This is NeXT-rumors in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 16-Aug-1989 04:28:04 From: Unknown Subject: NeXT rumors I only just started reading this group's postings, so I may be reiterating previous hashed-over rumors. I got these from the last page of Infoworld, an issue a couple months back: NeXT is planning a Motorola 88000-based NeXT machine (some ways off yet) that will be able to hold up 4 88k's in one cube, will have a 1 gigabyte Canon optical drive with a 30 ms access time, and will use the 32-bit AMD Ethernet chip. Full multiprocessing support included, naturally. Also in the works is a 32-bit/pixel color board based on TI's 34020 processor with 4MB of VRAM that will be 4X faster than the current 68030 (main processor) based 2-bit/pixel graphics system. Sorry if I reposted old news... Zach T. Smith (zs04+@andrew.cmu.edu) >From: mark@apple3.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark Jansen)
Date: Sun 17-Aug-1989 00:27:53 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors zs04+@andrew.cmu.edu (Zachary T. Smith) writes: >I only just started reading this group's postings, so I may be reiterating >previous hashed-over rumors. I got these from the last page of Infoworld, >an issue a couple months back: >[...] >Also in the works is a 32-bit/pixel color board based on TI's 34020 >processor with 4MB of VRAM that will be 4X faster than the current 68030 >(main processor) based 2-bit/pixel graphics system. As long as we are passing on rumours: The 14th August issue of Infoworld, back page, says that NeXT will be releasing a 32-bit/pixel colour board sometime next year based on the Intel i860. This board will have Renderman and Display Postscript in microcode. A 24-bit/pixel board will be released at rougly the same time, by some other company. I forget the name, but it is in the article. >Zach T. Smith (zs04+@andrew.cmu.edu) Naim Abdullah Dept. of EECS, Northwestern University Internet: naim@eecs.nwu.edu Uucp: {oddjob, chinet, att}!nucsrl!naim >From: dz@orange.ucsb.edu (Daniel James Zerkle)
Date: Sun 18-Aug-1989 14:34:10 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors [Lots and lots of talk about the next NeXT from lots of people] All this talk about new machines that may or may not be compatible with the current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying a current generation (and almost out of date, no less!) machine from NeXT. Anybody else feel the same way? - John H. Osborn * University of Texas at Austin walt.cc.utexas.edu * "Hey, was that 'kill 1 -1' or 'kill -1 1'?" >From: jans@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman)
Date: Sun 18-Aug-1989 17:09:14 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors <All this talk about new machines that may or may not be compatible with the current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying a current generation...> It's the price you pay to be a pioneer. Look at the poor boobs who bought Lisa's, only to face expensive (and less than completely compatible) upgrades to Mac XLs, and the current groaning about Mac II upgrades. Sometimes it backfires, as with the current hordes of MeSs-DOS users who "just say, 'No!'" to OS-2. It would certainly be nice if NeXT were to break with the tradition of screwing early adopters, but I'm not holding my breath. When you're looking at exponential growth, it's easy to write off the good will of your early customers. (On the other hand, since they're such a small lot, it doesn't cost much to keep them on your side, either!) I'm still trying to get my group a single NeXT machine, simply as an example of some interesting new technology, but I wouldn't spend my personal dollars on one, nor would I buy one each for our whole group, until the future becomes more clear. Jan Steinman - N7JDB Electronic Systems Laboratory Box 500, MS 50-370, Beaverton, OR 97077 (w)503/627-5881 (h)503/657-7703 >From: dz@orange.ucsb.edu (Daniel James Zerkle)
Date: Sun 19-Aug-1989 01:25:43 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors In article <17312@ut-emx.UUCP> johno@walt.cc.utexas.edu (John H. Osborn) writes: >[Lots and lots of talk about the next NeXT from lots of people] > >All this talk about new machines that may or may not be compatible >with the current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying >a current generation (and almost out of date, no less!) machine from >NeXT. Anybody else feel the same way? > For what it is worth, the local NeXT sales account manager told me, in response to my question concerning an upgrade path, that NeXT intends to build upon the platform of the original Cube, and not obsolete it by introducing incompatible enhancements. She made this comment in the context of my purchasing a machine, and I expressed the very concern and nervousness that you note here. Nothing that I have read on comp.sys.next over the past few weeks has given me reason to doubt what she said. On the contrary, the recent posting by Bruce Henderson spoke of 100% upgradability. So rumors and official pronouncements seem to correspond pretty well. I bought one, and I don't think I'll regret it. >John H. Osborn * University of Texas at Austin >walt.cc.utexas.edu * "Hey, was that 'kill 1 -1' or 'kill -1 1'?"
Date: Sun 20-Aug-1989 14:46:29 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors > <All this talk about new machines that may or may not be compatible with the > current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying a current > generation...> > > It's the price you pay to be a pioneer. Look at the poor boobs who bought > Lisa's, only to face expensive (and less than completely compatible) > upgrades to Mac XLs, and the current groaning about Mac II upgrades. > Sometimes it backfires, as with the current hordes of MeSs-DOS users who > "just say, 'No!'" to OS-2. > But then again, if people weren't willing to pioneer we would: 1- Not even have the good old MITS-ALTAIR (you all do remember that don't you - the first "real" PC. 2- All be running OS - as in OS/360 - or if you want to get even more rediculous - Autocoder - or if you want to go back to days when STARWARS was written on the PDP-1 or when dear sweet old "unix" was written... machine code assembly. 3- Not have the "unix" that most folks call "unix". BSD doesn't bare much similarity to Unix(tm) (as in SystemV), not to mention MACH. > It would certainly be nice if NeXT were to break with the tradition of > screwing early adopters, but I'm not holding my breath. When you're > looking at exponential growth, it's easy to write off the good will of > your early customers. (On the other hand, since they're such a small > lot, it doesn't cost much to keep them on your side, either!) > Don't forget that the "exponential growth" referred to here has absolutely nothing to do with NeXT - it is an INDUSTRY wide phenomon. I'm one year older than the entire computer industry! (Using 1946 as ENIAC's birthdate) NeXT is "revolutionary" exactly because Apple, IBM, and (what's left of) the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honneywell) took a lesson from the introduction of System 360 which obsoleted an entire generation of hardware AND software OVERNIGHT. The industry reaction was mildly histerical. Nobody wants to replace anthing they spent money for. All this talk about "competition" and "technological superiority",etc is so much hogwash - people (individual and companies/instutions alike) refuse to spend money just to "stay current" - ever had to fight with management for "software maintenance contracts", ever tried to convince management to "upgrade" to a new system. NeXT's introduction into the marketplace was incredibly traumatic - look at the reactions from DEC or SUN or Apple. Oh, they all swore on a stack of bibles that they were "inovating" and not "reacting", but the simple fact of the matter is, the availability of NeXT called their hands. In poker terms, they had to "put up or shut up". NeXT very effectively has raised the stakes in the workstation game. Just look at DEC's decision to drop "Berkley mail" as their supported mail processor in Ultrix 3.1. They have replaced "mail" with "mh". Now if you've ever used mh, you either love it or hate it, but it replaced one program with many commands with many programs containing one command each. This is an incredible pain in the butt for the async "line at a time" user. But DEC also included X-mh - NOW, that's a horse of adifferent color, especially on a 19 inch mnitor. With buttons to click on via mouse, mh is a pretty nice mail handeler! Put another way, DEC's decision to switch MUA's was a purely marketing decision - they want to sell workstations. So they release software that "works" for the async user, but "shines" in the workstation environment. I happen to be a Genealogical hacker (soc.roots) as well as a computer professional, and it pains me to see all of the "faith and trust" being placed in ANY computer system existant today when viewed in the light of Genealogy - our source documents are typically 100+ years old!!! How many of you sitll have your data still stored on 8 inch floppies? But there are many folks out their extoling the virtues of this CPM system or that one for computerizing their geneaological record keeping chores - because "the prices of the computers finally became cheap enough to be affordable for the hobbiest!" Hell, I've got "stainless-steel" tapes in my office from the UNIVAC I. They make nice memorabeila, but there is not a machine around that can read their data today. > I'm still trying to get my group a single NeXT machine, simply as an > example of some interesting new technology, but I wouldn't spend my > personal dollars on one, nor would I buy one each for our whole group, > until the future becomes more clear. Probably the attitude of many of us. If your "environment" happens to be "grant based" such an attitude is easy to support. But then again, what about Apollo? They "were" proven technology until bought up by HP. Today, I would counsel anybody considering Apollo the same way. Risk is the name of the game. It's no different in Computers than in Investing. If you can't sleep at night because of the decision you made - then you took on too much risk.
