From: jeffo@uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens)
Subject: Re: the REAL problem is...
Reply-To: jeffo@uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 10:53:01 GMT

Gavin Bowie writes
> YES, but even if Word/Excel come out as NeXTApps, why should I 
> purchase a NeXT to run them?

I think a NeXT would be worth buying then (assuming the price of the  
hardware doesn't increase and the software is priced at a maximum of  
$150 per piece of software) because if they are developed well, they  
can be integrated in ways that the Mac versions cannot.  They can take  
advantage of the software NeXT provides (Digital Webster, Digital  
Librarian just to name a couple) and make a very powerful word  
processing combination that doesn't exist on the Mac unless you bought  
some pretty costly software.

Something I think the NeXT needs is software from known places.  Sure,  
the best software in the world might come from <insert NeXT-only  
software company here>, but since nobody has heard of them outside  
USENET and a couple ads in NeXTWORLD, people just getting into NeXT or  
looking at NeXT might think that those places could go out of business  
any day, leaving them with a machine that is really unpopular and  
software with no hope of being supported.

If networking a NeXT were easier, it would help too.  This could mean  
that people could literally plug into their network with a modem or  
ethernet cable and access their documents remotely or access remote  
libraries for research, all while using a word processor they already  
know and trust.  If NeXT B&W systems were as cheap as an Mac IIsi, and  
they were as advertised as frequently as Macs are, I think they'd sell  
a lot more machines.  I think more people would be willing to take a  
chance on them, and the more people NeXT can rope into taking a chance,  
the more people it can claim are NeXT users and the more people it can  
tell developers about when developers or companies want to know the  
size of the platform.

As far as existing software, I use both DW and DL all the time, but now  
that object linking exists, I wish I had more software that took  
advantage of it.  Right now, all I've got are some demos of how to  
program object linking; things that really don't do anything for me.  I  
also wish I had NeXT software that could use the MS-Word file format.   
FrameMaker/Mac can load it in, but FrameMaker/NeXT can't.  Lastly, I  
wished all the software I got from NeXT worked.  DL often bombs on  
indexing stuff and DW's definitions has these double-pipe symbols in  
them sometimes.  It's also a pain to have to deal with the shelf, the  
way NeXT implemented them (dragging stuff off them all the time is a  
true pain and makes me think none of those designers ever used the  
shelf).

Developers tell me that the main hinderance for developing on the NeXT  
is the chicken-and-egg situation:  a software developer who pays  
attention to markets won't develop anything for the NeXT until there is  
a suitable base of NeXT users, however, NeXT users won't be able to  
purchase anything until it's available and people won't buy NeXTs  
unless something great and compatible is out.
-- 
-- Jeff (jeffo@uiuc.edu)
-- NeXTmail welcome