A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#21

Post by fulafel » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

The 1990 '040 was pipelined, and the superscalar RISCs came half a decade after it, many years after the x86 NeXT port was promoted, no? And the superscalar '060 came out in 1994 according to WP.

But yep the contemporary RISCs were faster than the 68k's nevermind those microarchitectural features.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#22

Post by wpietri » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

mschaef wrote: post #20

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

> Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. There were a bunch of dropped balls there. To rattle off a few: * They targeted academic institutions first, which very much constrained their market, and didn't align well with the $6,500 base price. Which turned into closer to $10K once you bought a disk and printer. (Slightly more than $20K in…

And as somebody who wrote NeXT software for a number of years, they never really aimed to solve anybody's problem particularly well.

If I had to sum up the NeXT, I'd call it "a much better Mac". Which isn't surprising given that Jobs started right after getting forced out of Apple, and took a number of Mac folks with him. But as you say, $6,500 was way too much for the Mac's strongest market, education; that's like $13k in 2020 dollars.

Instead it was priced like a workstation, but it also wasn't great for that, in that it was a totally new OS and didn't have much software available out of the gate. I've heard of multiple schools that ended up with NeXT labs where almost nobody used them.

The only niche where I really saw adoption was with financial traders, who had money to burn and liked the rapid development speed you could get compared with other platforms of the day. But that was never a goal, just a happy accident.

So in retrospect, I feel the whole thing was not about helping any specific customer, but about Steve Jobs and his feelings about getting booted from Apple.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#23

Post by flyinghamster » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #16

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

I'm not sure a different architecture would have mattered much. NeXT was trying to launch a Unix workstation right at the twilight of the age of Unix workstations. They got clobbered using 68K, but then at around the same time Sun got clobbered using SPARC, DEC and Compaq got clobbered using Alpha, etc. Intel and Microsoft were busy eating the world, and one of the things that got gobbled up was the market segment Ne…

I always wonder what personal computing might have been like had DEC not so greatly feared cannibalizing their mini/mainframe business. By the time they realized their mistake, it was already way too late. If Digital had played its cards differently, x86 might have been just a footnote.

I found it very ironic that the biggest market for PDP-11-compatible micros was one not actually open to DEC: the Soviet Union.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#24

Post by pinewurst » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

Ironically, NeXT, or rather the external perception of NeXT was a big driver/motivator of Sun's SparcStation (the classic, wonderful SS1) development. I was then working with Sun people who told me that even before the NeXT announcement.

My employers were signed up as NeXT and Sun developers and for what we were doing, the former was such a disappointment even if was pleasant to use (other than as an NFS server but that's another story...).

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#25

Post by abawany » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #7

As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware?

HP used to be an amazing company up until the arrival of Ms. Fiorina in the late 90s. Their hardware used to be innovative and bullet-proof (HP calculators, early Laserjet printers, oscilloscopes, etc.) Even today, when the company is a shadow of a shadow of its former glory, I prefer buying their business class laptops for personal use (e.g. HP Elite x360, HP X2 Chromebook) since they have an innovative combination of unique features, user upgradability, and reliability. In the old days, HP and Intel used to be synonymous with 'Silicon Valley' as I understand it.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#26

Post by pinewurst » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

opencl wrote: post #6

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

MIPS would have put them in a completely different price bracket. The MIPS-based DECStation 3100 was $11,900[1] compared to the original $6,500 NeXT computer. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=OzoEAAAAMBAJ see page 44

That $6500 was without any disk beyond the unusably slow (as main storage) NeXT Canon optical drive. I suppose the DEC price was diskless but that was also full retail. Just because NeXT refused to discount didn't mean DEC (or Sun) were limited by that.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#27

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #7

As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware?

HP was the top-shelf electrical engineering instrument company. Every top-tier lab would have HP equipment. Aspiring computer-makers wouldn't be able to afford it and would lust after it from a distance. This probably includes young Steve Jobs.

HP built plotters and printers because their customers wanted hardcopies of what they saw on their instrument screens. They built computers to control the instruments and calculators to assist engineers with calculations. Then, for some reason, the computers and printers started selling even better than the instruments. HP, which still thought of themselves as an instrumentation company, didn't catch on quickly or aggressively enough to capitalize, so their computers and printers did not keep pace and became... other than undisputably first tier. Eventually they span off the first-tier instrumentation company as Agilent (bio + EE) which in turn eventually span off Keysight (EE).

Electrical Engineers are still salty that the mediocre printer company got to keep the HP name while the best-in-class instrumentation company that still commands respect to this very day had to rebrand as "Keysight."

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#28

Post by bluedino » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

Isamu wrote: post #12

pengaru wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP's legacy runs deep in the valley, it's not unique to Jobs at all. It's shocking how far HP has fallen from its illustrious past.

Woz worked for HP, it was his dream job as an engineer. It was a big deal for him to give up his dream job to start Apple with Jobs.

And Woz sold his HP65 calculator to get the money to start Apple. Jobs sold his VW Bug.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#29

Post by mschaef » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #22

mschaef wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. There were a bunch of dropped balls there. To rattle off a few: * They targeted academic institutions first, which very much constrained their market, and didn't align well with the $6,500 base price. Which turned into closer to $10K once you bought a disk and printer. (Slightly more than $20K in…

And as somebody who wrote NeXT software for a number of years, they never really aimed to solve anybody's problem particularly well. If I had to sum up the NeXT, I'd call it "a much better Mac". Which isn't surprising given that Jobs started right after getting forced out of Apple, and took a number of Mac folks with him. But as you say, $6,500 was way too much for the Mac's strongest market, education; that's like $…

> If I had to sum up the NeXT, I'd call it "a much better Mac".

Which is pretty much how it wound up, eventually.

Re: A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016)

#30

Post by bluedino » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #2

Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the…

Three great things came out of NeXT: Doom, the WWW, and modern Mac OS