munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan V. Munson) (11/15/88)
We had a seminar here at Berkeley on the NeXT machine. I had a few thoughts about the machine and the company. I should mention that I am a long time Macintosh owner and have fond feelings for that machine and its manufacturer. If I sound somewhat sour about NeXT, some portion of that is just jealousy and regret that I may no longer be on the cutting edge of personal computing (Yeah, Yeah, ... I probably never was, but I felt like it). Good Things =========== 1) It's the first multimedia computer. The Mac brought window/mouse user interfaces to retail computing. If NeXT can find a way to sell outside of the university, it will do the same for multimedia. 2) Good Operating System -- I have only heard good things about Mach. 3) Well designed mother board -- By this I mean that the mother board crams lots of things into a medium-sized space. It is this, plus their much-ballyhooed automated plant that may allow the price to stay at $6500. 4) The Magneto-Optical Disk -- While this is not a particularly fast device, it is clearly an important addition to the memory hierarchy. Hopefully, it will get a couple of orders of magnitude faster. 5) A cheap laser printer Bad Things ========== 1) Not enough memory -- Mach + UNIX + Display PostScript requires about 3 meg. When printing, 2 meg of page buffer is required. Also, I suspect that these fancy applications (i.e. Interface Builder) are large. Common Lisp is at least 3 megs. If you want to avoid lots of paging, you want more than 8 meg of memory. 2) Needs a magnetic disk -- According to the guy who gave the seminar, only about half of NeXT's software developers have the magnetic disk. I think they all want one. The optical disk has an average seek time of 80-90 ms and throughput of (I think) 1 Mbyte/sec. Also, it has a three step write (erase,write,verify). Paging to the optical is not going to be fast. I think the NeXT people would claim that their DMA chip will speed things up quite a bit. It may. Personally, I would rather page to a fast magnetic disk anytime. 3) Thin Ethernet -- NeXT has a Thin Ethernet connector. Here at Berkeley, neither the EECS department or the academic computing service has anything but thick ethernet. As of last week, even NeXT didn't know where to find converters. Each converter will cost about $200-300. Since these machines are targeted at professors, rather than students, it may be hard to build short Thin Ethernets which share one converter. 4) Network connections -- NeXT talks a lot about using networking as a means of software distribution and sharing. That is a very nice thought, but I believe that many universities have only limited network connections at best. Does NeXT plan to help customers bring up a TCP/IP connection to the Internet? I realize that the top 100 universities in the country probably all have CS departments with at least tenuous Internet hookups. This is probably a large enough market to keep NeXT growing for several years. Beyond that, I don't know. 5) Software Distribution -- This one has been beat to death on the net. If software is only sold on the optical disks, then there is a problem with software distribution. If each program comes on a separate disk, then there is high overhead. This can be reduced by somehow bundling larger amounts of software. Apparently, this is the plan. Programs will be made safe from piracy by some kind of system where you unlock those programs you really want by phone. The overhead is not what bothers me. How much of a rake-off will NeXT take from each piece of software it distributes? 6) Memory Parity -- This has also been beat to death. One of my architecture (computer, that is) friends says the lack of a parity bit is a very bad idea. 7) Limited Printer -- Unlike the Laserwriter, the NeXT printer can not be used as a plug-compatible printer for non-NeXT systems. Also, how do multiple machines share one printer? If one machine runs the printer and the other machines just send it PostScript, then it may do a lot work supporting other people's printing. If the 2 Mbytes of data for the printer is transmitted over the net, then network load could get very high. I presume that the first solution is the one used. Other Things ============ 1) No support for X -- I think that Display Postscript is a much better imaging model, but the lack of an X server will make it very hard to justify buying many of these for research in our department. 2) Proprietariness -- NeXT does not plan to release sources of any of their operating system. They have no particular plan to adopt a "standard" UNIX. It will not be an "open" system. I think that Steve Jobs thinks that you can only make money with systems that are largely proprietary. I think he may be right. I should mention that they do plan to make the details of their bus architecture freely available. 3) I think it will be slow -- Think about other operating systems that are similar. Think about NeWS. It is fast enough, but it can be leisurely. Think about object-oriented programs. They are not renowned for speed. Think about the optical disk. Finally, think about other machines which Steve Jobs has championed. Neither the Apple, the Lisa, or the early Macintosh were blazing fast. In fact, one interesting thing is that none of them were cheap, while the NeXT machine appears to be. Anyway, Steve's track record indicates that the machine will not perform as well as one might wish. In summary, if had a budget that could afford a $10-12,000 workstation, I would be sorely tempted by the NeXT machine. It is an exciting design. However, I think there are some things waiting to bite us, like real operating cost and software costs. Also, I think that you must drop the extra $2000 for the "small" hard disk and will most likely need to buy a printer (can they print to any PostScript printer?). I guess I'm glad I don't have a budget big enough because I'm probably safer not being the first one on the block with a NeXT machine. Ethan Munson munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU ...ucbvax!renoir!munson
feigin@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Adam Feigin) (11/15/88)
I was in Philadelphia this past weekend, where the NeXT machine was on
display at the Philly College of the Arts. I went into the exhibit at a
time when there was little activity, so I was able to break the box out of
its silly little demo and play with it for awhile......
