From: andrew@cubetech.com
Subject: Re: A NS Fairy Tale
Organization: Cube Technologies, Inc.
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 04:00:26 GMT

>In article <sxjcb-081092091318@sxjcb.uacn.alaska.edu>  
>sxjcb@orca.alaska.edu (Jay C. Beavers) writes:
>> Marketing.  Need I say more?  I've seen under ten NeXT ads total in the
>> common market since NeXT came out.  Byte has given NeXT rave reviews on
>> more than one occasion and I've never seen a NeXT add in Byte.  PC Week? 
>> Forget it!  OS/2, Windows, and Solaris ads are everywhere.  Where is  
>> NeXT?

NeXT has been in PCWeek a "few" times (I've seen two of them), and
people in NeXT marketing say they advertise in the app-development
version of the magazine (I didn't even know one existed...).  I think
NeXT was in Byte once....

Heres the deal: NeXT wants to be another OS standard, but they are
going after the top 1/3 of the desktop market - not the "joe windows"
users.  This is right due to the cost and high equipment demands of
NS486.

But here is where NeXT is screwed up:

Four other companies are trying to do the same thing: Microsoft,
Univel, Sun, and IBM.

I think UnixWare and Solaris are going to go the way of SCO and
Interactive - niche operating systems.  People don't want motif.  If
they want something that's only as good as MS-Windows, they'll get
MS-Windows on NT.  UnixWare as a client offers little since there will
certainly be NetWare clients available for NT.

OS/2 is it's own thing.  It's gaining momentum, but it's more of an
intermediate hop than Dos->NT or Unix.  It will be a big player.

Then there's NT.  If you sum up the number of sentences is the rags
over the past few months that have "NT" and "32-bit" or "Objects" and
"1994" right close together, you have a lot more sentences than NeXT
has sold computers.  Clearly an operating system like NeXTSTEP today
is where the entire industry is headed, but NT runs on the same
PC hardware (more or less) as NeXTSTEP, and will probably cost about
the same amount!

NeXT has now what everyone wants, and it will run on PC's in less than
6 months (for sure).

What is so difficult with this???

Microsoft understands this; they've been pushing NT *hard*.  They
haven't been advertising, but they've been pumping the press and
holding Developers Conferences.  We (the only people on the planet who
keep up with NeXT) haven't heard a peep about NS486 until today when
Conrad was kind enough to put something on the NUG alias.

BUT, the tone in the press about NT has changed noticibly in the past
two weeks from "Bill Gates is God and NT is his 32-bit Aegis" to "NT
probably won't ship till late '93 and will probably be too volatile to
use until early '94."

If I were NeXT I would JUMP on this.  Get those $80 SDKs out there!
Pump the press.  Hold a developers conference!  Every ISV in the
Windows and future NT market just **hates** Microsoft.  If they
thought NeXTSTEP had a chance they would write software for it.  If
people knew about NeXTSTEP they would ask for it, and the press would
write about it.  Therein lies the problem.


andrew
"Is NeXT still around?"
-- 
andrew@cubetech.com     | "We shall not cease from exploration
Andrew Loewenstern      |  And the end of our exploring
Cube Technologies, Inc. |  Will be to arrive where we started
                        |  And know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliot