From: scott@nic.gac.edu (Scott Hess)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: NeXTstep for PowerPC --- THE ONLY CHOICE
Date: 22 Jan 93 13:34:33
Organization: Is a sign of weakness
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: nic.gac.edu
In-reply-to: rawyatt@phakt.usc.edu's message of 22 Jan 1993 03:54:39 -0800

In article <1jon9vINN91a@phakt.usc.edu>
	rawyatt@phakt.usc.edu (Robert Alexander Wyatt) writes:
>Well...I'm probably setting myself up for a flame war, but here goes...

We'll see.

>I received a great response to my post from Robert Szarek...and I
>quote...
>
>"Pink/TalOS - will even leapfrog NeXtStep 3 from what I can dig up.

But, his example is:
>The most interesting concept is that programs will be able to borrow
>objects from one prg. to another. The prg. will have to "announce"
>it's objects to the OS, other apps (possibly from the same or other
>soft vendors) can look up the object, and if available, it will
>use it. Think of it, one dictionary object used by your Word
>processor, database, and spreadsheet. The object can be applied in
>various different ways. Like in the wp it would be used to check
>text words. But if the dict. obj. can access various data structs.
>then in theory it can read words stored in a draw file! Now that's
>power that even NeXTStep doesn't offer.

NeXTSTEP3.0 doesn't do this?  That's news to me.  "A proxy by any
other name works the same", even if the proxy is not really a proxy
but the real object.  Of course, it depends on how good your proxy
code is :-).

[Though if IBM/Apple manage to pull off shared object access in
the shared memory sense, and still manage to do it in a memory-protected
environment, I'll be impressed!]

>They do have OOP but on a per app. basis. Something a la C++ but
>better.

Hmm.  That's a pretty big hook to swallow!  "It's like passing a
kidney stone, but better."

>Okay...not to flame Robert or start a war, but...is Taligent shipping
>their OS?  Specs are great...but...until the product is in hand...

This is the basic problem with comparing Taligent with NeXTSTEP.
NeXTSTEP is shipping _today_.  Taligent is shipping at some point
in the future which has been estimated as 1995-1996.  Now, that's
what they're estimating _today_, which means 1997-1999.

Even though NeXT doesn't exactly manage to get their development
cycles as short as they think they can, they are coming in around
18-22 months per release.  That means that NeXT will be to NS5.0
and probably releasing NS6.0 Real Soon Now by the time Taligent
comes out.

The thing is, what Microsoft and Apple/IBM are working to release
Real Soon Now is something has has everything NeXTSTEP has, but on
their platforms.  In essence, NeXT was the first major OS in the
second generation of the GUI wave.  I will be the first to admit
that NT and Taligent apparently will have some things that _are_
nice compared to NeXTSTEP.  That's the advantage of waiting five
or six years, you can see what worked and what didn't.  But, I'll
also be right in there pointing out many of the _disadvantages_
compared to NeXTSTEP.



Lest you think that this posting is all happiness and light, I'll
toss in one sobering thought.  For long-time NeXT users, NS2.0 was
not all _that_ awesome.  There were a lot of really nice things in
it, but you could hear the same refrain from many quarters - "This
is what NS1.0 should have been but wasn't."  With NS3.0, it's worse.
We're hearing things like "This is actually pretty buggy."  NeXT
currently has the lead.  If they are _really_ forward-thinking,
they're going to take the last five to eight years of experience
and use it to pull the NeXTSTEP operating system forward.  Then,
they can take that and become the first OS in the _third_ generation
of the GUI wave.  IMHO, it's going to require the use of a real
object-oriented language - C++ and Objective-C are attempts to add
real object-oriented abilities to C, and though they succeed on
many levels, they still are just C in costume.

Someone is going to do this.  It's not Microsoft or Apple/IBM (an
object-oriented operating system based on the C++ mindset is not
going to do it.  Remember, a big factor with Unix was that it was
95% C code - DOS was originally written in assembler).  There's no
reason it couldn't be NeXT.

[I want it to be NeXT, but it doesn't need to be - wherever it is,
that's where I hope to be.]

Later,
--
scott hess <shess@ssesco.com>                        <To the BatCube, Robin>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 895-1208 Anytime!