Having just seen the keynote at this conference, it's time for an update.
Most of the is the same as the Expo last year, with a few panel sessions and OpenStep topics. Attendance is fair (I don't have numbers), with six from the UK, and ten from Germany.
The agenda was:
Key point of '93 were shipping NeXTSTEP/Intel, bundled with SoftPC. SoftPC uses the same emulation technology as NT, and uses some code developed for NeXTtime to run. Future architecure support will include many PCs, PA-RISC and SPARC. HP will beta in May, ship in q3. Sun will beta q3, ship q4.
The goal for '93 was $10m; NeXT did $11m, which represents 20 - 25,000 units. The '95 plan is 100,000 units for $50m.
Management changes were brought out; and the number of shipping objects (1,400 in '93) was emphasised.
The Strategy is OBJECTS. This is no change from the Expo.
"Sun are betting their company on NeXTSTEP". Every copy of Solaris sold will include OpenStep, developed by NeXT for Sun.
OpenStep repesents an open API, freely licensed but subject to certification by an independent body (subject to agreement). Sun is the first licensee, others are to come.
It will take developers up to one week to port to the OS indepentent OpenStep, which will be included with NeXTSTEP 3.2 in the s econd half of this year. Sun's implementation will ship in '95.
This was slightly updated from Expo, comparing Cairo, Taligent and OpenStep, with ship dates and ship rates.
This talked about just PDO. PDO is shipping for HP, with SunOS and Solaris due 'Q2 this year, Alpha in summer, and Data General later. There will be 5 to 10 other licensees shiping this year.
The demo included SoftPC, cutting and pasting graphics into NeXTSTEP.
Steve said that a free upgrade will speed up NetWare access, and fix problems using enhanced mode. This will go out this quarter.
Most of the demo was pretty familiar: PDO, Mail, Interface Builder, PasteUp and NeXTTime.
A couple of interesting points from question time: the old PowerPC NRW was fully symmetric; and the planned price for NS/HP and NS/Sun are the same as Intel. Sun may charge differently, but those are NeXT price.