daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) (09/19/90)
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.
I have arranged to get a demo NeXTstation (monochrome--sigh) Tuesday,
September 25th, from 4:00-5:00 P.M. for the Computer Science Department
(room to be announced) and from 5:00-6:00 P.M. for TexNeXT, the new
Texas A&M NeXT Users' Group (in room 124, probably).
Y'all come!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walter C. Daugherity Internet, NeXTmail: daugher@cs.tamu.edu
Knowledge Systems Research Center uucp: uunet!cs.tamu.edu!daugher
Texas A & M University BITNET: DAUGHER@TAMVENUS
College Station, TX 77843-3112 CSNET: daugher%cs.tamu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
---Not an official document of Texas A&M---daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) (09/19/90)
In article <8348@helios.TAMU.EDU> daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) writes: ... >$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. Mathematica is bundled on educational machines only. ... >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? ^^^^^ I should have said "Improv." >Because God wanted us to."), .... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Walter C. Daugherity Internet, NeXTmail: daugher@cs.tamu.edu Knowledge Systems Research Center uucp: uunet!cs.tamu.edu!daugher Texas A & M University BITNET: DAUGHER@TAMVENUS College Station, TX 77843-3112 CSNET: daugher%cs.tamu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET ---Not an official document of Texas A&M---