#What's NeXT?
9 messages in this thread
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]
[continued]
as a combination of Quark XPress, PageMaker and Ventura, with certain
features (and liabilities) of all three. FrameMaker NeXT is a port from
other UNIX workstations and it seems to be powerful enough to be a
contender now, but the subsequent version – already implemented on the
generic UNIX platforms – will have to be ported before it will be a peer
with the next version of PageMaker, or Ventura with the extension set.
Frankly, I intend to support the NeXT at the service bureau I manage as
soon as possible. If I'm not the first, then it's not because we didn't
try. To transfer files, the immediate solution will have to be to send the
optical disk. Fortunately, it's pretty rugged and should tolerate shipment
well. Since the NeXT's Display PostScript controller is Adobe's product, it
definitely supports their fonts.
Cost effective? Not today, in all honesty. The price will have to drop,
say, 20-30% before it will give the new accelerated Macs any reason to
sweat, and the application base will have to get much, much larger.
But, gee, wasn't the Mac in this position not but 5 years ago? <grin>
…mm
One small consolation to supporting NeXT at your shop is that, at least for
the short term, you know that you have all the fonts. All four of them.
<grin>
How hard is it to remove/replace the optical disk in the NeXT? And how
expensive is it to have a backup on hand when your other disk is at the SB
for output? And how do you back up your optical disk to another optical
disk before you send it off? Isn't it rather odd to build a machine without
thinking about data transfer in the first place? Sure you can add a SCSI
drive (and hope it works), but why should you have to do that? That's
always puzzled me. Another quesition: how long will it be before "quantity
production gears up"? I would suggest it would have to do with the demand.
How fast is that expected to increase? I know I'm not rushing out for an
optical drive.
My questions about networking were on the speculation that you might have
to do that to get data on and off the optical disk, but if the SCSI drive
works, that's a much more reasonable solution.
It's, unfortunately, going to take more than a 30% drop in price for me
to consider a NeXT machine. Somehow, unless Steve Jobs is running _really_
fast, I have a feeling that events may overtake the NeXT and that it
doesn't have 5 years to prove itself. It's going to be make or break in the
next 2.
Is anybody producing type in NeXT format? Adobe? Again, how do you get it
into the system? The NeXT ads are touting it as a dtp machine, but where's
the flexibility and variety that we are all used to now? The NeXT, while it
may be a better platform, has a lot of catching up to do yet. Any thoughts?
(Excuse the lapse, David – busy, busy week.)
The impression I've gotten is the NeXT has quietly abandoned the idea of
using the optical disk as the sole mass-storage device. The idea was
initially a good one, but the realities of the sub-par seek times
eventually overcame the most optimistic code-tweaking and hardware
buffering. So far as copying disk-to-disk, the 8+ Meg of RAM should allow
the system to at least move individual files around without a lot of
disk-swapping. Only when color comes along for NeXT will disk-swapping
become impractical.
Maybe I've missed something here, but somehow I'm not too sure it's going
to be all that difficult to move Mac or PC PostScript fonts (they're the
same, really) over to the NeXT. I may be in for a hard lesson, but I
certainly am going to try on an experimental basis to see if it works, and
then probably confer with Adobe over distribution/licensing. After all, the
NeXT contains Official Adobe Display PostScript, and if it doesn't work,
then it's _their_ foot they've shot themselves in.
Once there is any hint of market acceptance (FrameMaker may be the
catalyst), I gather that other suppliers are poised to release product –
again, distribution medium is the main snag. Catching-up is mostly a
chicken-or-egg situation, and once started, the ramp-up should be short.
…mm
I thought I read somewhere that BusinessLand was being set-up to distribute
software for the next. Bring in a CD-ROM, buy the program, and copy it from
their machines right in the store.
<BW>
Mike,
I just got one of those "forehead slaps" as Lamar refers to them…
Do you think it's possible that even a small part of the MS/Apple Royal
collaboration was an effort to head off NeXT (which is PostScript-based)?
–Thom
Thom –
Hmmmmmmmmmm … could be.
-Tom-
Mike,
Let me know how it comes out. I know one guy who tried the same thing but
couldn't get it to work.
You'll also need to worry about the bitmaps. Despite Display PostScript,
NeXT does rely on bitmaps for small point sizes (a la ATM).