From: esky@marathon.cs.ucla.edu (Eskandar Ensafi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: NeXT: Giving up the dream?
Date: 16 Nov 92 17:33:20 GMT
Reply-To: esky@marathon.cs.ucla.edu
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department

Just what is NeXT going to do about better hardware?

Picture this: Los Angeles, Fall 1990
------------------------------------
Three NeXT reps visit UCLA.  I see the 25 MHz NeXTstations demos.  I see a  
four-page catalog of the NeXT product line.  NeXTdimension boasts JPEG  
compression.  I decide to forget about buying a Mac II with several add-on  
boards for high-end color & video and to go with the ND.  The reasons: price,  
performance and features -- NeXT beat the Mac in every category.

Picture this: Later in 1991
---------------------------
NeXT announces that ND will not have hardware compression.  Steve Jobs tries to  
calm customers by saying that NeXT endorses MPEG in NeXTWORLD magazine.   
Endorsement of a standard is very nice, but what about implementing it?

Now picture this: Fall 1992 and on
----------------------------------
All the rumors: NRW and NeXTbrick and a new NeXTbus that may obsolete the  
current cube's backplane and "the 88110 demise" ?@#%$@!

Well, there are still no fast RISC machines, still no JPEG on ND, and MPEG  
isn't even around for public use.  The 33 MHz Turbo machines were inevitable  
descendants of the original NeXTstations, but they offer no substantial  
performance gains.  And I have learned to live with the fact that NeXT has  
dropped OD support.

So where's the great hardware needed to run NeXTSTEP?

What ever happened to the claim that the i860 "runs full-color PostScript",  
only to find out from the Winter 1992 issue of NeXTWORLD that the 68040 runs PS  
while the i860 controls moving bits at a fast speed from the CPU to the ND's  
VRAM.  Some laser printers use the i960 to run PS (granted, they are not the  
same chip) so why doesn't NeXT do something similar with ND? Then comes 3.0 and  
we expect RenderMan to run on the i860.  Same story, though I've heard claims  
about "parts" of the RenderMan server running on the i860 -- just what parts  
would those be?

Though CISC processors make up the majority of today's desktop machines, it's  
probably going to be (and already has been to some extent) replaced RISC -- at  
least in the high-end workstation world.  So Sun's SPARC isn't the best chip on  
earth.  So the 88110 may be hurt by PowerPC.  So the DEC Alpha generates too  
much heat.  Go with the flow -- it's not hurting Sun, and they abandoned the  
68K long ago!

Or maybe these guys at NeXT are just sadists -- pain looks great on other  
people, huh?  S&M doesn't belong in selling computers, though the sexy black  
case does tend to provoke... well, never mind that...

On a higher note, fortunately, the same can't be said about NeXTSTEP -- it  
truly is a great piece of software, but it needs a CPU better than the NeXTcube  
Turbo/NeXTdimension or any high-end 486 system can offer.

	ADB and the new Trinitron monitor are very good ideas beacuse they  
represent standards.  ADB allows the NeXT to take advantage of Macintosh  
hardware, and this makes the NeXT a more attractive machine.  The same has to  
be done with NeXTbus -- why can't NeXT go with a standard like VME?  And they  
can even make it better: desgin it to use standard VME-bus cards and  
NeXT-specific cards with an even higher transfer rate.
	Look, Sun will be switching over to Dsiplay PostScript -- doesn't that  
say anything?  This is an era of standardization, and people don't want to take  
costly risks with proprietary platforms.  I mean, the number of NeXTbus cards  
currently available is still in the single-digits!!! (I don't think it's even  
more than five: ND, QuintProcessor, IRCAM, Extron, ???)

The moral of the story: give us better hardware, or maybe NeXT's demise is  
getting closer.

- Eskandar Ensafi

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 I bled all I can, I won't bleed no more."
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