CompuServe Messages

David – Answering some of your specific questions: Yes, the question of getting data on/off the NeXT in a _convenient_ form is still a bit fuzzy. I hear a number of schools of thought on this, but the strongest seem to be 1) "Once quantity production gears-up, single blank optical disks should be available for $15-25 or less." and 2) "A new communications application is about to be released, and, with a high-speed modem, should be fine for most data exchange including remote enabling/distribution of software." My personal approach, since it supposedly has a Mac-compatible SCSI port, will be to attach the SCSI 1.44M floppy which (I think) PLI sells and see if that works in the short term. What the final distribution/exchange solution will be is anybody's guess, really. (Also, he says paranthetically, I'm getting the feeling that NeXT is backing-off of the optical disk a little because of the media expense complicating application distribution as well as the observed I/O performance problems. With SCSI magnetic disks now in the sub-10 ms access time range, the optical disk Steve J. chose can't keep up. In fact, NeXT developers are now _required_ to buy Cubes equipped with the 300MB hard disk instead of retrofitting one at significantly less cost to a disk-less NeXT Node workstation.) Right now, I'm _real_ hazy on how well the Cube is going to network with the rest of the world. As it stands now, it's my understanding that it can be configured through an AppleTalk/Ethertalk gateway to look like an AppleShare file server. An associate (Hi, Dave!) has plans to see if an AppleTalk driver can't be cobbled-up quickly so we can hang the NeXT on our (eventual) coax Mac network as a peer-level workstation. Actually, the NeXT finally emerged as a "real and useful" system (rather than a toy for college professors with deep pockets – and most I know of will have to sell their Volvos to afford one) with the showing of the FrameMaker NeXT publishing software at Seybold last year. The application can best be described [continued in reply]