From: coolidge@sirius.aux.apple.com (John L. Coolidge)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't) (long)
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:31:38 GMT
Reply-To: coolidge@apple.com
Organization: Open Systems Development, Porting&I/O Group, Apple Computer, Inc.

feijai@endor.byu.edu (Sean Luke) writes:
>In article <1992Oct2.182038.4669@times.aux.apple.com>  writes:
>>feijai@endor.byu.edu (Sean Luke) writes:
>>>WHAT?  NeXTs all come with NeXTSTEP free.  And a keyboard.
>>
>>Not if you buy that at my (former) university's computer store, they
>>don't.

>John, I don't know who you talked about at your university's computer  
>store, but they clearly didn't know what they were talking about.  Just so  
>everybody at c.s.m.a knows, All NeXTS come with NeXTSTEP for free.   
>PERIOD.

This may be true. It _does_not_ deny that I had not one but three
salescritters, _and_ the printed price sheet, disagree with you.

>What the bookstore said is something like saying that when you buy a new  
>Mac, you have to get the Mac ROMs seperately.  It's BALONEY.  Please don't  
>continue to spread it.

I'll continue to spread it, because it's the truth. You may wish it
weren't so, but there are (apparently unscrupulous) people out there
who at least claim that you have to buy NeXTStep separately. What use
a NeXT is without an OS, I dunno. But then you have to buy SunOS too,
so it didn't seem all that farfetched.

>>Even if we are, of course, that _still_
>>means that I'm happily running 12 _MacOS_ apps at the same time
>>without any preemptive multitasking. So much for the original claim
>>that you need a NeXT to run stacks of applications.

>I assume you're attacking the need to have a preemptive multitasking  
>system, not attacking the need for a NeXT here.  I don't know what kind of  
>monster machine you're running, but it's hardly ordinary.  You might do  
>well to look around you out there at Apple.  Whatever Taligent is cooking  
>up will be, at its very base, a preemptive multitasking object-oriented  
>operating system.  From trade rags, it sounds like Apple intends to use  
>the PowerPC, running Taligent, to eventually displace Macs in the long  
>run.  Apparently there are those at Apple who disagree with you.

It's a perfectly ordinary Quadra 700, 20M of RAM. I've done much the
same thing with an original Mac II, 8M of RAM (ok, it was 8 MacOS
applications and A/UX). I'm not running a wierd monster machine --
this is perfectly normal stuff (especially the 8M MacII, which should
be roughly equal to an LC II for many tasks. The LC II is the current
best-selling Mac).

What I'm arguing with is the notion that you _cannot_ run lots of apps
in total harmony _unless_ you have preemptive multitasking. It isn't
true. It's never been true. It will never be true.

I happen to _like_ preemptive multitasking. I work in the Unix kernel
group, for goodness sakes! However, many people still make statements
that indicate that they think that cooperative multitasking is
completely unfeasible. It isn't. It may sometimes require more work on
the part of the programmer. So does providing a decent UI, performance
tuning, etc. Preemptive multitasking is nice, and I'll be very very
happy when it becomes part of the standard MacOS experience. That (and
TaligentOS, and anything else) doesn't deny that you can run large
numbers of applications in happy harmony on current Macs right now.

BTW, TaligentOS is only peripherally related to the PowerPC effort. A
better read is that the PowerPC is intended to eventually display the
M680x0 series as the Macintosh family processor. The PowerPC will run
the MacOS and PowerOpen (A/UX 4.0) initially. TaligentOS will come
along sometime in the future. TaligentOS is not a fundamental
component in the shift to the PowerPC architecture.

>Use what you need.  There are few who need the power of higher-end  
>machines.  But as applications become more sophisticated, more people will  
>have a use for power.  The argument you make against NeXT is the same  
>argument PC users make against the Mac:  "It's cute, but who needs all  
>that?"  People in c.s.m.a dismiss this argument, when PC users come on, as  
>ignorance.  With all due respect, NeXT do this as well.

Nope, I'm not making that argument. The argument I'm making is "it's
cute, but it doesn't matter to most people, and it solves a problem
that can be solved more easily and with a much lower performance
penalty." I _like_ the performance characteristics of NeXTs. A lot. I
might actually consider buying one someday (except that my apps won't
run, my friends find porting net Unix software is a major hassle, and
I'm set for computing power until the PowerPC machines come out
anyway).

However, I wish the extra power was available to users and developers
rather than being tied up in an overblown display system that solves
a problem that <1% of the user base will ever care about. The Mac
solves the same problem with a bunch of nasty hacks on top of
QuickDraw, which is a pain and makes DTP application developers sweat.
But everything else on the machine runs along at a nice clip. The NeXT
solves the problem once and for all, and everybody pays the price.

>Do you use NeXTs?  It really does sound like you've had limited experience  
>with them.  You say DPS has a "tremendous speed penalty".  This sounds  
>like you've only seen old '030s or machines without much memory.  You  
>imply that NeXT's terminal windows don't scroll quickly, but I'm scrolling  
>big stuff on a terminal here on a NeXT, and I can't figure out why you  
>would say such a thing.  You don't know what the Processes panel looks  
>like on the NeXT--something like not knowing where the Chooser is on the  
>Mac.  I would use a NeXT more before making such abrupt statements about  
>them.  A lot of what you're saying about them is, frankly, misleading.

My roommate has a NeXT, and I've used his terminal windows. They're
slow, IMHO. It's an 25MHz '040-based cube (upgraded from an '030). I
don't know what the Processes panel looks like, since I haven't used
the NeXT much. You're right -- I'm not a heavy NeXT user, and I am a
heavy Mac user. I suspect that you tend to notice the flaws in
systems you just poke at, and ignore them in systems you use
day-to-day. The NeXT has always seemed slow at display tasks, whether
it was the old '030 machines (IMHO unusably slow) or recent '040s
with 20M of RAM. The computer store had a 20M '040 machine next to a
Mac IIci. They felt about equivalent for most GUI tasks. The NeXT had
a lot more horsepower, and that really matters for a lot of tasks,
but I was frankly quite surprised by how slow the 2-bit deep screen
was. I don't expect to see anything like QuickTime on the NeXT soon --
the display bandwidth just isn't there.

Basically, as I said above, I like the NeXT. I think it's a lot of
hardware and software for the money, and I wouldn't hesitate to
recommend then for people with certain needs (high-precision DTP,
custom limited-market software authoring, etc). I do think that they
made some bad design decisions which rob performance and turn what
should be a very hot box into a fairly hot box (which, unfortunately,
is also true of the Q700-Q9x0, but at least those are bad hardware
decisions which will go away with new boxes, rather than bad software
architecture choices which will exist forever). I also think that
many NeXT advocates overplay the price advantage by misquoting both
NeXT and Mac prices. The NeXT is a good system, and it does well on
its merits even when the comparison is fair.

--John

        The KGB isn't like our FBI or CIA. It's more like our
        Amway distributors...
                --Heard on KGO (San Francisco) radio

+++John L. Coolidge++++++++++++++++coolidge@apple.com+++++++++++++++++++++++
I speak for myself, not for Apple Computer. Copyright 1992 John L. Coolidge.
Copying allowed only if attributed, and if all copies may be further copied.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy