I wonder how that plant compares to electronics plants Tory. Would it still seem up to date or would it be hopelessly outdated.
All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about Intel?
Intel fabs chips here. They assemble electronics in China. Edit: And that's assuming that they assemble electronics at all, which I wouldn't bet on.
Recent Intel Fabrication Locations:
Fab 24 Leixlip, Ireland
Fab 28 Kiryat Gat, Israel
Fab 68 Dalian, China
Fab 42 Chandler, Arizona, USA
--------------------------------------
Recent Intel Assembly Sites:
Heredia, Costa Rica
Chengdu, China
Kulim, Malaysia
Penang, Malaysia
Saigon, Vietnam
Chandler, Arizona
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#43My uncle did some electrical work for NeXT when they were first setting up, and he said he knew they were going to fail. They'd just finished putting in a very expensive new hardwood floor, and the guy in charge of design came in and said "it's going the wrong way- rip it out and do it right."
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#44The best I could find on the fate of this factory was from Wikipedia [1]. "NeXT withdrew from the hardware business in 1993 and the company was renamed NeXT Software Inc; subsequently 300 of the 540 staff employees were laid off. NeXT negotiated to sell the hardware business including the Fremont factory to Canon. Canon later pulled out of the deal. Work on the PowerPC machines was stopped along with all hardware pro…
Of course it worked out, half the people here run the latest version of NeXTStep on their phones and pads, another half run it on their desktops, and NeXT is considered the most successful contemporary computer company and is dominating the industry in innovation, all possible because of the AppKit and FoundationKit and the various NS kit APIs that came since then. They even acquired their closest rival, rebranded according to their trademark, and then deep sixed the rivals products, replacing them with their own.
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#45My uncle did some electrical work for NeXT when they were first setting up, and he said he knew they were going to fail. They'd just finished putting in a very expensive new hardwood floor, and the guy in charge of design came in and said "it's going the wrong way- rip it out and do it right."
It's interesting how that story is colored differently, depending on whether one considers NeXT (and/or its perfectionist attitude) to be a spectacular success.
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#46The most interesting part of that article was that they produce prototype boards on the same assembly line as production. No waiting for boards to come in. If they want a board made simply queue it and it's done. They were agile before it was cool to be agile. EDIT: Also, I had a NeXT Cube and NeXT Turbostation with laser printer. They were fantastic. We've barely budged the needle since then.
Well... that is the difference between PR and practicality. PR says "can" like they do it every day.
While they could run prototype boards down the line, it is not quite as easy as the video makes it sound and it is unlikely they would do that lightly.
To run a prototype board down the line they would have to:
* Get the prototype PCBs fabricated (in 1990, this took a lot more time than today where you can get a multi-layer board fabbed in days). Note also that the NeXT boards were probably a lot more than 4 layers, which adds time and expense, especially 20 years ago. The good news is all the other items probably would take less time to complete than the PCB fab, so this would be the pacing item for the schedule.
* Get a new soldermask made to match the board.
* Procure the necessary non-production parts. With luck, can get small quantities (or samples) quickly from distributors.
* Reprogram the pick-n-place machines to put the parts in the right places.
* Load the pick-n-place machines with the right (new non-production) parts.
* Possibly have to tune the soldering ovens to get the temperature/time profile right (should be OK for small part changes).
Once everything is in-house and programmed, you can simply queue it and it is done.
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by manufacturing, you mean chemicals, pharmaceuticals, processed agricultural products, pulp&paper, and heavy industrial equipment. Electronics and consumer products manufacturing is dead in the US.
The quote didn't specify electronics and consumer products.
And last I checked Intel, Dell, HP et al still counted as electronics.
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#48The most interesting part of that article was that they produce prototype boards on the same assembly line as production. No waiting for boards to come in. If they want a board made simply queue it and it's done. They were agile before it was cool to be agile. EDIT: Also, I had a NeXT Cube and NeXT Turbostation with laser printer. They were fantastic. We've barely budged the needle since then.
They were agile before it was cool to be agile. Which turned out to be arrogant, stupid and wrong.
I think it turned out pretty well for NeXT. They are the third largest company in the world by market cap, now.
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#49I almost forgot how DOOM, although primarily a DOS game, was created on NeXT systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Doom#Building_the_gam...
Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were agile before it was cool to be agile. Which turned out to be arrogant, stupid and wrong.
I think it turned out pretty well for NeXT. They are the third largest company in the world by market cap, now.
Their hardware was a resounding flop and building a state-of-the-art production facility for something for which there was no demand is in retrospect clearly a mistake.
Also, given that NeXT was bought for about 15% of Apple's market cap (after laying off most of their employees), it's disingenuous to imply that Apple == NeXT. What saved Apple was the iPod, not OS X and Cocoa.