Nebula 1995 August/NEBULA.mdf/Documents/Internet/NetNotables/Relfextions.txt

Internet Message Format | 1994-06-29 | 12.9 KB

From: [e-mail] (Don Hurter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Reflections on the 94 Expo   (long)
Followup-To: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 14:18:34 -0700


After attending this year's NeXTSTEP Expo I have finally found a resolution
to a number of nagging feelings that have bothered me since I first became
involved with NeXT computers a few years ago. The NeXT user community in
general has expressed a similar mood of frustration and dissatisfaction
with regard to their position in NeXT's marketing and support policies,
with emotions and tempers running high a few weeks before the Expo as the
tension mounted over the future of their chosen operating environment. What
I have to say will not be particularly palatable for the faithful advocates
who wish to further the original NeXT dream of a successful, mass accepted
OS and development environment, but it is for me internally consistent with
the various messages and announcements spoken by NeXT at the show. I have
been an avid NeXT/NeXTSTEP user and advocate myself, and will continue to
be, but at least now I can reconcile the reports coming from NeXT, Inc.
with their actual actions in the computer marketplace.

      The original NeXT Dream: Siamese Twins blessed at birth

When Steve Jobs and NeXT Computer first released the original Cube and the
NeXTstep operating system, the computer industry was still a free-wheeling
marketplace where innovative ideas and implementations could make or break
any start-up company bold enough to join the fray. The Macintosh had
promise but was still suffering from its immature roots and hazy corporate
focus, DOS was the bargain WalMart operating system for the masses trying
to dress itself up in the then-laughable Microsoft Windows, and Unix was an
unruly beast beloved only by the technical elite who could appreciate its
power and extensible foundation. The NeXT machines and the NeXTstep OS
burst onto the scene as a curious Siamese twin of very forward-thinking
technology, with the hardware twin an undeveloped but trainable athlete and
the software twin an intellect of great potential. Together they promised a
well-integrated and elegant future for computing, and supplied enough
examples of their superior abilities to convince a few early adopters that
there was an alternative to the otherwise heavily-compromised computer
marketplace. There were still quite a few rough edges to the NeXT dream,
but its potential for exciting development and unimaginable innovation
proved to be an enticing drug for those who signed up.

In those early days and for a number of years to follow, the NeXT community
felt anything was possible for the platform, since so many of its
components pushed the state of the art well beyond the accepted norm that
defined other computing systems. The current sales paradigms of the day
included a wide field of disciplines from graphic arts and media
(Macintosh) to research and computer science (Unix) to general productivity
(Dos) and any mix in between. Theoretically the NeXT environment should
excel at all of them, since the original designers learned from the
competition's experience and started with the luxury of a clean slate. Over
time NeXT tentatively followed all of the possibilities, with educational
discounts, general advertisements in the trade magazines, presence in the
graphics fields, and a fair amount of expensive corporate self-promotion.
The user community continued to propel the dream by developing a wide
variety of applications, forming user groups around the world, promoting
the platform to any business that would listen, and connecting up with each
other on the Internet. And during all this the more one compared the NeXT
experience with whatever the other platforms foisted upon their users, the
more the NeXT dream took on religious proportions. Here was the divine
operating environment worthy of the promised land of computing.

Tragically, this better mousetrap failed to garner widespread acceptance
for numerous reasons that are best described in popular computing history
texts, and the Siamese twin, despite its phenomenal heritage and world
class upbringing, somehow fell behind the competition. And it was the
athletic hardware twin that stood to lose the most.

                     The Painful Separation

In a move that jolted the NeXT community like the assassination of a
beloved hero, the black hardware was abruptly halted from production. Quite
a few NeXT advocates were shaken, and the community started to suffer from
a number of desertions. NeXT itself suffered months of bad press, and sales
were effectively put on a dangerous hold until the Intel port release could
fill the gap. This was a very dark time for the NeXT dream, but like an
occupied country determined to survive during a war, the NeXT community
stoically persevered until the second Expo. This was a near-fatal operation
for the twins, as the separation resulted in substantial blood loss and
complications.

Nonetheless, many supported the surviving intellect twin who still
possessed exceptional wits and a tremendous potential for learning. When
the mourning period passed, developers ardently pursued their original
plans for creating an operating environment second to none, and NeXT had
wisely made their transition from Motorola to Intel as painless a process
as possible with superior porting tools. Everyone naturally assumed that
although they would now have to contend with difficult hardware, they would
nonetheless fulfill the NeXT dream of helping the best software on the
planet blossom into a environment that would render all other operating
systems obsolete. The death of the hardware was an agonizing setback, but
the software twin would heal and carry the torch.

               Mixed Signals from the Headquarters

In the meantime, NeXT was hurting financially and organizationally from the
separation, but didn't want the industry to get the impression that their
health was still critical. They needed to justify the bottom line with
every operation, and continued to narrow their focus on the corporate
market which was their only chance for survival. However, they never came
out and explicitly said to the general NeXT community that the small users
would have to be sacrificed when push came to shove. The third party
developers would have to fend for themselves in an already small market,
pursuing a dream that they hadn't yet realized was now seriously
dismantled. Strapped by financial obligations that threatened their own
existence, NeXT simply lessened their support as time went by, and left it
for the user community to read between the lines.

This reality is what I feel is the crux of the community's discontent, and
I was swept up along with everyone else in the painful period where NeXT
helplessly stood by and watched the fates run their course. Their efforts
in the deep corporate market finally started to earn some steady revenue,
but there was nothing left over to support the very followers who helped
them through the earlier dark periods. On Wednesday morning at the Expo
Steve Jobs answered questions from the user community in what I thought was
both a heartfelt and bittersweet talk called 'A Fireside chat with Steve
Jobs'. He presented a profoundly honest picture of where NeXT stood with
regard to their financial and technical support for the user community, and
it was at this point that I finally came to accept their awkward position.
The computer industry has not been kind to NeXT, as every here already
knows, but the resulting path for their survival is what has forced them
into an extremely difficult relationship with the small business and
individual users. I truly think this is as agonizing for NeXT as it is for
us, since they can only stand to profit from a wide base of third-party
applications.

During the talk numerous people asked Steve how he felt about making
NeXTSTEP available for the masses through lower prices, porting to the
PowerPC chip, placing more high-visibility advertising, and other
attractive moves that might have made sense in the uncertain past when
NeXTSTEP was still positioned as a general use operating system. He
consistently answered that he would personally love to engage in those
avenues, but harsh market realities forced NeXT, Inc. to adhere rigidly
with their unwavering plan to only pursue guaranteed profitable markets. I
don't think he was happy having to tell us this, but after all these years
of navigating financial rapids, his hands were tied. It wasn't a popular
explanation, but it was, for a change, responsible.

       We create the demand, NeXT provides the sales force

Steve did, however, repeat during his talk that NeXT would never refuse to
sell NeXTSTEP to anyone. All they required was that the demand already
exists. And we, not NeXT, were the only ones now who could make this happen
outside of the narrow corporate market. The key words spoken during his
talk when asked about current marketing support were 'limited resources',
which is an admission of defeat from the original NeXT dream, but at least
Steve had the courage to openly state that NeXT's lack of support was not
any sort of strategic decision or other ambiguous euphemism for botched
marketing. NeXT simply doesn't have the money to advertise in a market that
Microsoft has already won and whose users don't even realize that their
computers suck. However, if a group of people were to seriously approach
NeXT with a thought-out plan where demand for NeXTSTEP is already visible,
they will get complete sales support. Currently the only area that fits
this model is corporate development, and it is there that NeXT will
continue to channel their resources.

All this is a bitter pill for the user community, most of whom are still in
denial that the software twin is not allowed to roam free in the general
computing arena. Losing the hardware was a blow to the community, but
surely the original software dream could still flourish, no? It turns out
that the software dream also suffered greatly during the separation, but we
were so distracted by the hardware transitions that we had a hard time
accepting the narrowing of the software focus. This Expo made it clear to
me that this is indeed the case, as NeXT has been trying to tell us from
behind its financial bars. But this realization has been somewhat
cathartic, since I can now accept their lack of presence in the trade
advertisements, and their emphasis on corporate development tools instead
of more end-user additions to NeXTSTEP. I don't particularly like it any
more than everyone else, but I accept it.

                Windows as a second language

I don't blame NeXT for what has happened to the NeXTSTEP market. I instead
have re-evaluated my views of the computer industry in general, where the
masses have unequivocally endorsed Windows running on Intel hardware,
despite all the other superior alternatives. NeXT will continue to survive
and slowly grow in their self-chosen corporate niche, which unfortunately
is not a segment that I aspire to be part of. I will continue to run
NeXTSTEP for mail, Internet access, and other limited network-oriented
tasks, but concede that like foreigners who must learn to speak English to
function in this world, I will have to stray away from NeXTSTEP to
interoperate in the Windows-dominated computer world. I'll keep the NeXT
dream alive in whatever capacity I find consistent with market realities,
in the hopes that some day NeXT's corporate focus will pay off and a large
enough installed base matures to once again offer a potential for lucrative
third party application development.

Glenn Reid, Jayson Adams, and other early adopters unfortunately learned
the hard way about the risks of trying to excel in an untested market.
Their refusal to compromise standards was our gain initially but ultimately
a test of perseverance that the mediocre computing marketplace won. NeXT
also runs the same risk if they try to spread themselves too thin; the only
way for NeXTSTEP to stay innovative these days is with the resources of
corporate computing paying the bills. In this regard they have forsaken the
general user for the rarefied Mission Critical market, and we are but left
to watch from the sidelines or change professions to stay along. Microsoft
has seen to it that the general computing market stays firmly pinned under
their heavy thumb, until they say it is time to move on to something new.
In the meantime, NeXT can not and will not assist any group or individual
that distracts them from the corporate focus that guarantees their survival
and growth, so it is our responsibility to acknowledge this situation and
see that they stay on this path until financial stability allows them some
leeway to re-assess their roots. I hope that in a year's time a turnaround
will signal the rebirth of NeXT's whole-hearted support of the user
community, but for now we who are not mission critical are essentially on
our own, and must either move on to other platforms as others already have,
or accept these unfair realities of the flawed computing marketplace.