(I'm pretty certain this piece is mine, although the tag in my database says "anon". If you know different, please give me a shout)
Information about NeXT was thin on the ground three years after Steve Jobs had left Apple to set up his new company. What we did know was that NeXT machines were imminent. What we didn't know -- at least I didn't know -- was how to spell the company name. Or (I note with some chagrin) the difference between UNIX the operating system and Mach the kernel.
But despite the waffle, I think I get the thrust of this piece for "Which Computer?" right. With the arrival of the 386 processor the PC is beginning to invade the traditional workstation space. During the course of the roll-out of NeXT over the following three years Jobs will discover that his real USP is not the hardware but the operating system. But by the time he reconfigures NeXT into a software-only company, he's too late.
Er, except that being Steve Jobs he's allowed a resurrection. But that's another story...
[NeXT Workstation][wc?][1 Jan 88][anon]
(year right -- date a guess)
Although it is not exactly rare for unannounced machines to make a bigger splash before launch than afterwards, the forthcoming Next workstations deserve attention despite the hype surrounding them. Not simply because they are the first products to emerge from Steve Jobs' Next Inc., the company he set up after being effectively ousted from Apple in 1985, but because they promise to bring workstation power down to personal computer price levels. And that promises users the ultimate in desktop computing power, without having to give up the benefits of truly personal computing in terms both of accessibility and price.
Indeed, the Next machines symbolise the convergence of 'traditional' personal computers - if anything less than 15 years old can be said to be traditional - and dedicated engineering workstations. The difference between these product categories used to be clear, since personal computers had 16-bit processors, very limited RAM and disk capacities, minimal communications facilities, and poor-quality graphics displays; on the other hand, workstations had 32-bit processors, vast quantities of extremely fast RAM and disk space, built-in networking to share even bigger disks between groups of users, and enormous graphics screens with resolutions of 1000 x 1000 or better. Now, machines like the 80386-based PCs and the Macintosh II can, when suitably configured, provide all the features that a 'traditional' workstation can.
And while workstations were always cost-no-object products, bought in small quantities for professionals who really needed their power and capacity, the 32-bit personal computers are in the mass-market mainstream and priced accordingly.
In such a market, the question of whether the Next machines are PCs or workstations is largely academic. According to sources close to the company, the low-end Next system comes with a 32-bit Motorola 68030 processor backed up with a 68882 maths co-processor, 4 megabytes of RAM, a single 3 1/2in 1.44Mb floppy drive, a 40 megabyte hard disk, built-in Ethernetnetwork and SCSI peripheral interfaces, an integral fax modem, and a 17in monochrome monitor capable of displaying 1280 x 960 dots in up to 256 shades of grey. So far, so not very unusual, since these specifications are not too far beyond a machine like the Macintosh II today, and match what Apple itself might launch as the Macintosh III in 1989. The price too is personal computer-like, at around $5000.
But where the Next system edges into workstation territory is in its operating software and in its adherence to industry standards that have been created and adhered to by workstation originators like Sun Microsystems and Apollo Computer. The operating system will be Unix - or, according to some reports, Stanford's Mach - with a windows-and-icons front-end that may or may not come from the UK's own Cambridge-based IXI, a Torch spin-off. The networking will use Sun's Networking File System (NFS) standard to allow transparent file-sharing between Next systems and NFS- compatible machines from many other vendors. And the display will use Adobe's Display PostScript to create its graphics images, so that what is seen on the screen will precisely match what is printed on a PostScript-compatible laser printer.
Like workstations, the Next systems make no compromises and do not attempt to be compatible with existing personal computers in the marketplace, apart from the obvious fact that they use the same fundamental electronic building blocks. Any software developer wanting to use the special features of the machines must write new software, or adapt existing software, to match the special features of the new systems, and Steve Jobs is attempting to attract software developers just like the Apple 'software evangelists' used to do in the early days of the Macintosh.
The problem, for Jobs and Next as well as for existing workstation vendors, is sorting out the channels through which their high-specification but non-PC-standard machines can be sold in large enough numbers to be profitable. As long as workstations cost £15,000 and up for a minimum configuration they could be sold like minicomputers, but at £5,000 and belowthey must be sold like IBM ATs to make money for the manufacturers. That means using dealers or value-added-resellers (VARs), and the reluctance of dealers and VARs to sell complex Unix systems, particularly complex Unix systems costing the same as high-end PCs, is legendary.
Workstations need more initial specification, more installation work thanks to the inherent networking, and a lot more after-sales support since there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf shrink-wrapped Unix application; all Unix programs must be tinkered with and re-compiled at least to make them work on a new hardware configuration.
To counter this problem, Jobs is primarily aiming the Next systems at the higher education market, where the number of prospective customers is manageably small but the numbers of machines per customer is high, and where the tightness of cash makes untried hardware attractive as long as it is cheap enough. In other words, Jobs is trying to sell the Next workstations in exactly the same way as the Macintosh was sold into Universities in 1984.
But in the long run, the workstation manufacturers have more of a problem than traditional personal computer manufacturers like Apple and IBM. The personal computer firms can up the technological ante at will, while maintaining software compatibility and adding enough computing power and high-end applications to chip away at the workstation user base. To compete, the workstation vendors have to cut their prices, cut down their system performance to meet those prices, and so try to battle the personal computer giants on their home ground of low prices and dealer distribution.
That is a high-risk strategy for companies like Sun, Apollo and Next to follow. But the blurring of the boundary between workstations and PCs - particularly when Sun, for example, produces an 80386-based machine that runs MS-DOS and uses the same basic hardware as PCs from Compaq, ALR, and now IBM itself - makes it a necessary evil if the workstation vendors are to beat off the competition from below in the 1990s.
Information about NeXT was thin on the ground three years after Steve Jobs had left Apple to set up his new company. What we did know was that NeXT machines were imminent. What we didn't know -- at least I didn't know -- was how to spell the company name. Or (I note with some chagrin) the difference between UNIX the operating system and Mach the kernel.
But despite the waffle, I think I get the thrust of this piece for "Which Computer?" right. With the arrival of the 386 processor the PC is beginning to invade the traditional workstation space. During the course of the roll-out of NeXT over the following three years Jobs will discover that his real USP is not the hardware but the operating system. But by the time he reconfigures NeXT into a software-only company, he's too late.
Er, except that being Steve Jobs he's allowed a resurrection. But that's another story...
[NeXT Workstation][wc?][1 Jan 88][anon]
(year right -- date a guess)
Although it is not exactly rare for unannounced machines to make a bigger splash before launch than afterwards, the forthcoming Next workstations deserve attention despite the hype surrounding them. Not simply because they are the first products to emerge from Steve Jobs' Next Inc., the company he set up after being effectively ousted from Apple in 1985, but because they promise to bring workstation power down to personal computer price levels. And that promises users the ultimate in desktop computing power, without having to give up the benefits of truly personal computing in terms both of accessibility and price.
Indeed, the Next machines symbolise the convergence of 'traditional' personal computers - if anything less than 15 years old can be said to be traditional - and dedicated engineering workstations. The difference between these product categories used to be clear, since personal computers had 16-bit processors, very limited RAM and disk capacities, minimal communications facilities, and poor-quality graphics displays; on the other hand, workstations had 32-bit processors, vast quantities of extremely fast RAM and disk space, built-in networking to share even bigger disks between groups of users, and enormous graphics screens with resolutions of 1000 x 1000 or better. Now, machines like the 80386-based PCs and the Macintosh II can, when suitably configured, provide all the features that a 'traditional' workstation can.
And while workstations were always cost-no-object products, bought in small quantities for professionals who really needed their power and capacity, the 32-bit personal computers are in the mass-market mainstream and priced accordingly.
In such a market, the question of whether the Next machines are PCs or workstations is largely academic. According to sources close to the company, the low-end Next system comes with a 32-bit Motorola 68030 processor backed up with a 68882 maths co-processor, 4 megabytes of RAM, a single 3 1/2in 1.44Mb floppy drive, a 40 megabyte hard disk, built-in Ethernetnetwork and SCSI peripheral interfaces, an integral fax modem, and a 17in monochrome monitor capable of displaying 1280 x 960 dots in up to 256 shades of grey. So far, so not very unusual, since these specifications are not too far beyond a machine like the Macintosh II today, and match what Apple itself might launch as the Macintosh III in 1989. The price too is personal computer-like, at around $5000.
But where the Next system edges into workstation territory is in its operating software and in its adherence to industry standards that have been created and adhered to by workstation originators like Sun Microsystems and Apollo Computer. The operating system will be Unix - or, according to some reports, Stanford's Mach - with a windows-and-icons front-end that may or may not come from the UK's own Cambridge-based IXI, a Torch spin-off. The networking will use Sun's Networking File System (NFS) standard to allow transparent file-sharing between Next systems and NFS- compatible machines from many other vendors. And the display will use Adobe's Display PostScript to create its graphics images, so that what is seen on the screen will precisely match what is printed on a PostScript-compatible laser printer.
Like workstations, the Next systems make no compromises and do not attempt to be compatible with existing personal computers in the marketplace, apart from the obvious fact that they use the same fundamental electronic building blocks. Any software developer wanting to use the special features of the machines must write new software, or adapt existing software, to match the special features of the new systems, and Steve Jobs is attempting to attract software developers just like the Apple 'software evangelists' used to do in the early days of the Macintosh.
The problem, for Jobs and Next as well as for existing workstation vendors, is sorting out the channels through which their high-specification but non-PC-standard machines can be sold in large enough numbers to be profitable. As long as workstations cost £15,000 and up for a minimum configuration they could be sold like minicomputers, but at £5,000 and belowthey must be sold like IBM ATs to make money for the manufacturers. That means using dealers or value-added-resellers (VARs), and the reluctance of dealers and VARs to sell complex Unix systems, particularly complex Unix systems costing the same as high-end PCs, is legendary.
Workstations need more initial specification, more installation work thanks to the inherent networking, and a lot more after-sales support since there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf shrink-wrapped Unix application; all Unix programs must be tinkered with and re-compiled at least to make them work on a new hardware configuration.
To counter this problem, Jobs is primarily aiming the Next systems at the higher education market, where the number of prospective customers is manageably small but the numbers of machines per customer is high, and where the tightness of cash makes untried hardware attractive as long as it is cheap enough. In other words, Jobs is trying to sell the Next workstations in exactly the same way as the Macintosh was sold into Universities in 1984.
But in the long run, the workstation manufacturers have more of a problem than traditional personal computer manufacturers like Apple and IBM. The personal computer firms can up the technological ante at will, while maintaining software compatibility and adding enough computing power and high-end applications to chip away at the workstation user base. To compete, the workstation vendors have to cut their prices, cut down their system performance to meet those prices, and so try to battle the personal computer giants on their home ground of low prices and dealer distribution.
That is a high-risk strategy for companies like Sun, Apollo and Next to follow. But the blurring of the boundary between workstations and PCs - particularly when Sun, for example, produces an 80386-based machine that runs MS-DOS and uses the same basic hardware as PCs from Compaq, ALR, and now IBM itself - makes it a necessary evil if the workstation vendors are to beat off the competition from below in the 1990s.
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