurred, or liberties have been taken with the definition of "composed." One of the supplied program is some sort of primitive editor. I don't know how 'primitive' it is but whenever you open a file and the browser doesn't know what application it belongs to it runs this editor on it. I like this idea (one of the more frustrating things about the Mac is that it *has* to know exactly what application to run a file) but I haven't played with the editor much yet. Anyone? I ran the mail program and tried to send myself voice mail. No luck. I think that the microphone was not hooked up because I followed the instructions completely but it didn't play back any sound to me when I requested it. (It was obvious how to do it, of course but when it didn't work I looked through the documentation). Conclusion? This was version 0.8. When it's up to 1.X or 2.X I will want one bad. I want one now but it's not quite ready yet.
ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (12/30/88)
In article <JEFF.88Dec28165044@stormy.atmos.washington.edu> jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) writes: >I ran the mail program and tried to send myself voice mail. No luck. I think >that the microphone was not hooked up because I followed the instructions >completely but it didn't play back any sound to me when I requested it. You should note that the NeXT machine doesn't have a built-in microphone; did you have an external one hooked up? If you just want to test sound record/playback, you can also use the sfrecord/sfplay utilities from the shell: sfrecord FILENAME sfplay FILENAME Sfrecord will record 8kHz sound into the specified file, sfplay will play it back. (Sfplay can also play back 22 and 44 kHz samples sound.) Other sf* programs exist to "optimize" gain, change sampling rates (from 8kHz to 22 or 44), trim samples, etc... (Look at /usr/bin/sf*.) A sound record/play facility also exists in Interface Builder. Ali Ozer, NeXT Developer Support aozer@NeXT.com
jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) (12/30/88)
In article <5830@polya.Stanford.EDU> ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) writes: >In article <JEFF.88Dec28165044@stormy.atmos.washington.edu> <jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) writes: >>I ran the mail program and tried to send myself voice mail. No luck. < >You should note that the NeXT machine doesn't have a built-in microphone; <did you have an external one hooked up? > Oh. Well, I guess it's a good thing that I was alone in the lab. I was definitely under the impression that there was a microphone in the NeXT. I vaguely recall some discussion in this group from a while back about the low quality of said microphone. Perhaps I was hallucinating. >If you just want to test sound record/playback, you can also use the <sfrecord/sfplay utilities from the shell: Yes, I found these and tried them too with no luck.
bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (01/10/89)
In article <JEFF.88Dec28165044@stormy.atmos.washington.edu> jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) writes: >I ran the mail program and tried to send myself voice mail. No luck. In article <5830@polya.Stanford.EDU> ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) writes: >You should note that the NeXT machine doesn't have a built-in >microphone; did you have an external one hooked up? In article <JEFF.88Dec29122409@stormy.atmos.washington.edu> jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) writes: >Oh. Well, I guess it's a good thing that I was alone in the lab. Reminiscent of the scene in the Star Trek Saves The Whales movie where Scotty says "Computer!" into the Macintosh mouse, right? :-)