From: johnsd2@lib111.its.rpi.edu.its1 (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: Mac multitasking?
Reply-To: johnsd2@lib111.its.rpi.edu.its1
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:04:29 GMT

In article 5014@athena.mit.edu, zmonster@athena.mit.edu (Eric M Hermanson) writes:
[deletia- empty flamage, mostly]
>>>Word Perfect, and Lotus Improv offer full compatability between platforms.
>>>Concurrence (the presentation program) is writing filters that will allow
>>>Power Point presentations to be read in and edited on the NeXT.
>>
>>Hmmmm... no, I am rather talking about companies that have standardized
>>on a particular package- Excel or Lotus 1-2-3, Word (yech! But still true).
>>You have WordPerfect covered, tho.
>
>Lotus 1-2-3 files can be read in by Lotus Improv for the NeXT.  By the way,
>Improv is coming out for Windoze in 1993.  Believe it or not, an application
>that got its start on NeXT is being ported TO Windows!

Isn't that the way it was supposed to work.. apps get made on the NeXT
cuz its easy, then ported out? :/

Can Improve WRITE Lotus 1-2-3 files? How bout Excell? Quatro Pro? (Mac
is equally screwed on that, last I checked. But what the hell, If Im gonna
flame the NeXT for no apparant reason, why not go all the way?)

>NeXT applicatios can read and write the following formats:
>
>Lotus 1-2-3, Word Perfect, Illustrator, Write Now for Mac, Frame Maker,
>TeX (comes standard with NeXT), MSWord, MacWrite, Excel, SAS, OfficeWriter

All NeXT apps can do that? If so, how'd they manage it?

Such an ability would impress me.

>
>>>NeXT's floppy drive writes in both
>>>DOS and Macintosh formats if the user is running the current version of the
>>>operating system (3.0).
>>
>>All DOS and Mac formats, or just a few? (not that it matters hugely,
>>but Im curious)
>
>
>DOS: 720KB, 1.4MB, 2.88MB
>MAC: High density only (I think 800K?)

Mac High-Densities are 1.44 megs. (800ks are the double-sided ones, and
require an odd sort of floppy hardware to read)

>>
>>>  Also, NeXT understands Apple Talk, and can be 
>>>networked to a Mac cluster. 
>>
>>Does this require additional hardware, or are the NeXTs ports
>>compatible.
>
>You need a special cable that connects the Mac Apple talk port to the NeXT
>ethernet port.  No additional "hardware" needed.

??

I dont quite follow. Macintoshes do not have "Appletalk ports", they use
their printer ports for the purpose. You run a cable directly
from a Mac to a NeXT you mean?

Or do I just not get it?

>
>>> The Mac's think the NeXT is another Mac.  Full
>>>file compatibility is accomplished while transfering data through AppleTalk.
>>
>>Howzzat work? Sounds like a good trick.
>>
>
>As Steve Jobs says, it just works!  NeXT understands apple talk.  So you can
>transfer data and files back and forth.  The ideal result would be to have
>a full featured Mac emulator for NeXT  8-) 

THat's a LITTLE vauge. :)

How does it handle resource forks, for one thing?

>>>NeXT's can be seemlessly hooked into Novell networks (IBM).
>>
>>Hmm.. howzat work too? Macs can be too, if you want to blow rediculous
>>amounts of cash to do it. :(
>
>Again, the NeXT OS comes with Novell support.  Full connectivity with
>all ethernet based Novell Networks (NFS support too).
>

Pretty neat.

>>insist of having. (as a personal computer- ie for 1 person- this is not
>>revelant at all, of course. But I didn't think the NeXT was so oriented-
>>not with all its netstuff..)
>
>Of course NeXT supports Internet Protocol (IP) within the OS.

I knew that. :)

>>>The high end NeXT machines that will be available next year
>>>will be RISC based, and offer 32bit hardware color, real time image
>>>and movie compression, and multi-processing capability.  Since Mach is
>>>a multi-processing environment, the user will be able to plug in CPU chips
>>>in parallel, much like extra RAM is added to machines nowadays.  You will
>>>most likely be able to add as many processors as you want to get up to your
>>>desired speed (to within certain limits, that no one will know until NeXT
>>>releases this "MEGA MACHINE" sometime NeXT year).  You can catch some of
>>>this hardware/software speculation by reading comp.sys.next.advocacy.
>>
>
>Forgot to mention the professional SONY audio port that is to be built into
>the machine.  This will make digital recording directly to the machine 
>possible.  NeXTstep 4.0 (due out in 94, after the RISC has had time to
>settle in) will offer unicode capability.

But of course. :) What's a professional SONY audo port, and what's
nice about it?

[deletia- I said something nice about NeXT! Somebody stop me before I do
	  it again!]

---
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

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