You've probably read or heard enough about NeXT to whet your appetite for more. The dreamchild of former flower-child Steven Jobs, it's designed, promoted and sold to be the computer of tomorrow, available today.
Many things, pro and con, can be said about Apple's co-founder. But nobody can accuse him of being boring, timid, modest or lacking a sense of adventure. At upwards of $10,000, NeXT is pricey, but it's also classy. And although Jobs' long stint at Apple left some observers shaking their heads, we like a lot of what we've seen.NeXT was designed for performance first, price second. If engineers of the earliest Apples and IBM PCs had taken this approach, we'd now have standard software that outperforms today's. We'd all print to any printer we had.
Accountants and financial figurers wouldn't have to find the manual and sales slip to know whether they own a math co-processor. (Every NeXT is supposed to come with one.) NeXT's computer cabinet itself is different - cubic, spanning about a foot in all directions. Colored matte black, it has no buttons, lights, switches, knobs or other low-tech accoutrements. Everything you can do with NeXT, even turning it on or off, you must do at the keyboard.
The main processor chip is similar to the one used in Apple's most powerful Mac, only supercharged to run more than twice as fast (and not compatible with anyone's Mac accessories). The video display monitor is bigger and shows more details than standard equipment shipped with other PCs.
The screen is big and so finely tuned it can display a full detailed page of text on scarcely half its width. Programmers can use the second half for lengthy software and hardware instructions.
Onscreen images are produced using Display Postscript, an output standard we like very much. Since NeXT's laser printer is also driven by PostScript, What You See on this screen Is a lot closer than usual to What You Get.
Most computer owners have to keep adding memory as programs get fancier. NeXT arrives with enough internal memory for future needs, not just now. And every NeXT produces high-fidelity stereo digital sound. If you think that's a gimmick, consider that one major impediment to voice-operation is the tinny quality in most computer sound systems!
NeXT also comes equipped to be wired directly to an Ethernet type of local area network (LAN). This allows any NeXT to swap files and messages not only with other networked NeXT users but with almost any brand of computer connected to the same Ethernet network.
Even with brilliant designing, NeXT had a huge problem to overcome. Computers can't do a thing without software to tell them how. NeXT can't run software written for the IBM, the Apple or any computer but another NeXT.
Jobs' dilemma was this: On the one hand, no sane software company is willing to risk the enormous investment it takes to customize programs for a one-of-a-kind computer until its sales figures approach the six-figure range. On the other hand, few sane potential buyers are (or should be) willing to buy a computer that has no software.
Jobs' way out: He bankrolled a lot of selected makers to customize their software for NeXT, a solution we suggested to a French mainframe computermaker back in 1962! To sell his computers, Jobs is bundling all that software. (Bundling is computer industry jargon for programs included in the price of the hardware.)
And what software! For starters, NeXT's operating system permits multitasking. In other words, it lets you do several things at a time. (OS/2's multitasking is still little more than a promise.) If you think multitasking is superfluous because you can do only one thing at a time, you haven't suffered our frequent long waits for data to finish processing.
With multitasking, you can send a Fax and back up all the accounting files while you're writing a letter to Mother.
NeXT also comes equipped to use UNIX at a time when most other PC makers are just mentioning it. UNIX is an operating system whose advocates think it's a cure-all for most problems in using personal computers.
That we don't hold this belief is beside the point. Jobs has skillfully pegged his marketing arrow straight at the academic world, where UNIX is almost as common as federal grants. In fact, it looks to us like Jobs' plans called for establishing NeXT first in academe and then using federal grant money to debug his dreamchild.
When Jobs gets ready to sell hard to the rest of us, no doubt we'll be buying a different configuration of networking hardware and workaday software.
We've long wished for some style in computers, since every guest in our office has to stare at the things. NeXT is stylish, too. And, being black (a color quickly copied by lots of off-brand IBM-type computer makers), it does tend to recede into the background.
Judi would love a computer in colors to match our decor, and basic black isn't it. But the paint used on NeXT is water-based latex enamel, so she can easily paint over it! If you, like us, don't have government money to spend on a Model 1.0, you can satisfy the rest of your curiosity by reading the $23 NeXT Book by Bruce F. Webster. It was written mostly on an early NeXT supplied by NeXT Inc.
Since its publisher, Addison-Wesley, is also the official publisher of NeXT books and manuals, it's sort of the official story. But it's the only story in book form, and unsales-pitchy. And it thoroughly answers the question, "What's NeXT?"
Copyright 1989 P/K Associates Inc., 4343 W. Beltline Hwy., Madison WI 53711.