From: wilcoxt@cuug.ab.ca (Terrance Wilcox 229-3361)
Subject: Re: Mac multitasking?
Organization: Calgary UNIX User's Group
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 17:10:29 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.061512.8008@athena.mit.edu> mflafeer@athena.mit.edu (Mohamed F. Lafeer) writes:
>I'm a powerbook user. I use the thing so much, I thought about getting a 
>desktop computer now that I am nearly out of school. I called NeXT and got
>their literature on the NeXTstation Turbo and NeXTstep. I was really
>excited about it. I researched it, talking to proponents (in come cases,
>fanatics) and detractors. Then I decided to buy a Quadra. Why?
>

I give up. You had money to burn? You already had a Mac and a bunch of 
software? You didn't really want a NeXT, but you wanted to be able to
write this message?

>Well, when I asked the simple question of why I should buy a NeXT machine, the
>NeXT people responded that it can do A, B, and C. Great, but I went home and
>realized my powerbook (180, 12mb RAM, 80mb drive, System 7.1) could A,B, and
>C also.
>

My NeXT can't do the A,B,C's. It can however sing the song in CD quality
through the RCA out jacks. If anybody has the song (from Sesame Street)
recorded at CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16 bit, not that 8 bit stuff), I'd
love to have it.

>So I went back to the NeXT camp and they said "Oh, we didn't know that little 
>toy could do that, but have you seen how NeXT can do D,E,and F."
>
>But, the Mac camp showed me how those, too, could be done on my "toy".
> 

So what were D,E, and F? Real life examples make so much more sense than
arbitrary letters. If you've got a legitimate argument, let's hear it.

>So I went back to the NeXT camp and they said "Oh, really? I don't believe
>the Mac can do that. But the NeXT just does things better. It's a REAL
>computer."
>

Who is this NeXT camp? You didn't talk to me.

>It seems to me that the NeXT camp still thinks Macs are Mac Pluses running
>system 5 with 1mb RAM. I see my Mac doing all these neat things everyday.
>The NeXT definitely has some advantages in implementation, but not enough
>to justify moving to a computer system who's entire customer base is about 
>equal to one week of Macintosh sales.
>

Depends on what you do with the computer. Since I don't make my living
off of the customer base, I don't care how many people use it.

>The NeXT camp is making a big deal about how easy it is to write software
>on the NeXT. They show you how you can write an App in 10 minutes. Great,
>but what can you run that App on? About 100,000 computers mostly in CS
>departments, dorm rooms, and large corporations who are using them for
>internal development.
>

If you can write NeXT software, those big corporations will offer you a
high paying job. There's a large demand for NeXT programmers. Even here
in Calgary (population less than a million) there's a demand for NeXT
programmers.

>On the other hand, if I write an App for a Mac, I've got millions of Macs it
>will run on. There are Macs in dorms, colleges, homes, small businesses,
>large businesses, and briefcases all over the world. Furthermore, products
>like TCL, MacApp, and Serius Developer show that NeXT may not have the
>monopoly on easy app development anymore.
>

If you write an app for the Mac, so what? There's thousands of them out there.
Sure it'll run on millions of computers, but the market is loaded with
Macintosh developers. By the time your app ships, it'll be obsolete. Maybe 
TCL and MacApp make Mac programming easier (but not together they don't),
but it still takes a lot more time and effort to write quality software on a 
Mac than on a NeXT. The NeXT's main advantage is its full-featured appkit.
TCL and MacApp simply aren't there yet.

>As for this NeXTstep 486 thing. For me that was the main reason I decided
>to get a Mac now, and look at NeXT again in a couple of years. Besides
>the obvious reason that I want to be sure NeXT gets really accepted, there is
>another reason.
>
>The way I see it, there are two things that may happen with NS486:
>
>1.) NS486 is a big hit. It's blazing fast on a Pentium. There are hundreds
>and thousands, or even millions of NS486 users. But NS486 is not binary
>compatible with NS68k. Fat binaries or not, I am not going to ship software
>to a user without testing thoroughly on an Intel. So, if NS486 is going to
>be a success, I'll wait for it to come out and establish itself in the 
>marketplace before I move to NeXTstep.

By the time you decide to move, all the important people will be there. I
bet you're one of the people that criticized the original Mac, then jumped
on the bandwagon when the Mac took off. You're certainly no pioneer.

>
>2.) NS486 doesn't take off. PowerOpen or Windows NT or OS/2 with Apple/IBM,
>Microsoft, and IBM's push keep NS486 out of the mainstream. NeXT will either
>remain a niche product, or fade away all together. In this case, I'll stay
>with the Mac and make the transition to PowerOpen and then, later, Taligent.
>

How do you know PowerOpen or Taligent will make it? Why would people
want to move to an OS that has "About 100,000 computers mostly in CS
departments, dorm rooms, and large corporations who are using them for
internal development." 

>Either way, why buy a NeXT today? I need a computer today, so I'll buy a Mac.
>And I'll enjoy a rich feature set, tremendous potential for new apps with
>AppleEvents and new system enhancements, and the security of millions of users,
>thousands of developers, and a multi-billion dollar market.
>

Why not use DOS? It has the security of millions of users, thousands of
developers, and a multi-billion dollar market.

As for AppleEvents, sure there's a lot of potential there. When's it going to
be realized? 

I would say that it's fairly obvious you had no intention or interest in
buying a NeXT. Your arguments (A,B,C) were in alphabetical order, but had no
'C is for content'. There's really no point in you buying a NeXT anyway.
NeXT needs pioneers, not followers.

>-M.Firoze Lafeer
>mflafeer@athena.mit.edu
>


Terry Wilcox

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy