Nebula 2/Nebula Two.iso/Documents/PressReleases93/10October/NTvs.NeXTSTEP.txt

Text File | 1995-06-12 | 15KB | 406 lines

Item    8886362                 93/10/14        09:23
From:   [e-mail]@INET#    Internet Gateway
Subject: Windows NT vs. NeXTSTEP Shootout Results

Hello,

Everyone has been asking how the recent NT vs. NeXTSTEP user group
meeting went recently.  Below are what some of the attendees (both
PC User Group and NeXT User Group members) said about the

Windows NT vs. NEXTSTEP Shootout


that occurred at the Rocky Mountain NeXT User Group
(Denver/Boulder, Colorado) meeting in late September.  Every seat
was taken for the event even though it was held on a Friday night!


Conrad Geiger
International NEXTSTEP User Group Program

P.S.  I would like to offer a special thanks to the Rocky Mountain
NeXT User Group and to Timothy Miller of that group for helping to
organize the event!


________________________________________________________________

Unedited PC User Group comments as recorded by the PC user group
president Russ Louie:

"We finally got to see visually what we've been hearing about in
the media."

"Very visually-oriented interfaces."

"Looks like it (NeXT) is easy to program."


"Beautiful development (NeXT) environment."


"Disappointed that NeXT not portable to NT."


"I like the tool bar down the side."


"...from the presentation, it looks like NeXT is a development
environment while NT is more a network environment. I don't see
much overlap."


"Didn't like NeXT's display of files. I like to see the hierarchy.
I like the graphical look of Windows better."


"It seems operating systems are looking more and more alike. One
can learn one operating system and then apply 25-50% of that
learned knowledge towards another."


"Many thanks to the NeXT Users Group and John Stoddard for a look
into the future of  operating systems. Although the casual user is
still trying to learn DOS 6.0 and Windows  3.1, it is obvious that
one day they will need to learn NeXTSTEP, Windows NT or some hybrid
of the two."



_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Comments from rmNUG (Rocky Mountain NeXT User Group) members:

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 08:33:11 -0600
From: "Barbara L. Dijker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Feedback on NT vs. NEXTSTEP Shootout

We had about 100 attendees.  Guesses put the
spread at 50/50 or 60/40 PC to NeXT folks.
They were very receptive.

Anyway, I think it was a great success. The PC group was
very attentive and seemed open minded.  I think many of
them had _never_ seen NeXTSTEP before and were surprised
that it appears to be a much easier to use (more intuitive)
interface with features they never even dreamed of - like
the seamless drag-dropping.  The icing on the cake was the
notion that the 16-bit Windows emulation on the NT is the
_same_ code as SoftPC on NeXTSTEP.  If Chris [Huston,
rmnug-er who spoon fed questions to highlight areas not
mentioned in the demo, like MABs] hadn't monopolized the
questions, maybe we could have heard more of their real
concerns - other than third-party apps.

I hope you can also collect some feedback from the PC
folks as well.  I talked to their pres and he was quite
happy with the turnout and how the program went.  Unlike
rmnug, their group is very non-technical ...



Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 00:21:29 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Jamie Krutz)
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

...Billed as an NT vs. NEXTSTEP shootout, the evening was more of a
love fest where strengths and weaknesses of each were calmly
discussed.  Due to limited time, only a quick view was given of
each, with NEXTSTEP getting a somewhat more comprehensive overview.
NT was revealed to be essentially MicroSoft's breakaway version of
OS/2, rather than having much at all to do with MSWindows (not NT)
beyond a similar look to the GUI.  It was noted that both NT and
NEXTSTEP use software emulation, from the same supplier, to run
MSDOS/MSWindows applications.  NEXTSTEP's interface and development
strengths were highlighted, and NT's suitability for servers was
discussed.   Unlike NEXTSTEP, NT apps will have to be recompiled
torun on different CPU architectures, but NT will initially support
more CPUs.  The presentation was well received by the IBM-PC clone
user group, who are facing interesting OS choices these days.  In
passing, MSWindows (not NT) did not get much respect from anyone.




