🚀 go-pugleaf

> In article <1992Apr15.155132.16493@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca>  
aberno@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Anthony Berno) writes:
> [about Apple]
> Keyword: was.  The PC market will gain even more momentum with OS/2
> and the soon to be released Windows NT.  Hundreds of PC developers
> will write development tools that provide a comparable environment to
> the one found on the NeXT.  Like Windows 3.0, they won't have to be as
> good as what they're imitating.  By December of 93, Windows NT will be
> running on faster hardware than NeXTstep, and probably on much cheaper
> hardware too.

What a lot of people forget is that *all* platforms advance over time. I  
am currently having a minor email flamewar with a friend of mine in  
California about NextStep. He claims that, (having worked on a vintage  
Cube) that his Amiga is faster than a NeXT and the new such-and-such that  
he's adding on to it RSN will "widen the gap even further". I informed him  
that NeXT has come a long way since the 030 days, and that in fact the gap  
is the other way around - and widening.

By 1993, we might have NT running on very fast hardware, but we might also  
have a NeXT running with multiple 88110's or something like that. NeXT has  
blown the pants off the competition in terms of price/performance before,  
what makes you believe that they won't continue to do so? And Apple is  
sure to switch someday to a new, advanced operating system, perhaps  
something out of the IBM/Apple alliance. I don't think that *any* vendor  
has a clear monopoly on the future. Certainly, OS/2 and NT will have a  
long way to go before they are truly mature systems rather than "something  
to run Windows". It's going to be a big push to get them going, because  
there is no immediate advantage to switching to them - you just end up  
running the same old apps - while there is a big advantage for at least  
some people to switch to NextStep.

I've been looking quite carefully at the situation. I don't think that  
NeXT is dumb, and I believe that they have a firm foothold in the market.  
They aren't stagnant, and they probably have a lot of cards up their  
sleeve. I don't think that a zillion apps makes for a good platform - what  
makes a good platform is that it does what *you* want, and NeXT, even with  
its relatively small base, does it *exactly* for me. There will always be  
people that feel this way, and they will always buy something other than  
the mainstream machine. 

-Anthony