🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct2.091430.11860@ITcorp.com> geoff@ITcorp.com (Geoff Kuenning)  
writes:
> I have to confess that I'm more than a bit distressed at NeXT about
> their approach to unbundling.  One of the main reasons I bought a cube
> was because it came with much more software than the competition.

I have no intent or desire to be a NeXT apologist, since I don't get to make  
their business decisions, but their moves make good business sense. When NeXT  
systems were first released, there were few 3rd party productivity apps, so  
NeXT needed to bundle software to make their systems usable out of the box. As  
time goes on, however, bundled software discourages 3rd parties from developing  
competing applications--anyone here old enough to remember the long wait for  
MSWord/Mac, then the long wait for something other than MSWord/Mac?--and it  
keeps system costs high (I assure you that Wolfram Research didn't donate an  
unlimited Mathematica license to NeXT). Given the shift of NeXT sales away from  
education and into corporate/gov't offices, the cost of continuing to bundle  
Mathematica and ACL made no sense. As for WriteNow, it met exactly the same  
fate as MacWrite: was sold off to a third party company (AppSoft), who is  
putting resources into revising and upgrading it that NeXT could never afford. 

Those who complain loud and long about NeXT's announced price for NeXTSTEP-486  
should remember that the price is kept high in part by all the stuff which NeXT  
still has bundled into NS. (On the other hand, given that their development  
system is based on GNU tools, I can't figure out why they charge an extra $1500  
for their "developer version". But that's another discussion.)

The long and short of it: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  ..bruce..

Bruce F. Webster
CTO, Pages Software Inc.
bwebster@pages.com