Begin forward message

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 16:36:48 -0600
From: Chris Huston <earth2![e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Feedback on NT vs. NEXTSTEP Shootout

  ...I would like to see a more combative fire and brimstone
presentations from both sides.




Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 00:35:59 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Robert B. Love )
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

There were plenty of "Oohs" and "Ahs" when the Interface Builder
was demoed....





Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 10:08:54 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Tyler Perkins)
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

Windows NT has a LONG way to go to compete with the friendliness
and functionality of NEXTSTEP.  Although some nice features were
demonstrated regarding configuration and security, it seemed that
much of NT has to do with solving problems that simply don't exist
for the NEXTSTEP user.  Clearly, NEXTSTEP is much better
thought-out, being so well integrated from the ground up.  NT on
the other hand, has had many more constraints placed on its design.
In the arenas of development and user-interface, of course,
there is no contest -- NEXTSTEP!




Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 10:37:46 -0600
From: [e-mail] (Leif Smith)
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

Thanks for organizing the NS/NT show. I was amazed at the number of
people who showed up.  Seems like there is a lot of interest in
high-end OS.  Patrick Howlett, head of WhizBang Communications in
Denver is about to start building NS capable PCs.  He's building
machines for OS/2 now but would like to concentrate on NS.  He kept
saying "phenomenal" to things shown in the NS demo.




Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:26:06 -0600
From: Aaron Gordon <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

It seems like the event needed to be longer for both presentations.
It would have been nice to highlight what each does better than the
other.  My overall impression (coming from the NeXTSTEP camp) is
that NT is halfway there (DOS is not there at all and NeXTSTEP is
almost all the way there).



Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 14:44:46 -0600
From: "David R. File" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

My 2 CeNT's...

... NT is a very powerful product - if they would totally
revamp the GUI, make it  object-oriented & give it a real UN*X
kernel - I just might consider using it.

NT is geared for a different market than NS/FIP.  Most Windows
users will want to wait  until Windows 4 (Chicago?).

... NT is great if you are an efficient Windows programmer,
absolutely need 32-bit  apps and have a Sequent server with
multiple i486 chips.

The only reason a typical Windows user would want to upgrade to NT:
to stop the crashing.



Begin forward message

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 08:37:05 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Karl Hanzel)
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

It really didn't come across as a "shootout"... no bullets were
fired.  If either gang came out looking better, it was probably
NeXTStep with Brent as the gang leader, not just because he gave a
really excellent demo, but also because the "opposition" gave us
some great plugs/endorsements, both in  their presentation as well
as through the Q&A session that ensued.  I would highly recommend
that other NUG's consider staging a similar event... we may well
win some favor!



Begin forward message

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 00:27:24 -0700
From: [e-mail] (Jeff Buske)
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

I would first like to say Job Well done!!

I was very pleased with the attendance, your advertising paid off.
Due to the very nature of Next Step One is hard pressed to cover
any thing in a  few minutes.  I did feel that too much time was
spent with programming, considering the audience.  A box with sound
would have been very help full.   Considering the screen has a bit
hard to see.

Time spent showing off basic ease of use and consistent interface
would have worked well.  All and All the a good number were covered
(taste).

The NT chap got too deep into the guts of the machine for my taste.
I work with the stuff all day I could care less what IRQ line the
serial port is connected  to.  This is handy for figuring out how
things are configured.  The infinite  number of cheap (un or poorly
documented ) cards is the a major curse of the PC  world.  And will
be a major source of trouble for NEXT and MS.



With MS going after the server market, I'm not sure what this does
for Joe computer user.  Considering the user interface I'm not user
MIS people will like  to use it.

The user interface of NT was in my opinion ugly, considering the
number of good interfaces they had to study.  The use of
command,alternate and control keys that are not clearly documented
and come from folk lore.  Makes things very unintuitive, requires a
memory of an elephant.

I think both the PC and NeXT group benefited from the interchange.



Well Done...



