Re: Netscape the Big Win
At 4:31 PM 7/20/95, Ray Cromwell wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if in 5-10 years, your operating system basically looks like a cross between Netscape, OpenDoc, and HotJava. The "browser" would be ubiquituous, and local/LAN/WAN data would be treated transparently.
This is precisely my view, although I try to call it an "operating environment," so as to get away from quibbling about what is and what is not a real OS. There were reasons why some folks like to do as much work as they could in an integrated environment like Emacs, regardless of the underlying OS flavor. Many folk still do, and they read News, send mail, etc., all from within Emacs. Same idea with Netscape...albeit with a different focus. And my guess, based on lots of indications, is that about a thousand times as many people will soon be doing this with Netscape as with Emacs, or elm, or pine, etc. Ray's comments about OpenDoc, HotJava, and other object-oriented tools fit this picture, I think. I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar approaches, but reality is reality. (And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a 15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.) .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@sensemedia.net | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
On Thu, 20 Jul 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
There were reasons why some folks like to do as much work as they could in an integrated environment like Emacs, regardless of the underlying OS flavor. Many folk still do, and they read News, send mail, etc., all from within Emacs.
Same idea with Netscape...albeit with a different focus. And my guess, based on lots of indications, is that about a thousand times as many people will soon be doing this with Netscape as with Emacs, or elm, or pine, etc.
Ray's comments about OpenDoc, HotJava, and other object-oriented tools fit this picture, I think.
Perhaps. I went to a computer store the other day, and saw almost two dozen different packages for e-Space access, each with different software... 2 or 3 with netscape, 2 or 3 with mosaic, everything else just custom packages, mostly. And from what I've heard about HotJava (not seen it yet, can't comment strongly) there needs another jump in PC power before it would be useful at the home level. Part of why we were stuck with DOS for so long is that it was what got the job done when the revolution happened. For that reason, I agree that HTML/Integrated browser solutions are what we're looking at, and at the same time don't have strong hopes for HotJava, though I would like to see it succeed.
I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar approaches, but reality is reality.
All dogmas are ultimately Bad Things. But dogma gets stuff done in the short run. NetScape deserves to be popular; they followed the truth that most PC users like "pretty" better. And they made the best "pretty" software.
(And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a 15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.)
Agreed. It's still too early to tell. This is like 100AD and we're trying to predict the Catholic Church of the twentieth century, trying to figure out fifteen years down our road. I really believe that's how fast we're moving right now, and we have to hit as many targets as we can. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu> (410) 494-3253 Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/ You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.
Jon Lasser wrote:
And from what I've heard about HotJava (not seen it yet, can't comment strongly) there needs another jump in PC power before it would be useful at the home level. Part of why we were stuck with DOS for so long is that it was what got the job done when the revolution happened. For that reason, I agree that HTML/Integrated browser solutions are what we're looking at, and at the same time don't have strong hopes for HotJava, though I would like to see it succeed.
HotJava runs fine on a 486/33 with 16mb running WinNT 3.5. 486s are pretty much standard. 1995 and '96 will be "the year of the pentium" Entry level systems are now Pentium 90s with PCI and 64-bit video. Pentium 120 systems now cost less than my 486/66 system did a year ago. HotJava is compiled into efficient byte-code with the option to be translated to machine code at run time. This is the same principle behind the Newton. Since the majority of the CPU time is spent in native-C code function calls to the user interface, and network latency is high, the "slow" interpreted code is hardly noticed. In fact, I wouldn't call the Java runtime slow, it beats the performance of many Lisp interpreters which have been adequate for "home" users. (e.g. Emacs Lisp) HotJava is not meant for writing applications to decode MPEG in real time. It's best use is for interactivity on web pages. It doesn't take a powerhouse of CPU to put up a slider, "sleep" for an event, and they call a ScrollList() routine. There's going to be a huge use of Java for doing sales catalogs and online ordering on the web.
most PC users like "pretty" better. And they made the best "pretty" software.
Netscape software is not just a pretty user interface, it also has the best layout algorithms I've seen of browsers. That's some pretty hefty dynamic programming there. Mosaic and Arena frequently produce poor or incorrectly formatted pages. (or less optimal pages than I've seen Netscape) -Ray
Tim May wrote:
I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar approaches, but reality is reality.
(And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a 15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.)
I agree wholeheartedly with this. When General Magic first released the Telescript white paper, I was really hot for the technology. I tried to become a developer, I sent mail to every General Magic employee on the net I saw posting (one guy even CC'ed me accidentally to his manager saying they should hire me). I did searches in the media for any mention of it. Harry Hawk even had dinner with the VP of Product Development at General Magic. Alas, they would not give out alphas/betas of the development environment, which is all the same, because they don't know how to market Telescript and make it a defacto standard. Instead of charging for the interpreter/server, they should have given away the servers and development stuff for free, or near free, and made their money by selling services and clients (personal digital assistants using Magic Cap and Telescript). The result is that no one uses Telescript except AT&T. If I had gotten my hands on Telescript, I would have wasted lots of time and effort on a failed product (failed in my eyes, because of its potential) [lesson: proprietary programming languages fail unless they come embedded within a killer consumer application] Then I got into Safe-Tcl, which is a little more promising, but still a failure because there was no "killer app" which used it and which would encourage its incorporation into other servers and clients. HTML would have failed were it not for Mosaic. I was on the Web when it only had a line mode browser and it was about as exciting as Gopher. I think Sun has taken the right approach with Java. Giving out Alphas and Betas for free with source code. Encouraging heavy porting, and incorporating it into a "killer app" (HotJava). They will make money by licensing and selling tools and environments for Java, but their biggest success will be that it will become the defacto "enabled content" language. Java still lacks what Telescript has (the ability to checkpoint execution state and migrate execution across servers seamlessly), but what Telescript has that Java doesn't isn't enough to make people wait for it, or pay lots of money to be developers for. I could be wrong about how successful Java will be, but my confidence factor is high. -Ray
Timothy C. May writes:
I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar approaches, but reality is reality.
I assume everyone but Tim knows about Netscape's origins in Mosaic, and understands thus why his comments above are so amusing. Perry
participants (4)
-
Jon Lasser -
Perry E. Metzger -
Ray Cromwell -
tcmay＠sensemedia.net