From: zmonster@athena.mit.edu (Eric M Hermanson)
Subject: Re: Mac multitasking?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 01:52:35 GMT

>>In article <wjj2cvn@rpi.edu> johnsd2@jec330.its.rpi.edu.its1 writes:
>>>In article 2257@athena.mit.edu, zmonster@athena.mit.edu (Eric M Hermanson) writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>Macs offer you solutions, now. To a lot of problems. NeXT may do so one
>>>>>day, if they ever get accepted.
>>>>>
>>>>>But NeXT offer you a very nifty, internally clean os. It is just not enough,
>>>>>tho.
>>>>
>>>>NeXT offers solutions just as well as Mac does.
>>>
>>>Oh?
>>>

>>>>  I am trying
>>>>to get rid of the stigma that NeXT has no software available for it.. There
>>>>is plenty of software at very good prices (educational users always get
>>>>discounts).  If you don't believe me, call 1-800-848-NeXT and tell them
>>>>you want the software and peripherals guide.
>>>
>>>I know it has software. It just has relatively little, and many of
>>>the packages are nonstandard. They may be excellent but often mere
>>>nonstandardness can kill a package. (unforunately); for many
>>>companies need to stick with their standard stuff for interconnectivity
>>>reasons. (or at least, that's the best excuse I've heard yet. :) )
>>
>>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!

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


>>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?)

>
>>  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.


>> 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-) 

>>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).


>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.

>>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.


>That sounds extremely nifty. Such a machine could change my mind about
>the importance of NeXT, if it comes out soon. (ie before other people
>do exactly the same thing. But nobody else is close- NT has to put up
>with hardware that cant hack it, MacOS doesn't even have pre-emptive
>multitasking, OS/2 has the same problem as NT, etc, etc... NeXT has a
>real opportunity here)
>
>---
>			- Dan Johnson

Eric

Organization: Sophomore, H&SS general, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA