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Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.announce
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From: treed@bmt.gun.com (Timothy Reed)
Subject: Notes from NeXT Presentation at GUN in NYC
Message-ID: <1993May7.054326.3965@digifix.com>
Sender: sanguish@digifix.com
Reply-To: treed@gun.com
Organization: Digital Fix Development
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 05:43:26 GMT
Approved: sanguish@digifix.com
Presentation Notes
Gotham Users of NeXT, Inc. and NeXT Computer Inc.
Timothy Reed
President/Black Market Technologies
Director/Gotham Users of NeXT, Inc.
4/26/93
Copyright (c) 1993 Black Market Technologies. Copyright holder
grants permission to any individual or organization to copy and
distribute the complete text of this document including this copyright
notice.
Gotham Users of NeXT, Inc. recently hosted a special gathering at
Swiss Bank Towers in New York city addressed by Steve Jobs and other
top management from NeXT Computer, Inc. The special user group
meeting capped off a day of special NeXT presentations to corporate
users and other players in the New York City high technology community.
Over 30 of NeXTs top managers were at the evening presentation. On
the dais with Steve were Erna Arnesen, Director of Channel Sales;
Brett Bachman, Director of Product Marketing; and Ron Weissman,
Director of Corporate Marketing. Mitch Green provided technical
support, including showing off the NEC notebook running VirtSpace
and a couple of standard applications. Someone on the panel joked that
the NeXT-to-attendee ratio was about 5-to-1.
Admission was standing room only. The meeting attended by over 120
NYC-area educational and corporate users, as well as NEXTSTEP
developers and other industry luminaries.
The following are our notes covering event's major announcements
and news:
MEETING NOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS
NeXT confirmed compliance with the CORBA and DCE standards. Although
CORBA especially is just a specification, not a 'read' standard,
NeXT intends to be the first compliant computer vendor to market.
Messaging to and from objects running on non-NEXTSTEP operating
systems that are also compliant will be possible in NEXTSTEP 3.2.
NeXT is also working on a DCE secure RPC mechanism as well.
Canon purchased the Power PC computer - circuit board, enclosure,
etc. - designed and completed by NeXT. Steve said that the box had
been designed and the NEXTSTEP port started, but shrugged and said
"We're not in that business anymore, so we sold the box to Canon."
NeXT had no idea whether Canon would release the Power PC version
of NEXTSTEP or the box itself - according to Steve, that move would
be Canon's decision.
Steve said that NEXTSTEP was running on an SMP machine (I believe
the PowerPC box - our notes aren't clear on this point). This is
a significant hurdle in that a lot of the nasty details related to
SMP have been worked out).
NeXT has $25 million in cash reserves, and remain financially sound.
The panelist noted the following computer sales figures when justifying
NeXTs decision to stick with CISC platforms
Apple 2.5 million units per year
486 30 million per year
Sun/Sparc 225 thousand per year
2 percent of all computers sold this year will be RISC
Pentium machines will be out soon at 100 mips, and will
alter the RISC market
Original cube and slab owners will not be left out in the cold.
NeXT concluded a deal with Bell Atlantic to provide hardware support
to existing black hardware owners for 5 years. Current warrantees
and extensions will be available starting May 25th directly from
Bell Atlantic. NeXT will continue to support NEXTSTEP on black
hardware "at least" through 1995.
Compaq's name will be added to the list of vendors bundling NEXTSTEP
on their 486 hardware in the next few weeks.
Vendor support for NEXTSTEP appears to be an order of magnitude
larger than their support for SUN's Solaris for Intel. This is good
news to those who have noticed that all the vendors who are bundling
NEXTSTEP with their 486 boxes are also bundling Solaris.
NeXT announced sales goals for the near and mid-term (with the caveat
that "NeXT doesn't normally do this..."):
Year Copies Cumulative
Installed 50K 50K
93 25K 75K
94 100K 175K
95 250K 450K
NeXT also announced 3.1 upgrade prices for current 3.0 owners.
Title Intel 2.x 3.0
User 795 495 75 ($49 right to use)
Developer 1995 495 99
They recommended that 2.1 owners who have already upgraded to 3.0
should send in their registration cards before May 25th to take
advantage of the upgrade prices. Quote from Steve: "$300 price at
expo will be the best price you can get."
NEXTSTEP will include a 60 day trial license for SoftPC - after
that, owners can upgrade to a working license for $249. This version
of SoftPC will be not be available with 3.1 - NeXT has not worked
out the distribution method, but it will either come to 3.1 owners
on diskette or with NEXTSTEP 3.2. Since Insignia has licensed
Windows source code, they have been able to optimize the emulator
to run DOS/Windows applications at 80% native processor speed.
(Insignia apparently worked out this deal in exchange for providing
Microsoft with emulation technology for non-Intel versions of
Windows/NT.
Expect good stuff in the production version of NEXTSTEP 3.1:
Better version of HeaderViewer.
Better C++ support, including a working version of g++ and libg++
class library.
Latest version of GNU gcc compiler and gdb debugger.
Netware 3.x support (Netware 4.x will _not_ be supported in this
release of NEXTSTEP).
Expect even more good stuff in NEXTSTEP 3.2:
Portable Distributed Objects (PDO) distributed objects
running on vanilla UNIX server boxes.
"Portable" netinfo: Netinfo running on other UNIX boxes.
The panelists did not go into what "portable netinfo" really
meant, but we assume that it means that netinfo will be
written in C or some other non-Objective-C language.
Additional device drivers for PC peripherals, including
frame grabbers and video boards (although they said to not
expect "anything resembling NeXTDimension anytime soon").
Extended SoftPC support with improved emulation.
Netware on Token Ring.
Bug fixes
NeXT plans to freeze NEXTSTEP 3.2 development in mid-July.
There will be some noticeable differences in functionality between
NEXTSTEP 3.0 and 3.1:
ISDN support and PhoneKit are not included with 3.1. NeXT
is looking for a third party developer to take over development
and support for these products.
Token Ring will be supported.
Appletalk support has become a third party product. Since
NeXT originally acquired this code from a third party, this
should result in a higher quality and better supported
product.
Ron Weisman talked about NeXT's current marketing campaign. NeXT
has targeted several areas to concentrate their marketing effort
(including the strangely unspecific "financial mags" at the bottom
of the list). He pointed out that NeXT has decided not to use
comparison ads pitting NEXTSTEP against Microsoft. He noted that
since NEXTSTEP has gotten out of hardware, everyone ("unanimously,"
according to Steve) in the press has raved about how good NEXTSTEP
is. Advertising will therefore concentrate on the following:
Good reviews of NEXTSTEP by computer magazines.
A "big push" in the aforementioned "financial mags."
General corporate visibility.
Expect the developers' program to change. All developers will have
to reapply for enrollment in NeXT's developers' program. NeXT has
not worked out the details or how things will change, and solicit
the community for comment and suggestions.
Ed. Note: Thanks to the invaluable assistance and contributions from
GUN members that made this article possible.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.