ls1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Leonard John Schultz) (09/20/90)
I got this report from a friend. I take no responsibility for it's contents
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REPORT ON THE NEW NeXT's
From: Walter Daugherity
September 18, 1990
San Francisco
Steve Jobs premiered the new NeXT's this morning at Davies Symphony
Hall in San Francisco to a capacity crowd. Frankly acknowledging the major
areas needing improvement (speed, cost, number of application packages,
color), he specifically addressed each one.
In summary, with a 25 MHz 68040 CPU the new single-board NeXTstation
(which NeXT calls a "slab" to emphasize its solidity, in comparison to the
"flimsy pizza-box" enclosure of a Sparcstation) comes in at $333 per MIP: $4995
list for 15 MIPS. Of the alternatives Jobs listed, a Sun Sparc SLC was just
over $500 per MIP at $6500, with a 386 or Mac ci at $2000 per MIP. A
Mathemtica benchmark which ran in 26 seconds on this NeXT took 40 seconds on a
Sparc 1+ and 250 seconds on a Mac ci.
Also included are a 2.88 MB 3.5" floppy (with read/write compatability
for 720 KB and 1.44 MB diskettes, all MS-DOS format), a built-in
twisted-pair interface in addition to the thin-wire ethernet on the
original NeXT, a 105 MB disk preloaded with the system software (340 MB
optional), 8 MB RAM (expandable to 32 MB with low-cost DRAM SIMM's), a
microphone built in
to the 10-pound lighter monitor, and the same basic features of the
original NeXT except for the optical disk.
In the area of applications packages, Jobs promised over 100
applications by the end of the year, including major ones in four categories:
spreadsheet and analysis (dominated by PC's)-Improv from Lotus,
PowerStep from Ashton-Tate, and Wingz from Informix; desktop publishing
(dominated by Macs)--Frame, WordPerfect, TopDraw, and Adobe Illustrator; custom
software development environment (dominated by Sun)--Interface Builder
from NeXT; and "interpersonal computing," which NeXT intends to
dominate in the 1990's.
Color was the star of the show: the NeXTdimension 32-bit color board
and the "NeXTstation Color" with 16-bit color. The bits for each pixel are
allocated as 3 8-bit RGB fields with 8-bit opacity, or 3 4-bit RGB
fields with 4-bit opacity, respectively. The 32-bit 4 MB VRAM can also be
used to double-buffer 16-bit/pixel windows. VRAM on the 16-bit color is 1.5
MB.
The 32-bit color board has a 33 MHz i860 (64-bit RISC) graphics
processor and a JPEG compression coprocessor from C-Cube, which lets you take
live video and compress and store it in real time (up to 60 minutes on the
optional 1.4 gigabyte internal hard disk). All standard video inputs
and outputs are supported. At 30,000 polygons per second (Gouraud shading,
triangular, meshed), this "true color" runs as fast as or faster than
the 4 gray-level monochrome NeXT's.
Other items mentioned: support for fax (external modem required),
including OCR software from HSD which can convert a received fax to ASCII,
optional 550 MB CD-ROM drive, 15,000 real orders already booked in the last 60
days.
Oh, the color list prices are $3995 for the NeXTdimension color board,
$2995 for a Sony 16" Trinitron color monitor (but there is a 9-pin EGA
connector on the board!), and $7995 for the NeXTstation Color with 12
MB RAM.
The list on the NeXTstation is $4995. On all prices there is an
educational discount available.
I will leave to the trade press the descriptions of Jim Manzi's
theological ruminations (e.g., "Why did Lotus reinvent the spreadsheet
with Lotus? Because God wanted us to."), the yummy food, and the ten
bodyguards who
kept the audience from storming the stage to get their hands on the new
machines, but I will (Real Soon Now) post some more info on NeXTStep
2.0, Improv, etc.
Pricing on Improv was not announced (I'd guess $400-500), but will
be ***FREE*** on all new NeXT's ordered through the end of the year.
My understanding is that Allegro COMMON LISP will continue to be
bundled with educational machines, but not with commercial machines.
The two items which impressed me most were the built-in twisted-pair
10-Base-T interface and getting the 16-bit affordable color on the
single board.
-------------------------------gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (09/27/90)
>I got this report from a friend. I take no responsibility for it's contents >------------------------------------------------ [info about Next intro] Much more info available in comp.sys.next, the Next group. Robert ============================================================================ = gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu * generic disclaimer: * "It's more fun to = = * all my opinions are * compute" = = * mine * -Kraftwerk = ============================================================================