🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr14.055954.14518@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca> aberno@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca writes:
>In article <1992Apr13.035754.11198@utstat.uucp> philip@utstat.uucp (Philip  
>McDunnough) writes:
>
>>And it's "most people" who
>> will determine the future. 
>
>There you have it folks. The future is DOS.

No, the present is DOS. The future will evolve from there. I think you have
missed my point. The momentum of the "Intel based" world is enormous. Every
conceivable little gadjet you could ever want it available there, and it
keeps gets less expensive every day. There's a gap between the NeXT OS and
those that currently live on PC's. That's obvious. But every second someone
is chipping away at the gap and NeXT just won't be able to come up with new
things fast enough in order to avoid being surpassed.

I think the NeXT is great. It's one of the few computers I've used that I
really, really,...like. However, I maintain that the mass market forces will
eventually dominate. For example, think about "multimedia" for a second. Its
real future lies, in my view, in the convergence of consumer products and
computer techniques. The ND is not the answer. A $1000 TV equipped with
an operating system that can control entertainment, communications, etc...is
more along the right lines. The problem with the workstation world is the
cost of virtually every little thing you want to add to a workstation. The
initial cost may be low, but so what. People do not think of Sun's, HP's,
NeXT's,etc...when they think about buying a home item. They do consider PC's
and to a lessor extent Mac's( Apple has realized that marketshare is very
important although they may very well be too late). It is in that spirit that
I'd rather see NeXT heading away from the workstation label and more towards
the elegant personal computer label with something different to offer. Since
NeXT obviously doesn't agree, I wish them well. I hope they see the light 
though because they risk becoming another Amiga.

NeXT needs a low cost entry level computer. By low cost I mean $1500 complete
and in colour. Get rid of Unix. Put mach or whatever in ROM when it is stable
enough. And allow it to be cloned in Thailand if needs be. Wouldn't you
rather see 1,000,000 units/year vs. 50,000? 

Philip McDunnough
University of Toronto
philip@utstat.toronto.edu [NeXT mail ok]

[ Whither Neuron?]