Jobs’ Feat: Better Package for Existing Technologies
By most standards, Wednesday’s unveiling of Steven P. Jobs’ new computer was a big hit.
There were “oohs and aahs” for the new optical disk data storage system and sustained clapping for the $6,500 “bargain” price. Even the extra-long power cable got a round of applause. At the end of the show, Jobs and the sleek black machine that he predicts will set the pace for computing until the next century received a standing ovation.
But not everyone is impressed.
William Gates, founder and chairman of the software publishing giant Microsoft, has dismissed the Next Inc. machine as containing some “truly trivial” features. William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, the fast-growing workstation manufacturer, proclaimed that Jobs’ product is similar to existing desktop computers.
Words of Praise
Although Next’s business strategy could offer significant competition for both Microsoft and Sun, Joy and Gates have raised important questions: Just how revolutionary is the Next machine? What does it offer that its competitors’ products don’t? And has it really advanced the level of expectations for personal computers?
By and large, industry analysts and educators--at whom the machine has been initially aimed--say the Next machine does live up to the considerable hype that was heaped on it.
Many note, as did Sun’s Joy, that the Next machine does contain a number of features already available in existing machines and laboratory prototypes. But they say Jobs has made a real leap by tying together of a wide array of sophisticated technology in a single box whose $6,500 price tag is considered a true bargain.
No Quantum Leap
“All the technology in the machine is available in various forms already. Jobs is the first to integrate them into a single system,” says Timothy Bajarin, executive vice president of Creative Strategies Research International, a San Jose market research firm.
“If this machine doesn’t succeed, something just like it will,” adds David Grady, publisher of a newsletter aimed at computer users on college and university campuses.
Still, users who have become jaded by the fast pace of new computer technology may expect a quantum leap that the Next machine doesn’t offer. “This won’t be like the leap we took from typewriter to personal computer,” says Thomas Newdecker, assistant vice president at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a member of the technical advisory board at Next. “But the machine will allow users to tackle more difficult problems, problems that previously have been only in the realm of elite students and researchers.”
What are the advanced technologies that distinguish the Next machine and are likely to be found eventually in other computers? Analysts and educators have singled out the following features:
Data storage: Clearly one of the most well-received and novel features of the Next machine is its optical disk data storage system. The system allows the storage of 256,000 megabytes of information--the equivalent of 700 floppy disks--on a single $50 platter.
Most important, unlike any disk currently available, the “read-write” disk can be erased and re-recorded with new data, either sound or text. In addition, unlike other data storage devices such as hard disk drives, which are not easily portable, the six-inch-square optical disk can be removed and played in any Next machine.
“This is the most exciting feature of the machine,” says Jan Lewis, editor of Lewis Research, a personal computer market analysis firm. “No one else has this now.”
Digital signal processing: Every Next machine comes equipped with a microphone and chip called the “digital sound processor,” a tiny piece of silicon that converts sound into the digital signals that computers can process, and vice versa, from computer data to sound.
Although these chips are commonly available, they have not been included as a standard feature in a personal computer. Users who wanted them had to purchase a special board and undertake some special rewiring.
Making music is only one of many applications of this chip. Others including managing a facsimile transmission operation and processing graphic images.
The chip also is the basis for the Next machine’s “voice mail’ system, a feature that allows users to attach recorded sound to data files.
Analyst say the system extends the opportunities for future development of a computerized speech recognition system, a development that could lead to a talking, interactive personal computer.
“That microphone on the box isn’t there to look pretty,” says Paul Saffo, a research fellow with the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto. “You can bet there will be some real advances in speech recognition.”
Internal software environment: Although it’s the least understood and the most invisible feature, the internal software environment of the Next system is what analysts say offers the most potential excitement.
Unlike its desktop predecessors, the Next system comes fully equipped with a wide range of software and tools for building new software programs. This offers the average user the building blocks to assemble “designer software.”
Carnegie-Mellon’s Newdecker likes to compare the Next internal Software to the sets of plastic Lego building blocks that are so popular with preschoolers. Each block represents a programmed computer capability. By attaching these blocks, which is done by simply pointing to the graphic symbols displayed on the monitor, a user can create a set of instructions--a de facto program.
What’s missing?: The Next machine does not come with a color monitor and it will be at least a year before one is available. Jobs says the technology doesn’t yet exist to produce a low-cost, high-resolution 17-square-inch color monitor.
The machine also does not come equipped with a fax attachment, scanner, telephone modem or floppy disk drive. Jobs has broadly hinted that the fax and scanner will come. He considers floppy disk drives “a technology of the 1970s” and, unless pressured to modify his design, will ignore them. There also are no current plans to include a modem since college campuses typically have computer wiring built-in for information sharing.
What’s next?: There is wide-spread agreement that the Next machine is not long destined to remain solely on university campuses. Keep on the lookout for a general business application machine.
