From: chuck@nighthawk.jhuapl.edu (Chuck Waltrip)
Subject: Re: the REAL problem is...
Organization: JHU/Applied Physics Laboratory
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 00:04:19 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.210958.1376@rna.indiv.nluug.nl>  
gerben@rna.indiv.nluug.nl writes:
> In article <BzoHro.2tw@news.cso.uiuc.edu> jeffo@uiuc.edu (J.B.  
Nicholson-Owens) writes:
> > Chuck Waltrip writes
> > > But NeXT's only real asset is its (diminishing) head start in 
> > > the OOP arena.
> > 
> > I agree; I don't believe that significant numbers of people are  
> > migrating to, have migrated to or are starting with NeXTSTEP.  By  
> > 'significant', I mean that NeXT, Inc.'s profits haven't shown enough  
> > growth.  I'd say that if the people with money are truly interested in  
> > OOP, then they'll wait until it's available from Microsoft or
> > Taligent.   
> > I think it's another case of the masses saying, "What we've been doing  
> > and what we're doing now is working for us, so why change to something  
> > else small like NeXTSTEP?"
> > 
> > I think if NeXT realized that developers are not where the money is,  
> > they'd have a more profitable NeXT hardware investment.
> > 
> > I think that users are the key to the success of the NeXT.  Users tell  
> 
> Well, not quite. IBM tried to to it that way with the original OS/2
> stuff. It failed miserably, because of lack of software.
> 
> What NeXT is trying to do is copy the original succesful Apple scheme: 
> edu - niches - corporations - mass market. They lack the resources
> Apple had originally from the succesful Apple II, which makes the NeXT
> project a 'little' bit more difficult.
	Users and developers are sort of a chicken-or-egg matter.  NeXT
	has provided a generally superior developer environment.  While
	developer response has been fair (in terms of numbers of
	developers; probably very good in terms of enthusiasm), the real
	drawing card for developers is number of platforms that my
	application can run on.  This means number of platforms where a
	user is willing to run my application on.  Now there are two
	classes of users:  those running in a dedicated environment; and
	everybody else.  The dedicated environment market includes things
	like reservation systems where people use the computer for
	nothing else.  Even so, a reservation system computer in a travel
	agency (as opposed to in an airline's own centralized reservation
	system) may have multiple uses so that the reservation system is
	just another application.  The dedicated environment constitutes
	much (most?) of the mission-critical application (MCA) market.
	Success in such an environment may have very little payoff for
	other developers whose market success depends on being useful to 
	the general purpose computer user.

	NeXTSTEP 486 partly addresses this problem.  A buyer gets an
	integrated environment in which to make his/her MCA available.
	If the same desktops that need access to the MCA were not already
	using highly-integrated PC apps, then NS 486 will probably very
	nicely accommodate existing PC productivity apps already in use
	on those desktops.  This provides some opportunity for NeXTSTEP
	productivity app developers to supplement or displace existing
	productivity apps.  But, of course, if the desktop is completely
	dedicated to the MCA, no such opportunity exists.

	But the market for productivity apps is moving rapidly towards
	integration.  Both Apple and MicroSoft have application 
	programming interfaces (APIs) that promote this integration.
	NeXTSTEP developers can't play with the Mac or PC apps that use
	these APIs.  These APIs constitute the current, de facto "open
	systems".  At a minimum, then, NeXTSTEP should provide APIKits
	for these APIs similar to DBkit, but perhaps with the ability to
	transparently and simultaneously interact via multiple adapters
	to specific APIs.

	But that's still not sufficient.  PC apps have to be able to run
	on the NeXTSTEP platform with full access to the same APIs.  It
	would be a considerable advantage to NeXT if Mac apps could run
	on the same basis.  I suspect that NeXTSTEP would have to provide
	"driver" mechanisms that vendors of PC and Mac emulators could
	utilize for these APIs to be implemented.

	This would provide a fully integrated environment which would be
	painless for current PC users to convert to if they wished to
	use NeXTSTEP applications.  Given attractive pricing for a
	runtime NS 486 environment (and current pricing is not
	attractive), the number of available platforms to NeXTSTEP
	developers could become very large.

	I have suggested in the past that an easy way to get much of
	this "for free" would be to port NeXTSTEP to NT.  But I don't
	care if it was easy or hard to provide and don't care how we
	get it--just give it to us.  Please.

cfwaltrip

Opinions expressed are my own.

Email:	<chuck@nighthawk.jhuapl.edu>	NeXTmail OK.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy