From: Darren_Smith@NeXT.COM (Darren Smith) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.announce Subject: NeXT PROVIDES DETAILS ABOUT NEW RELEASE OF THE NEXTSTEP OPERATING SYSTEM Date: 25 Jun 1994 13:50:41 -0400 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Logsdon NeXT Computer, Inc. 415/780-3786 or Charlotte Penner Copithorne & Bellows 415-975-2225 NeXT PROVIDES DETAILS ABOUT NEW RELEASE OF THE NEXTSTEP OPERATING SYSTEM NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 to be released in fourth quarter of this year SAN FRANCISCO - June 21, 1994 - NeXT Computer, Inc. today provided details about the next version of its object-oriented operating system, NEXTSTEP Release 3.3, to attendees at NEXTSTEP EXPO, held here at Moscone Center. Based on feedback from NeXT's customers, more than 1,000 enhancements have been made to NEXTSTEP to address critical deployment issues for enterprise-wide client/server applications. The new release includes enhancements in the areas of interoperability, scalability and ease of use. Specifically, NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 offers more support for Intel-based PCs, eases system administration efforts, improves large network scalability, provides enhanced mail features, and through SoftPC, supports enhanced-mode MS-DOS & Windows applications. "NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 combines the robustness of mainframe operating systems with the flexibility of PCs, making it the best environment for enterprise-wide deployment of object-oriented custom applications," said Rick Jackson, director of product marketing at NeXT Computer, Inc. "The enhancements to this release provide greater support for large-scale operations typical of NeXT's corporate customers." New Release Offers More Intel-based PC Support Keeping pace with new PC technologies, NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 includes additional support for new standards such as PCI and ISA Plug & Play. Release 3.3 also includes enhanced support for portable computers, such as PCMCIA support, advanced power management capabilities and 8-bit color. Release 3.3 comes bundled with more than 50 device drivers to support a wide variety of peripherals. These new features simplify the task of hardware configurations and enable NEXTSTEP to run on a larger variety of Intel-based desktop and portable systems. Release 3.3 Eases System Administration & Improves Scalability To ease the task of system administration, the installation of NEXTSTEP in large sites has been improved. With new capabilities such as network install and network bulk upgrade, system administrators can now install NEXTSTEP through a network server without requiring a CD-ROM drive. Templates can also be configured so that all systems built from the server inherit the same configurations. Network enhancements have been included to increase scalability. NetInfo, a proven enterprise-wide network administration database, now supports 10,000+ nodes across wide-area networks which enables corporations to grow their networks globally without sacrificing data integrity or network performance. Features from Mach 3.0 and BSD 4.4 have also been incorporated to improve overall system performance. NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 also provides enhanced system administration tools, such as UserManager, NetInfoManager, SimpleNetworkStarter and new networking utilities, to manage large networks more efficiently and cost effectively. Enhanced Mail Features in NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 NeXTmail has been significantly improved in Release 3.3 to give users greater flexibility in how electronic mail is accessed, managed and stored. New MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) support enables NEXTSTEP users to send and receive multimedia messages with users of other popular e-mail applications through the same intuitive NeXTmail interface. Information such as the number of read and deleted messages, size of each message and the number of new messages is now easily accessible. By treating e-mail messages as generic documents, users can now save and restore drafts of partially composed or unsent e-mail messages, including header and address information. Additional mail features, providing time management benefits, include: selective and summary printing; enhanced searching; selective message archival; in-line address validation; hierarchical mailboxes; and user defined fields. New Release of SoftPC Supports Enhanced-Mode DOS & Windows Apps NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 will also include an updated version of SoftPC. SoftPC 4. 0 for the NEXTSTEP/Intel operating system from Insignia Solutions, Inc. will support several enhanced-mode MS-DOS and Windows applications, including Aldus PageMaker 5.0 and WordPerfect for Windows 6.0. The product will be available in July through Insignia Solutions and shipped as a 30-day trial version with NEXTSTEP 3.3. It is priced at $249 with upgrades for $69. Pricing and availability NEXTSTEP Release 3.3 will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for $795 with upgrades priced at $199. NeXT Computer, Inc. NeXT develops and markets the award-winning NEXTSTEP object-oriented software for industry-standard computer architectures. Customers use NEXTSTEP's advanced object environment to rapidly develop and deploy custom, enterprise-wide, client/server applications. NeXT is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has offices in North America, London, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. # # # # NeXT, the NeXT logo and NEXTSTEP are registered trademarks of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners.