This is Product-availability-gripes in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1989 15:39:53 From: Unknown Subject: Product availability gripes Having had my NeXT through releases 0.8, 0.9 and now 1.0, I decided that it's time to spend some cash on software. So I got out the NeXT Third-Party Programs and Products, and made a couple of phone calls to those "Contact vendor" numbers. First phone call was to Mark of the Unicorn regarding Performer (page 33, for the curious). Bottom line is that they aren't planning on porting Performer to the NeXT. Next phone call was to The MathWorks (page 34) regarding MATLAB. Looks, from the documentation, like it has enough things that Mathematica doesn't to be worth the money. They told me that they would be glad to take down my name, and if enough people call them and ask them if the product is available, they'll consider porting it to the NeXT. By that time I was too depressed to keep calling. I'll try to refrain from whining to the net. I would, however, like to hear about third party software! Was there ever a committment on the part of these people to develop for the NeXT? Is this a Sign of Big Trouble? Should we rip all of the pages that say "Availability: contact vendor" out of the book? People who have purchased these machines have made decisions partly on the basis of what NeXT asserts is or will soon be available for it. The book made it sound like NeXT had agreements with a few key developers to develop the first round of products. Yesterday's phone calls makes it sound a lot like there was never any kind of agreement at all. ------- Scott Deerwester | Internet: scott@tira.uchicago.edu Center for Information and | Phone: 312-702-6948 Language Studies | 1100 E. 57th, CILS >From: phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1989 17:03:47 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes >Having had my NeXT through releases 0.8, 0.9 and now 1.0, I decided >that it's time to spend some cash on software. >... >They told me that they would be glad >to take down my name, and if enough people call them and ask them if >the product is available., they'll consider porting it to the NeXT. Unbelievable !!! That's what you call being stuck ! >Was there ever a committment on the part of these >people to develop for the NeXT? > Is this a Sign of Big Trouble? Of course developers have no moral obligation to develop for all machines under the sun (poor pun here :-) ) but reading the probelms people post about 1.0 and the inexistence of a decent software base makes you doubt the seriousness of the next people. Doesn't it sound much like an ego pleasing trip by gifted nerd rather than a seriously planned computer business operation. No fortan, No SAS No Wp No TSP No SCA No SPSS No SCA No MATLAB No GAUSS No 123 No ASYST No ASYSTANT No MINITAB (Please correct the list of there are mistakes or complete it with the package of you choice) That's an expensive joke !!! People who buy a 10k machine have the right to spend time on their work, not on rewriting the software for the manufacturer! I forgot: No S >From: jtn@zodiac.ADS.COM (John Nelson)
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1989 16:51:52 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes >Having had my NeXT through releases 0.8, 0.9 and now 1.0, I decided >that it's time to spend some cash on software. So I got out the NeXT >Third-Party Programs and Products, and made a couple of phone calls to >those "Contact vendor" numbers. First phone call was to Mark of the >Unicorn regarding Performer (page 33, for the curious). Bottom line >is that they aren't planning on porting Performer to the NeXT. Now this IS rather depressing since the NeXT seems to be tailor-made for music applications. Musicians/Composers/Researchers, who are looking for a machine will probably consider the Mac and the NeXT, but if programs like Performer (or Finale' and Score to name a few others) are NOT available on the NeXT then guess which machine the musician is going to pick? The Mac of course! Music packages for the Mac are numerous and powerful and the selection of hardware depends mostly on what kind of software is available. I think it incredibly callow of MOTU and other vendors to just sit back and say "Oh, it's MUCH too risky to try and port our software to another machine. We support the Mac thankyou *click*." Risk-taking is an enevitable part of doing business and frankly I see the payoff to the music community as being more important than the bottom line which is what MOTU is probably thinking of first. Speaking of music and NeXT... anyone know if software like Finale' or other composition tools run on the NeXT? Any sequencer/editor/librarian software available yet? John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 >From: phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1989 20:46:26 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes In article <6054@tank.uchicago.edu>, phd_jacquier@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes... >No fortan, Incorrect. I know of at least one (Absoft) for immediate consumption. >No SAS In contrast to some other companies, they are working on a NeXT version at this very minute. >No Wp True, but neither do many other decent machines. Do you run WP on Ultrix? In any case, framemaker outclasses it easily. >No TSP So what? >No SCA So what? >No SPSS A SAS substitute... >No SCA Still no SCA... Won't change from above. >No MATLAB Well, they announced, and may still change their minds to pursue NeXT porting. >No GAUSS A Matlab copy. Do you run Gauss on many Unix workstations? Sorry, if you want a product written in IBM assembler, you need a computer that behaves like an IBM. >No 123 WingZ is being ported right now. beta-test copy is promised for November. This will likely outclass any older programs. Incidentally, Lotus has announced it is actively working on NeXTs (they never announce unfinished products.) >No ASYST Never heard. >No ASYSTANT Never heard. >No MINITAB Yes, unfortunate, but some other simple statistical packages (without graphics) and similar capabilities for BSD are cheaply available. >That's an expensive joke !!! >People who buy a 10k machine have the right to spend time on their work, not >on rewriting the software for the manufacturer! Buy an 80386 Computer and remain happy. It will run most of the above---if only within 640K usually. >I forgot: >No S False. I have seen at least one recent port of S by a friendly soul. This is important, as it is the only world-class statistical software which now runs on NeXT. Still, I must admit, I would rather have more software, and software priced competitively with 80386 systems. Fortran is great to have, but a $1,000 version from Absoft targets different consumers than the $100 versions advertised in PC magazines. Academic Framemaker prices are great, though. Maybe other software houses will follow Framemaker's lead. Ivo Welch ivo@<128.97.74.50> my NeXT iwelch@agsm.ucla.edu phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu >From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Date: Sun 31-Oct-1989 21:44:11 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes in article <6049@tank.uchicago.edu>, scott@sage.uchicago.edu (Scott Deerwester) says: > .... I would, however, like to hear about third > party software! Was there ever a committment on the part of these > people to develop for the NeXT? > People who have purchased these machines have made decisions partly on > the basis of what NeXT asserts is or will soon be available for it. I don't think this is necessarily a NeXT specific problem; the same thing happens any time you introduce a new computer with a new OS, especially something that's pretty "wiz-bang", since you get lots of people excited about something new who later think twice. We sure had the same problems when the Amiga was introduced -- all sorts of 3rd parties announced products for this new machine, some even got help out from Commodore (loans of Sun workstations, etc). Lots of that stuff never materialized. In many cases, other 3rd parties benefitted from that. For example, Borland initially announced a port of Turbo Pascal for the Amiga. It never happened. However, there are now three excellent Modula-2 compilers available, which pretty much eliminates any need for Turbo Pascal, unless you absolutely need Turbo Pascal for some reason. NeXT certainly tries to attract developers, and may even help them in various ways like most companies do. But they have no control over any company they aren't directly hiring -- developers are free to port or not port as they like, and even once a port is completed, they may not release it if they don't feel they'll sell enough to pay for supporting the thing, plus profit. But like for any machine, you have to consider lots of things before you buy. If there's a specific application you absolutely need, your only choice is to buy a computer that have a version of that specific application available. If you want to be the first on the block to have something, you may have to wait for some real applications to be available. If you're lucky, you'll be right about the new machine, it'll catch on, and it'll do things better than the previous generation. That's getting harder and harder to count on. At least much of NeXT is UNIX enough to eliminate the programming curve for lots of folks -- I don't think you'll see anything as different as the Amiga or Mac OS succeed again from scratch. > Scott Deerwester | Internet: scott@tira.uchicago.edu > Center for Information and | Phone: 312-702-6948 > Language Studies | 1100 E. 57th, CILS
Date: Sun 01-Nov-1989 20:42:02 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes In article <9652@zodiac.ADS.COM> jtn@ads.com (John Nelson) writes: >Now this IS rather depressing since the NeXT seems to be tailor-made >for music applications. Musicians/Composers/Researchers, who are >looking for a machine will probably consider the Mac and the NeXT, but >if programs like Performer (or Finale' and Score to name a few others) >are NOT available on the NeXT then guess which machine the musician is >going to pick? The Mac of course! Nothing stops us academic types from producing commercial- quality software, making it available for free, and screwing the commercial software houses out of the profits they would have had had they not been a pack of lazy SOBs. It *should* be much easier to develop code for the NeXT (I've used MPW, >shudder<). The Mac developers have something the NeXT people don't: Macintosh Technical Notes--machine readable and available for anonymous FTP. We need "the collected wisdom of Ali Ozer & Co." so we don't make the same mistakes over and over again. Do we all have to go to NeXT camp? Mac developers don't, and some of the most brilliant Mac developers have meager financial resources. Apple's/APDA's support has been invaluable. NeXT, the commercial approach didn't live up to its promise. Give it to the hackers. This is the new dream machine. Make it real. -=EPS=- [ Special thanks to Purdue's efforts to fill an important gap ] >From: kchung@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Kwok Wan Chung)
Date: Sun 03-Nov-1989 20:39:30 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes in article <732@wet.UUCP>, epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) says: > > In article <9652@zodiac.ADS.COM> jtn@ads.com (John Nelson) writes: >>Now this IS rather depressing since the NeXT seems to be tailor-made [...] > > Nothing stops us academic types from producing commercial- > quality software, making it available for free, and screwing > the commercial software houses out of the profits they would have > had had they not been a pack of lazy SOBs. I love this "head-in-the-sand, superiority attitude". The only people you would manage to "screw" over would be yourselves. I work for a marketing department with a company that sells workstations. That's why I happen to occasionally read this news group, to keep abreast. We have some of the same problems (though not as severe) as NeXT. The whole industry has this problem. You have a better box, but to sell it you need XXX's software to run on it. XXX is more than willing to port to your platform, as soon as the numbers reflect that it would be worth THE MAJOR EXPENSE involved in training (internal and external), documentation support (this is a huge expense, involving hardware and personnel), and of course the actual porting development costs, which can also be substantial. "lazy SOBs"--what an ignorant, mindless, attitude. Are you so certain that your NeXT "microcism" group is important enough that company XXX should effectively HALT development and enhancement of the very product that you are coveting, thus "screwing" over users who have already purchased the product, JUST TO MAKE YOU HAPPY? How would you feel if you were waiting 6-20 months on a postscript output for a program that you paid >$1K, only to find out that feature would be postponed so that the company could port over to some other h/w platform? Generally, with most s/w vendors, they only have the resources to enhance upward, or port laterally. (And I'm not talking actual dollars, or personnel. I'm refering to trying to bring a company up to speed on a totally different hardware platform, from marketing, sales, engineering, shipping, AND support--which is where I used to work--I know. If you haven't worked in this kind of environment, I doubt you can comprehend it.) Or maybe I'm just a "lazy SOB". > > -=EPS=- > > [ Special thanks to Purdue's efforts to fill an important gap ] >From: labc-1aa@e260-1d.berkeley.edu (Bob Heiney)
Date: Sun 03-Nov-1989 03:39:12 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes >Doesn't it sound much like an ego pleasing trip by gifted nerd rather than >a seriously planned computer business operation. Do you work for Apple? :-) Let's not over-react here. The NeXT is a *very* good machine but also very new. Nevertheless, it's not going to die because a couple of developers aren't immediately rushing to complete their projects. You're sample size is tiny, and for each company putting NeXT on pause, there are likely dozens more companies who are proceding as planned. The tone one gets from having been at NeXT camp is that people, and I mean third-party developer people, are excited and optimistic. We're going right ahead with our product. Roger Rosner Lighthouse Design, Ltd. US mail: 7100 Edgevale Street Chevy Chase, MD 20815-5906 This is of course personal opinion. >From: kaplan@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Date: Sun 05-Nov-1989 03:16:09 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes In article <7257@ingr.com> jch@ingr.com (Chandler Hall) writes: > You have a better box, but to sell it >you need XXX's software to run on it. For most instances of XXX popular in the IBM PC world, I honestly hope they never feel it's worth their time. The best products are not ports of horrible little software from crippled machines. Yes, you have to learn The NeXT Way of doing things. (Awww...) However, the issue is that of vendors that already put their names and reputations on the line, and then got cold feet. >Or maybe I'm just a "lazy SOB". I won't try to convince you otherwise. (And with your attitude toward customers, I'm perfectly happy with your staying that way.) Why is it that people who don't have cubes think they know better than those that do? -=EPS=- >From: NU115247@NDSUVM1.BITNET
Date: Sun 08-Nov-1989 16:08:56 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Product availability gripes Foo on the product availability gripes. When the Macintosh was introduced, the only things it ran were MacWrite and MacPaint. The only way to do development was to shell out $10,000 for a cross-development system whose idea of mass storage was a floppy disk with two holes. The Macintosh would Never, Ever catch on, just look at all the software that was out there for the PC! And then there was that funny little rodent thing. What an insult to business types to imply that they are too stupid to enter typed commands! When the IBM PC was introduced, the only thing that it had was interpreted BASIC. Not even an assembler! One of the major Big Deals in deveolopment in the first year of the PC was a BASIC program that could emulate a dumb terminal at a heart-stopping 300 baud. The PC would Never, Ever catch on, just look at all the software that was out there for CP/M-based systems. Besides, it had those funny tiny little disks that were never standard, unlike the old reliable 8" ones. And it was slower than most 8-bit systems, too. When CP/M systems were introduced, there were probably a few people with H-8's that laughed at the idea that anybody would take such a large body of software on reliable paper tape and convert it. And when the H-8's were introduced, there were probably a few that thought that nobody would ever write a program so long that it could not be entered every time you wanted to run it using toggle switches. If you compare it to any other computer as different from its predecessors as the NeXT, it is hard not to see that NeXT development is proceeding at an incredible rate. It has literally been weeks since I installed the first release version of the operating system and a mere year since the first widespread distribution of pre-release software, and I can already program in C, FORTRAN, and LISP, all with access to the user-interface stuff, write letters using a WYSIWYG word processor, do trickier stuff with TeX, draw simple diagrams, do page layout, and even find all occurences of "go to" in Shakespeare, which is something that I have wanted to do for more than a decade! So Steve Jobs exaggerates promises and claims. Remember the first Mac? Was it any different? Is there any computer company that does not have a list of reasons why their computer is better than all the others? So people say the NeXT is revolutionary. It's not. Alan Kay's work at Xerox was revolutionary; everything thereafter is evolutionary. So Steve Jobs says that 1.0 is bug-free software. That's wrong. But did anyone really have to wait until the installation before realizing that fact? Sorry about the screed, but it's silly for people to look at any industry as if it were fixed for all time. Things change, more rapidly in the computer industry than in any other industry of which I know. BTW, as regards music software, the first piece of Macintosh music software was a MacPaint file containing pictures of notes. The second was a non- LaserWriter font, and the third was the toy MusicWorks. It took *years* before anything serious was developed. Eric Pepke INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET: pepke@fsu Florida State University SPAN: scri::pepke Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052 BITNET: pepke@fsu >From: lane@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (Christopher Lane)
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