melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) (04/01/91)
In article <2022@aldebaran.cs.nps.navy.mil> schweige@aldebaran.cs.nps.navy.mil (Jeffrey M. Schweiger) writes:
I don't intend to knock the NeXT, I think that they have done some interesting
things. I do wonder, though, whether or not they will really survive in the
market place. Let's remember that they have apparently shipped less then
10% of the numbers of Amiga's that have shipped, and that from reports given
here on the net are very backlogged in making deliveries (and are quite
possibly losing sales because of it). The price-performance ratio for the
NeXT is quite nice, nice enough so that I wonder if there is any real profit
being made. Since NeXT is a privately held company, we don't get to find out
how they are doing financially. On the other hand, we do know that Commodore
is presently showing a profit, and that the Amiga, while certainly lacking
the market penetration of MS-DOS machines, and Macs, does seem to be doing
well in certain markets.
I remember reading where someone said that NeXT could go an entire
year w/o selling a machine and still remain in business. NeXT has had
600 million dollars invested in the company from various sources. So,
we can assume it will be a couple of years before they have a major
crisis since they are selling machines. In the meantime, the consumer
gets a great deal on a computer.
As pointed out in the above post, though, it is useful to evaluate a machine
for what it is, not for what it isn't. One should buy a machine that fits
the users requirements. If the machine must have a 68040 _initially_, then
the Amiga does not _yet_ fill the bill (although you may have to wait quite
a while to get the NeXT that does come with the 68040). If you want an
industry standard version of Unix, then the A3000UX with SVR4 may be much
more appropriate then the Mac with A/UX or the NeXT. As far as my requirements
went, I was quite happy with the Amiga (although I'd still like an Ada
compiler, which I believe will come eventually. I note that the NeXT doesn't
have an validated Ada compiler either).
Let's hope NeXT never goes SVR4. Mach and BSDism's are the only way
to go. I think NeXT is dealing pretty well with their backlog of
orders. We got all of our upgrade boards and our NeXTstations at Penn
State, and NeXT has started shipping color machines. Motorola is
ramping up production of the 68040 so I don't forsee a major problem
getting a NeXT if you order one today.
As far as requirements go, if good software exists then the machine
fits the requirements. In the meantime, Mac and Amiga(PC owners are
oblivious to all changes) owners can say to themselves "NeXT won't be
in business in five years" so they won't feel so bad spending a lot
more money on a less powerful machine. Of course everyone said the
same thing about poorly mismanaged Commodore, a company that still
doesn't have the support of Lotus, Adobe, Word Perfect(at least they
didn't drop the Amiga), or Microsoft(of course NeXT doesn't here
either, and I don't expect they will for some time -- selling IBM your
user interface isn't going to make friend with DOS Weenie leader Bill
Gates). At least Amiga owners can say, "we still have the best games
in the business."
-Mikepeter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (04/03/91)
In article <_adGva+d1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > Let's hope NeXT never goes SVR4. Mach and BSDism's are the only way > to go. I hate messages that start off with "YOU'RE WRONG", but I'm afraid you are. SVR4 has all the BSDisms you could want, but it leaves behind the really horrible parts of BSD... like the system configuration stuff (which hasn't changed since V7). A true Mach system would implement the O/S as a set of tasks and shared libraries on top of the microkernel, not the current kludge, and then SVr4, SVr2, BSD, and any other O/S API would be available. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.