A few comments on Dave Griffiths' letter about NeXTs "no chance of surviving" and the German sales management:
There is a very simple explanation for the low sales figures in Germany and Austria. I don't know about the U.S., but I doubt they were the same (as low) as in Germany.
The explanation is: Only madmen (or people with a *lot* of money, or some university departments) would have bought a NeXT from NeXT Germany (or Austria, for that matter) and not have directly imported them from the U.S.
A few months ago, a basic NeXTstation mono, 25MHz 8/105 cost the equivalent of $6000, in a "special education offer" in Austria and Germany. I don't know the exact list prices in the U.S., but around the same time there was a special NeXT promotion offer for the 25MHz NeXTstation color + laserprinter for about the same price (or even lower).
I now can buy a 33MHz 486, 170MB, with local bus and a really impressive S3 color! graphics accelerator for the equivalent of $2900. What would you buy?
(needless to say, I *could* run Unix on this machine).
I definitely would have bought the NeXT promotion offer in the U.S. However, this was not possible from Europe.
Another thing was the NeXT booth on the CeBit fair in Germany this year (this is the largest computer fair in Europe): Coming from the Apple stand, it just looked ridiculous. Typical for a freaky garage company, I would say (though I think some would have done better). Certainly NeXT must have done better in the U.S.
So I suppose the decision to completely dump the management in Germany was correct. I am aware that this might be an insult to some people, but I also think that this way of marketing was an insult to NeXT and the customers in Europe. Correct me if it was all NeXTs (U.S.) fault and you (NeXT Germany) had to pay the same prices yourself.
At last some wishes to NeXT:
Make your machines cheaper in Europe, especially in Germany and Austria. There are a lot of interested computer freaks around, just look at the Amiga sales figures (for a long time they were a lot better in Germany than in the U.S.).
Get out NRW soon. Some university departments (mine, for that matter) are desperately looking for a *real* multimedia workstation. Don't wait until Apple, Sun or Sony come out with
- built-in video compression/decompression (H.261, MPEG)
- ISDN and B-ISDN access (just look at the "NCLATM" document from them, a draft standard for an ATM (B-ISDN) local area network, see comp.dcom.cell-relay.
- video in a window, naturally
- support for 128MB MODs
- etc...
Also get out NeXTstep 486. I really would like to run it on my 486, and I even would pay quite some money for it - if it works. It could support the S3 graphics accelerator, this would be great (I think this type of cards sells quite well in the PeeCee market at the moment, and it supports blazing fast BitBlt, Draw, etc.). Maybe I would start developing with NeXTstep, because I know it and really admire the developing environment?
