Will Next Cont to Port OS to its Old Hardw?
Greg Colello
1. Will they continue to develop NextStep for the existing hardware?
2. If so, will it keep up with developments on the Intel version?
I suppose it depends on just how portable the changes to NSIntel are, and
how much money Next can make by selling NS for the old hardware.
THE REAL THREAT: Next could not make a profit by maintaining new versions
of NS for the old harware!
Wouldn't they would be forced to freeze development of NS for the old
hardware?
I've seen this situation in the computer industry to-o-o many times
before...
If the scenario follows the usual pattern, we should be hearing Next at
the NextWorld Expo reassuring current hardware owners that they will
receive NS upgrades in the future. That would mean there's a 50-50 chance
of that coming true. If we hear nothing, I'm going to start sweating
profusely. :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Colello
Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology
Stanford University
gcol...@biosphere.stanford.edu (NeXT mail OK)
Robert Davis
>
>I think that anybody hoping NeXT will continue developing for those
>cubes and slabs is dreaming. Why would they, they've already been
>sold. The market for that software will never get larger. Port the
>new versions of the OS to it? Why would they.
>
They will if Canon continues to make similar (M680x0)
hardware. But we still don't know what Canon will do with the
factory and the hardware people.
Rob
--
| Robert Davis da...@sonata.cc.purdue.edu
| "Look up, Hannah. It's Bruce, T Bone, and... Bob." NeXT Mail accepted
--
Scott Wisdom
>: Ok. Next hardware is a dead end. My questions are:
>
>: 1. Will they continue to develop NextStep for the existing hardware?
>
>cubes and slabs is dreaming. Why would they, they've already been
>sold. The market for that software will never get larger. Port the
>new versions of the OS to it? Why would they.
Why would they? Well, they aren't going to make a good impression in the
marketplace by alienating several hundred thousand customers. Since they
can potentially sell 80 thousand units of the next release (or more) to current
hardware owners, they have a good financial reason to do so. Even if they
take a hit, it probably won't be anything like the 030->040 upgrade baord.
At that time, NeXT most certainly didn't go forward with the attitude "well,
we already sold the 030 systems - let's puke on 'em! No upgrade!"
NeXT can't afford to just throw away their cutomer base - it doesn't take a
high powered CEO to see that. They need as many advocates as they can get!
Since no official announcement has been made, though, speculation is just
speculation. We have to wait and see what's going on.
-Scott Wisdom
wis...@geom.umn.edu
ger...@rna.indiv.nluug.nl
writes:
> NeXT can't afford to just throw away their cutomer base - it doesn't take a
> high powered CEO to see that. They need as many advocates as they can get!
>
> Since no official announcement has been made, though, speculation is just
> speculation. We have to wait and see what's going on.
Not quite. Since the normal thing to do is supporting their customer base it
would be normal that this would be their policy. If it is their decided policy,
then stating this support would be something to do, good impressions are needed
very badly.
The simple fact that they do not make this statement gives me the creeps.
--
Gerben Wierda [NeRD:7539] Tel. (+31) 35 833539
"If you don't know where you are going, any road will
take you there." From the Talmud(?), rephrased in
Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland".
Annard Brouwer
writes:
<stuff deleted about NeXT will/should support their current hardware>
>
next Tuesday and then we can either get blindly drunk or just carry on with
what we've been doing... using the best computer environment ever produced!
I'm not very happy with the fact that they've dumped the hardware (it is and
most probably will be the best, most beautiful computer I've ever will work
with), but we have to agree that it is the software that really made the
difference. Now if it gets ported to all kinds of machines, that would be a
blessing.
Envision this: it's a dark and rainy day. You just got at work and turn on your
shabby grey looking plastic computing toy. A message appears on your screen:
"Welcome to Microsoft". A small yelp emits from your mouth... You want to see
if any mail has arrived so you jump through a zillion windows to find the mail
icon: after you've double-clicked your mail application another MS greeting can
be seen flashing over your screen... You need to update some report, do some
calculating, want to program a bit, want to play a game (need I go on?) each
time the greeting flashes on your screen until you wake up bathing in sweat!
'T was just a dream or wasn't it? You get out of bed, go to your work. It's a
dark and rainy day...
I do not want Mr. Gates' dream to come true: that he controls the world with
his software. That would be a very scary thing indeed! If NT is becoming the
number one OS in the coming years then I will decide that I shouldn't have
bothered with computers all these years and I will go back to the good old days
of the abacus, which I will use to do the bookkeeping of my vineyard :-)))
P.S. I *hate* this world were the plebs only want _cheap_ products instead of
_good_ products...
William Lee Nussbaum
>
From all signs, it looks like this announcement that had been
scheduled for next Tuesday was intended to include the fact that NeXT
was dropping the hardware. It leaked, and was spreading quickly
enough that NeXT wanted to confirm or deny it publically immediately,
and would explain the details next week.
Or at least that's how it appears. If, next Wednesday, they haven't
made any clear statements, then I'll start worrying.
Vin Locke
>can potentially sell 80 thousand units of the next release (or more) to current
>hardware owners, they have a good financial reason to do so. Even if they
Good point. However, make that more like 50% of the installed (read static)
base: I think a good deal of these fine machines will be relegated to the
slag heap (or should it be "slab" heap) of the time/technology
continuum, right next to the eight-track tape player and the 8" floppy drive.
Let's consider the profits of the last quarter of '92. NS3.0 finally
shipped that quarter (yes, yes, I know some people got theirs before
October 1) -- I attribute this surge of revenue to the release. Of course,
platforms were sold, but I think the OS and the sale of CD drives were
the icing on the cake.
I think we (proprietary platform owners) will only get patronizing support.
The next full release of NS (if there is one) will have some half-hearted
attempts at bringing up the old hardware, but it will certainly be a low
priority, despite what Mr Steve may say at the formal announcement.
(unless, of course, Canon continues the hardware line) Ask any Sun developer
whose been around a few years about support of Sun 3's . . .
v...@netcom.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"NeXT Axes Hardware"
--San Jose Mercury News, February 10, 1993
"Ever have the feeling you've been cheated? Good night."
--Johnny Rotten, February 1978, at the end of Pistol's performance
System Administrator
: Greg Colello (gcol...@biosphere.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: : Ok. Next hardware is a dead end. My questions are:
:
: : 1. Will they continue to develop NextStep for the existing hardware?
:
: I think that anybody hoping NeXT will continue developing for those
: cubes and slabs is dreaming. Why would they, they've already been
: sold. The market for that software will never get larger. Port the
: new versions of the OS to it? Why would they.
: --
: Don Bowman bow...@waterloo.hp.com 519-883-3085
I disagree. There are (depending on whose lies you believe)
between 60 and 90 kilonexts out there. If they sold upgrades at $200
each to half that, that 600 to 900 kilobucks. And since right now 100
percent of the developers are using Next hardware...
Anyway, The potential profit is sufficient to keep a half dozen
programmers just on porting. If it keeps their current developers productive
for the next year or two, it will be worth their time and money.
If taking bets, I'd say that Next will continue to support the old
hardware with further OS upgrades until they have sold 200,000 copies of NS
for other platforms, or until Nexts are relegated to the category of boat
anchors because of new advancements in hardware.
--
=> Sherwood Botsford sher...@space.ualberta.ca <=
=> University of Alberta Lab Manager, Space Physics Group <=
=> tel:403 492-3713 fax: 403 492-4256 <=
Peter Kron
> Anyway, The potential profit is sufficient to keep a half dozen
> programmers just on porting. If it keeps their current developers productive
> for the next year or two, it will be worth their time and money.
>
> => Sherwood Botsford sher...@space.ualberta.ca <=
> => University of Alberta Lab Manager, Space Physics Group <=
> => tel:403 492-3713 fax: 403 492-4256 <=
Especially since they have been touting the ease of porting apps
to NS/Intel! I would guess most of the machine-dependent parts of
Mach and DPS are pretty stable. The bulk of 3.0 went into 3DKit,
DBKit, PhoneKit, ProjectBuilder, etc which *ought* to be pretty
portable.
But what about app vendors? Will they bother to continue cross-compiling
and distributing fat-binaries...incurring the testing, media, and
support costs? New vendors won't even be able to find machines to test
*on* unless someone picks up the hardware. I am optimistic that these
costs will be a lot less than Mac/Windows ports, but will they make
economic sense--figuring, say, 5K to 10K units at 10% penetration.
Don't sell your cubes...become a Testing 'R' Us franchise :-)
---------------
Peter Kron P.O. Box 51022
Corona Design, Inc. Seattle, WA 98115-1022
Peter...@corona.com