Impressions:
A) Hardware
It's a nice machine. The display is very crisp and sharp, even if it is only
B & W. The keyboard could use a little work. It's a little too small for my
taste, and wasn't very comfortable to use. I couldn't find any way to elevate
it for a comfortable feel; I'm also not too keen on the cord(s) plugging into
the middle of the keyboard; like someone else mentioned, even the slightest
overextension of the cord will pry the connector loose from the keyboard.
The beastie has the noisiest disk drive that I have ever heard. On every
access, you can hear ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk as information is read off
the disk. If you get one, I hope you have a loud air-condo system to drown
out the noise...and people complain about Mac fan noise ! (they aint seen
nothin yet)
B)Software
I like Mach; we have it here running onan IBM RT, but NeXTStep is a really
nice interface. I'm disappointed that there's no X-Window System support, but
some kindly soul is bound to port it to NeXT, just as soon as s/he gets his/her
hands on the machine.
General:
I think it was a dumb move to go with a proprietary printer, but I'm just a
grunt down here in the trenches, so my opinion may not mean much. I wont even
bother contributing to the parity wars, except that I've designed a few computers
myself......
Thats it. My opinions are, of course, my own, but I'll let you have them for a
price....
Adam
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet: feigin@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu Adam Feigin
Bitnet: feigin@crnlthry Workstation Consultant
UUCP: {backbonz}!cornell!batcomputer!feigin Cornell National Supercomputer
MaBell: (607) 255-3985 Facility, Visualization Group
"Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (11/16/88)
In article <26812@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan V. Munson) writes: >3) Thin Ethernet -- NeXT has a Thin Ethernet connector. Here at Berkeley, > neither the EECS department or the academic computing service has > anything but thick ethernet. As of last week, even NeXT didn't > know where to find converters. Each converter will cost about > $200-300. Since these machines are targeted at professors, rather > than students, it may be hard to build short Thin Ethernets which > share one converter. Thick and thin Ethernet cable can simply be interconnected with coax adapters. Losses are higher in the thin sections, but the adapters themselves seem clean; I've looked at a mixed cable using a time-domain reflectometer, and I can see tranceivers and sharply bent cable, but not thick/thin adapters. Usually, you convert from thick to thin inside a wall, box, floor, or plenum, then bring two thin cables up to the machine, where they meet at a T connector attached to the back of the machine. Remember, the T connector must be directly on the back of the machine; any cable between the T and the computer causes reflections that trash data. If the entire cable is within the thin Ethernet length limit, everything should be safe. The appropriate adaptor is a constant-impedance UHF (female) to BNC (female) adapter. However, this is a hard-to-find adapter, and it may be necessary to combine a UHF (female) to BNC (male) adapter with a BNC-BNC barrel. Amphenol part 12025 is the adapter. John Nagle
bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (11/19/88)
In article <26812@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan V. Munson) writes: >Good Things >=========== > >1) It's the first multimedia computer. The Mac brought window/mouse user > interfaces to retail computing. If NeXT can find a way to sell > outside of the university, it will do the same for multimedia. They can do multimedia stuff inside academia and it will still "count". >Bad Things >========== > >3) Thin Ethernet -- NeXT has a Thin Ethernet connector. Here at Berkeley, > neither the EECS department or the academic computing service has > anything but thick ethernet. As of last week, even NeXT didn't > know where to find converters. Each converter will cost about > $200-300. Since these machines are targeted at professors, rather > than students, it may be hard to build short Thin Ethernets which > share one converter. There are lots of other places where that's not a problem. I was surprised when I saw that even the public labs in Corey and Evans use thick Ethernet and transceiver drop cables. It's a matter of taste and cost and timing and local culture, I guess. >4) Network connections -- Does NeXT plan to help > customers bring up a TCP/IP connection to the Internet? Though that's a noble goal, I doubt NeXT has the resources to devote to it. I'd think that most institutions with the inclination to get connected would have someone on hand who can ask the right questions of the right people (NSF) and get the ball rolling. Perhaps the prospect of easy SLIP will help. >7) Limited Printer -- Unlike the Laserwriter, the NeXT printer can not be > used as a plug-compatible printer for non-NeXT systems. No, but if there's a NeXT system with a printer on the network, then all the other machines using the Berkeley remote line printer transport, and the Adobe TranScript application-level stuff to generate the PostScript, can use the NeXT box as a print queue server. > Also, how do multiple machines share one printer? See above. If you already have a PostScript printer down the hall on a machine that will let you do remote line printer stuff to it, you can manage without a local NeXT printer at all. > If one machine runs the printer and the other machines just > send it PostScript, then it may do a lot work supporting other > people's printing. The imaging apparently doesn't hurt the printer server's performance much, though you may want to add a couple of Mb to that machine. >Other Things >============ > >1) No support for X -- I think that Display Postscript is a much better > imaging model, but the lack of an X server will make it > very hard to justify buying many of these for research in our > department. Perhaps someone will implement an X protocol server in PostScript. Why should NeXT bother, when their (Stepstone's?) system has technical advantages? >2) Proprietariness -- NeXT does not plan to release sources of any of > their operating system. I'd see the sources to their protocol and toolkit libraries (and Objective C front-end) as more critical, because it will determine whether they can work in a heterogenous application-server environment. Others see their changes to Mach (that may or may not be fed back to CMU) as more critical to a support effort. How about it, Mr. Datri? Can I license it from Stepstone for my Sun? Or do we need to go clear back to HP? > They have no particular plan to adopt a "standard" UNIX. Why bother, when Mach has technical advantages? Besides, as your ""s imply, there's no such thing (yet) as a standard UNIX, much as some parties might like to define theirs as one. I think superiority, not compliancy, should be a design goal in systems that intend to push us forward. > It will not be an "open" system. It would be a lot more so if they would let source out of the bag. >In summary, if had a budget that could afford a $10-12,000 >workstation, I would be sorely tempted by the NeXT machine. If I could afford a NeXT machine, I'd get my instrument rating instead. Then commercial and multiengine. Then, if I had that much more again, I might consider a NeXT machine. Maybe. I need a seaplane rating, too.
caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) (11/19/88)
In article <27965@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes: >In article <26812@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan V. Munson) writes: >> They have no particular plan to adopt a "standard" UNIX. >Why bother, when Mach has technical advantages? Besides, as your ""s >imply, there's no such thing (yet) as a standard UNIX, much as some >parties might like to define theirs as one. Well, everything I've heard has suggested that they're not really married to Mach, believe it or not... at a demo I saw the marketing type gave the impression that if there were enough pressure for a SysV.4 Unix, or something like that, it might be offered. Although, to be honest, I'd be surprised and disappointed if they abandoned Mach... >I think superiority, not compliancy, should be a design goal in >systems that intend to push us forward. Agreed. Also, there were originally some comments in the above message about getting Stepstone to release windowing source. To the best of my knowledge, they're not in a position to do it-- it's not their window system. NeXT seems to have done their windowing code in-house. -Antonio Romero romero@confidence.princeton.edu
brooke@ingr.UUCP (Brooke King) (11/22/88)
In article <26812@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan V. Munson) writes: |We had a seminar here at Berkeley on the NeXT machine. I had a few thoughts |about the machine and the company. I should mention that I am a long time |Macintosh owner and have fond feelings for that machine and its manufacturer. |If I sound somewhat sour about NeXT, some portion of that is just jealousy |and regret that I may no longer be on the cutting edge of personal computing |(Yeah, Yeah, ... I probably never was, but I felt like it). I agree with most of what Mr. Munson writes, but there needs to be a correction: |Good Things |=========== | |1) It's the first multimedia computer. The Mac brought window/mouse user | interfaces to retail computing. If NeXT can find a way to sell | outside of the university, it will do the same for multimedia. The Amiga is the first multimedia computer. I do not own one, but I have used one, and it is a powerful, non-toy machine. I'd probably rather have a NeXT, but accuracy is what this followup is about. |Ethan Munson |munson@renoir.Berkeley.EDU |...ucbvax!renoir!munson -- J Brooke King uunet!ingr!brooke W+1 205 772 7796 H+1 205 895 0824
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM ([Karl Denninger]) (11/23/88)
Regarding the Next machine, Mr. Munson's and brooke@ingr's comments: Yes, the Amiga was the first multimedia system. I have worked on one, played with it, and even programmed the bugger. The Amy 1000 looked, smelled, and played like a game machine -- but the current A2000 is NOT of the same genre. As for NeXT and the like, they had better watch out for Commodore/Amiga. There are some very, very interesting things in the works with regards to the Amiga line and where it is going (not to mention all the playing around that Sun and DEC are doing right now...) Anyone who bets their marbles on the NeXT system without looking at ALL the alternatives deserves, and will get, what he/she has coming to them... Look for "interesting" things out of Commodore before NeXT manages to ship production code. It's gonna be a fun next couple of years, folks. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, ddsw1!karl) Data: [+1 312 566-8912], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality solutions at a fair price"
fullmer@dover.uucp (Glen Fullmer) (11/26/88)
In article <;1> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM ([Karl Denninger]) writes: >Yes, the Amiga was the first multimedia system. I have worked on one, >played with it, and even programmed the bugger. The Amy 1000 looked, >smelled, and played like a game machine -- but the current A2000 is NOT of >the same genre. >-- >Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, ddsw1!karl) >Data: [+1 312 566-8912], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] >Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality solutions at a fair price" I am not sure where you "looked and smelled" but the only basic difference between the Amy 1000 and the A2000 is the backplane, IBM BridgeBoard, and the fact that it looks like an IBM AT. If not having the IBM "look and smell" makes one a game machine, then NeXT also falls into that category. Game machine = fast, interactive, multi-process, color graphics. ^^^^^ NeXT doesn't completely fit my definition of a game machine yet, but hopefully NeXT year! -- _____ _ "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence" {____/ // "over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." \ // _ __Richard P. Feynman, Appendix F of Shuttle Disaster Report {____/ </_</_/ / <_ {sun!sunburn | cadillac} !dover!fullmer
karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer #) (12/01/88)
> >> They have no particular plan to adopt a "standard" UNIX. > Bob Sutterfield writes: > >Why bother, when Mach has technical advantages? Besides, as your ""s > >imply, there's no such thing (yet) as a standard UNIX, much as some > >parties might like to define theirs as one. In article <4501@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) writes: > Well, everything I've heard has suggested that they're not really > married to Mach, believe it or not... at a demo I saw the > marketing type gave the impression that if there were enough pressure > for a SysV.4 Unix, or something like that, it might be offered. Well, Mach is really nothing more (or less) than an OS kernel providing multitasking, memory management and interprocess communications. Efforts are under way at CMU to move 4.3 BSD out of the kernel. Then other operating systems could be ported to run under Mach, gaining Mach's machine-independent virtual memory management and multiprocessing capabilities as well as the potential of greater concurrency in the OS (since a lot of stuff that used to be in the monolithic kernel now runs as separate tasks, and the thread implementation of lightweight processes enables these programs to be written to have even more concurrency. The point is that there is nothing incompatible between Mach and System V per se. System V extensions could be added to Mach. I would be very, very surprised if NeXT abandoned Mach, since it provides their machines the capability to transparently run programs on other Next machines on a network and the eventual ability to add more CPU boards to your Next machine and have Mach transparently make use of them by dispatching tasks on a "most favorable CPU" basis. -- -- +1 713 274 5184, uunet!ficc!karl -- Ferranti International Controls, 12808 W. Airport Blvd., Sugar Land, TX 77478
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (12/01/88)
>System V extensions could be added to Mach.
Including the S5R4 "mmap" system call, complete with the ability to
create a shared writable mapping to a file, right?bader+@andrew.cmu.edu (Miles Bader) (12/01/88)
karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer #) writes: > caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) writes: > > Well, everything I've heard has suggested that they're not really > > married to Mach, believe it or not... at a demo I saw the > > marketing type gave the impression that if there were enough pressure > > for a SysV.4 Unix, or something like that, it might be offered. Marketing types say lots of things... -Miles
jr@bbn.com (John Robinson) (12/01/88)
In article <2330@ficc.uu.net>, karl@ficc (karl lehenbauer #) writes: >Well, Mach is really nothing more (or less) than an OS kernel providing >multitasking, memory management and interprocess communications. Efforts >are under way at CMU to move 4.3 BSD out of the kernel. Then other operating >systems could be ported to run under Mach, gaining Mach's machine-independent >virtual memory management and multiprocessing capabilities as well as the >potential of greater concurrency in the OS... I love it! Mach : Unix :: VM : MVS. So now maybe Unix can be considered a *real* operating system! Except that the virtual machine provided by Mach is much, much nicer to the client OS than that provided by VM (== generic S/370 "hardware"). Liberal smileys; I know this is less than accurate really. -- /jr jr@bbn.com or bbn!jr