Begin forward message

Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

Reply-To: [e-mail]
Return-Receipt-To: [e-mail]
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 07:37:51 -0600

It was off to late start, about 15 minutes late, mainly because I
was late in getting there with the food. People were milling about
and arriving late, too, and grabbing something to eat, such as
cookies, water, or candy, on the way in the door. The PC users
seemed very quite, almost subdued and were not mingling very much.
The NeXT people were all over the place, talking about things, like
they normally do. The room was packed. There were no seats left,
and some people who arrived after the lights went down just sat
along the aisle. The guy from Colorado Springs, Troy, sat next to
me in the aisle, since I was sitting in a seat right on the aisle.

The intro was from Tim Miller, the rmNUG club Treasurer, since he
was mostly responsible for coming up with the idea, organizing and
setting up the meeting. He talked about his work as an Open Systems
Consultant, and gave us all a quick tour through some of the
terminology used in the industry to describe what Open Systems are
about.

Then, the NeXT guy stepped in. This was the first I had ever heard
of him, so I did not go up to him and say hi. I thought Tim Carlin
was going to be there to do the NeXT side. His presentation went
through some of the nice GUI and Multi-Media features of NeXTSTEP,
demoed some of  the Apps, talked about the seamless integration
afforded by the consistent use of the AppKit by all applications,
and then finished up with a short demo of the Interface Builder.

Then, the NT guy stepped up to the plate. He mainly wanted to just
answer questions, since he had no tour map in mind before he began
speaking. He just sort of went into the GUI, we all saw how ugly it
was, and then he started talking about the Systems Administration
tools.

Several questions came up concerning integration with other Unix
machines, and the speaker threw in that it would integrate
wonderfully and be compatible with everything that is out there in
Microsoft land now, except that he did not mention Macintoshes. He
said there were lots of 3'rd party programs that would be ported to
it, including Interface Builders and such. He talked about some
security issues, and mentioned that NT was certified C2 secure, and
was pushing for the C1 rating. He said every software object inside
it had Access Control Lists, and you could easily create groups and
ACL's that would not allow anyone to look at anything. He said the
NT was basically the same thing as NeXTSTEP, a 32 bit
multi-tasking, object-oriented, message passing, micro kernel, with
built-in support for linear, symmetric multi-processing. He said
the kernel was the same thing, but it started from sources created
by Microsoft, not Carnegie Mellon University. Ie, it did not come
from a MACH 2.5 heritage, like NeXTSTEP and others. He said that
Microsoft was trying to leverage NT into the server markets first,
and I pointed out a rumor that they had just dropped the price of
NT about 17 times for a 1000 machine license. I also pointed out
that that sounded an awful lot like dumping to me. (I thought that
was illegal in this country?)


Several other questions were asked, including a question from me
concerning the ease with which ISV's could write software that
could be used in a networked environment, without having it be
pirated. The implication of that question was asking whether NT
would allow a network based, floating licensing to be implemented.
The speaker was not sure what the answer was. He did mention that
NT was a single-user operating system out-of-the-box, but that a
third party had already found a way to implement remote logins via
telnet to an NT machine. If it really was a single-user machine,
then that would pretty much take care of the licensing issues,
since the ISV's would know that their software could not be used
by multiple users on the same machine, since each machine is a
single user machine, just like a PC.

A nice round of applause was handed to both speakers.


After the talks, I asked the NT guy if the NT machine was doing
Display Postscript on the screen, and he said it was not.

Then, just before adjournment, we raffled off a NeXTSTEP developer
evaluation kit for NT486, with the Book, CD, and everything....


It was very good meeting.



Begin forward message

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 09:00:50 -0700
From: Wayne P. Rogers <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

Thanks for setting up the NT-NEXTSTEP shootout. At least on a small
local scale, it helped to inform PC users about NEXTSTEP. After
seeing the demonstration of NT and listening to the somewhat
cynical remarks by the NT speaker, the event made me much more
optimistic about the future of NEXT....



Begin forward message

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1993 20:59:06 -0600 (MDT)
From: Troy Weingart <troyw@csn>
Subject: Re: NT vs. NEXTSTEP SHOOTOUT

Great job!  I really enjoyed the presentations.  My overall feeling
is that NeXT need not worry about MicroSoft.  NT appears to have a
good core (kernel), but the interface is still ugly and a kludge.

=END=