🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BvIL0u.H0L@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson) writes:

> >> How come the release keeps getting bigger, yet the functionality
> >> continues to shrink?
> 
> Just to name a couple: services, the slider on the dock, etc.

Minor point:  2.0 doesn't have a slider on the dock.  I suspect you're
running a dock extender.  This doesn't detract from your point, of course.

> I'm not even going to go into how NS 3.0 gives you so much more
> functionality (Much better fax support, Netware and AppleShare
> clients, DBKit, ProjectBuilder, RenderMan (!!!), PhoneKit) and
> doesn't add that much to your disk space needs.

In the first place, I'm not arguing that NeXT hasn't added
functionality too.  They obviously have.  But I'm a bit distressed at
their habit of removing things that people have come to depend on.
Writenow is especially important because, by shipping it for so long,
they made it a de-facto standard document format.  Now newer users
won't be able to read a lot of existing stuff.  Not good.

In the second place, note that the new functionality is at a different
level.  Services is very nice, but it's not an application.  I have to
buy applications before it's very useful.  Most of the stuff in your
list above requires either hardware purchases (fax, etc.), or software
writing (ProjectBuilder).  RenderMan is presumably a very nice
application (or is it another library?  My 3.0 isn't here yet, so I
don't know).  But is it, too, going to be dropped in the future when
somebody else comes out with a competitor?

I understand NeXT's need to provide a level playing field to
application software companies.  But the WriteNow folks took a big
risk by porting to the NeXT early on.  If WordPerfect or whoever wants
to compete, let them do it by providing more functionality.  I think
it's counterproductive, unfair to new users, and upwards-incompatible
for NeXT to stop shipping widely useful applications that used to be
standard.
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   uunet!desint!geoff