🚀 go-pugleaf

From: James Spohrer <spohrer-james>

>>From: James Spohrer <spohrer-james>
>>
>>Does the NeXT machine have an 800K or 1.5M floppy system?
>>It seems that in an educational market you want to be able
>>to share programs, etc. on a medium that doesn't cost
>>$50.  The joy of the under $1.00 diskettes is that you
>>can freely give them away, whereas the $50 CD diskettes
>>would be too expensive.
>>
>>- Jim Spohrer
>>spohrer@yale.edu
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>
>The NeXT machine does not have any sort of floppy drive, and I >doubt it ever
will.  You're right that you want to be able to share
>programs, files, data, etc. on a medium that doesn't cost $50.  How
>about your campus Ethernet?  Why cart programs around on a >floppy when you
can access them with NFS from across the campus?  >Of course if you don't have
a campus Ethernet you're out of luck.  >But I think that's one of the reasons
Jobs included built-in Ethernet >and TCP/IP support. I just hope you don't have
to open a terminal >window and type someting like "mount -t nfs serv:/usr/src
>/usr/src"; I hope Jobs made the user interface better than that.
>
>David Finkelstein
>davef@jessica.stanford.edu

I am think NeXT has made a big mistake by not including a 3.5" floppy.  Campus
Ethernet will not begin to solve the problem. The cost of the medium will be
added onto the price of the software, so every appication will start out at $50
instead of under a dollar for the 3.5" floppy. Sure once you have the software
on campus, maybe Ethernet will be useful, but what about buying the 1000 new
applications that are supposed to spring up for the NeXT machine? This price
problem will almost totally eliminate the possibility of inexpensive (under
$50) software for the NeXT machine. I think not having a 3.5" floppy is a VERY
VERY BAD move for an otherwise brilliant machine.

-Jim Spohrer
spohrer@yale.edu
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