AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS NEXT TECHNOLOGY APPLE IS BUYING
AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS NEXT TECHNOLOGY APPLE IS BUYING
Sent: 12/22/96; 7:39:15 PM
From: mark@oaai.com (Mark Onyschuk)
Just some observations:
>The excitement wasn't there when Next was independent. >Can Apple buying Next really make that much of a difference?
A good portion of NeXT's problem was that it was never marketed as a mainstream operating system. Imagine a Be that charged 10K for its hardware, or which built software for PC's but charged 1K per seat. Or which built a developer environment for NT but charged the same 1K per seat.
An exciting aspect of what Apple gets by buying NEXTSTEP is not so much its cross-platform capability (PPC/X86/Sparc/PA-RISC), but rather its OS independence.
Right now, a pressing problem Apple is suffering is an exodus of developers who'd prefer to develop their applications under Windows.
Imagine though if all of a sudden, Apple could turn to those same developers and say "here is a tool with which you'll be able to write Windows applications *in less than one-third the time*, and which at the same time, without need for modification will be full fledged Mac applications as well."
All Apple needs to do is release the OpenStep runtime which NeXT was charging 1K for until last Friday, and finish up the work NeXT was doing with its OpenStep runtime for 95.
NEXTSTEP is a very big stick with which to beat Microsoft.
And Microsoft has little to offer in defense. The only environment Microsoft has in its pocket which even approaches NEXTSTEP in the area of rapid application development is Visual Basic, and I don't see many commercial grade applications being written in VB any time soon.
>PS: If you've used Next's WebObjects product, I would be >interested in hearing how it works, if you're satisfied with it, if >it's moving, performs well, etc. I admit I haven't been following >this software. I'd like to know more about it. Thanks!
I've used it to implement two mid-sized intranet applications, we're now using it to build a large-scale application.
[At least as of Friday] Price is steep, but scalability is unmatched. The visual tools are still less stable than I'd like, but the paradigm they provide - that of drag-and-drop, component-based design of web pages is first-rate.
Regards, Mark
M, Onyschuk and Associates Inc. 15 La Rose Ave. Unit 702, Toronto Ontario M9P1A7 (416)241-3076
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