[SunRescue] Re: Speaking of SGI equipment...

[andrew m hoerter]

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999 ward at zilla.nu wrote:

[NeXT]
> Then Jobs had to go and get bored, and drop the hw line just as it made 
> money. Then Jobs had to go and get bored yet again, and sell the OS to
> Apple. I bet he does something just as drastic when he gets bored at
> Apple.

Steve Jobs is the John DeLorean of the computer industry -- jump into the
market, release a technically superior and just plain cool product, only
to fizzle out due to mismanagement and personal problems.

NeXT's early pricing was just plain ridiculous, they didn't treat
resellers very well, and some of the technology, while ahead of its time,
was impractical.  Using solely optical disks instead of hard disks, for
example (very slow and noisy).  They were hoping to capitalize on the
education market the way the Macintosh did, but ultimately the marketing
never worked.

Then, around the time the slab came out, SPARC ate NeXT's lunch.  :)
Universities wanted a cheap machine that would run UNIX, and Sun gave it
to them.

There's an excellent book detailing NeXT's history, I believe it's "The
NeXT Big Thing" -- worth a read for anyone interested in that time period.
One anecdote I found amusing was Jobs' insistence on buying expensive
designer furniture and interior decoration for the NeXT factory before
the first box rolled off the line (not outsourcing some of the part
construction/assembly was another cost driver for NeXT).

-andrew
--
"Welcome to Taco Bell!  Would you like to try... a taco?"
		-- a Taco Bell cashier, to me