Date: Sun 21-Aug-1989 19:38:29 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors In article <5792@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> jans@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) writes: }<All this talk about new machines that may or may not be compatible with the }current Cube certainly cause me some concern about buying a current }generation...> }It would certainly be nice if NeXT were to break with the tradition of screwing }early adopters, but I'm not holding my breath. When you're looking at }exponential growth, it's easy to write off the good will of your early }customers. (On the other hand, since they're such a small lot, it doesn't cost }much to keep them on your side, either!) We had a NeXT demonstration here last week. I expressed similar concerns to the demonstrators. They assured me NeXT is very concerned about upgrade paths and keeping its customer base up to date. Their plan is to make upgrades cheap and easy enough that everyone will get them. This saves them and the third party vendors from having to write code for different versions of the system or, worse, writing for the lowest common denominator. They told me the upgrade from .9 to 1.0 will be free. Considering the media it comes on sells for $99 a copy, I'd say they're putting their money where their mouth is. (On the other hand, all this information came from sales critters. I wish I'd read this group before I attended the demonstration. I'd have been armed with more useful questions).
Date: Sun 22-Aug-1989 12:51:22 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors >denominator. They told me the upgrade from .9 to 1.0 will be free. It sure better be free! When you buy a NeXT, you are buying version 1.0. The fact that you get .8 or .9 means that *you* are volunteering to help NeXT test a pre-release of their software. lee >From: jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Date: Sun 22-Aug-1989 03:52:00 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors All this talk of screwing over competitors bring to mind the variaties of ways in the Mac world. On one hand, Symantics is charging me $69 of a $250 price to upgrade to Think C 4.0, which is only half of C++. They will probably have a Think C 5.0 within a year and charge me again for another upgrade. On a nicer note, Paragon software announced that anyone who has ever purchased their program will get a free upgrade to Nissus 2.0. I'll let everyone decide for themselves which company I like better. Just thought I'd pass this along. Michael Rutman Softmed >From: dz@kiwi.ucsb.edu (Daniel James Zerkle)
Date: Sun 26-Aug-1989 23:05:58 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors In article <5792@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> jans@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) writes: > >It would certainly be nice if NeXT were to break with the tradition of >screwing early adopters, but I'm not holding my breath....... > Tradition? What tradition? You've got it backwards, Jan. This screw early customers stuff is yuppie new-age. We used to get our OS-8 upgrades for the PDP-8 free when DEC was the little guy. Has anyone *ever* paid to have their NeXT system software updated? This is a great leap into the "good ole' days" when early customers were rewarded, not penalized for their purchases. Yeah NeXT! Paul O'Neill pvo@oce.orst.edu Coastal Imaging Lab OSU--Oceanography Corvallis, OR 97331 503-754-3251 >From: rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini)
Date: Sun 27-Aug-1989 02:21:00 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors >Has anyone *ever* paid to have their NeXT system software updated? has anyone received a working non-beta system sotware package yet to have to pay to upgrade? More to the point. When NeXT introduces a 50mHz 68040 board, how much will it cost to upgrade. Most likely, it won't be a swap, since the mother board can handle up to four logic boards, but what if someone does want to swap. Will NeXT handle it gracefully, or are they planning on doing the old Apple BS of a new machine every 6 months to a year and telling us our old machines are worthless and we must shell out between $1000 and $4000 to upgrade per machine per time. Michael Rutman Softmed >From: gerrit@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Gerrit Huizenga)
Date: Sun 28-Aug-1989 16:38:18 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT rumors In article <246300051@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, jpd00964@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > > has anyone received a working non-beta system sotware package yet to have to > pay to upgrade? You can be certian tha NeXT will not charge you for the 1.0 release. After that who knows. I doubt that they will be too absurd. The whole apple upgrade bs started AFTER Jobs left.... He's very up on having EVERYBODY upgrade..... That way you don't have to worry about software supporting obsolete platforms. > Will NeXT handle it gracefully, or are they planning on doing the old Apple > BS of a new machine every 6 months to a year and telling us our old machines Actually, the plan is every 18 months the system will evolve. If that is true then the next evolution is due in April, just about the time that industry insider types say the color system will be announced...
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