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Why no NeXT section?

I was just wondering why there was no NeXT section on 68kMLA? Since NeXT's history is twisted up with Apples, and they are pretty old these days, I was just wondering why there was not NeXT specific section?

- Derrik

 

John8520

Well-known member
Also because this is the 68k -macintosh- liberation army. If we let in NeXT we might as well let in suns too, and then TI calculators. And nextcomputers has that area completely covered already. Redundancy in these sorts of things causes lots of problems.

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
ppcmla is pretty much dead. :p
Almost solely because anyone that WOULD post over there just posts in the PPC forums here. :lc:

While we're at it, can we include HP 68k UNIX workstations here? ;)

Personally, I think the 68kmla should do one of two things:

  • Make sections for all Motorola 680x0-powered systems, and remove the PPC sections
  • Make the 68kmla solely for Macintoshes, and possibly merge the PPCmla in, making the PPC sub-forums "official", rather than "there just because"


Of course, going for the latter, we'd be opening up for naming issues, allowing in non-68k. Whereas the former, we could just rename "68k Motorola Liberation Army"...

 

alk

Well-known member
If we get a NeXT forum and an HP forum, I demand a Sun forum for the Sun-1/2/3 boxes!

 

BarnacleGrim

Well-known member
Or maybe a Unix workstation section, and perhaps an Intel Mac section. Not sure what do to with the Atari ST and Amiga followers, though, technically they are 68ks too, closer to the scope of 68kmla than, say, SPARC and MIPS stations.

Personally, I'd like to see a few sections merged. Too many sections on a forum is a bad idea.

 

Scott Baret

Well-known member
I think it's fine as is, with the Lounge being used for non-Macs.

Although the NeXTs share a few things in common with Macs, they clearly are not Macs. True, we do stray from the 68K theme sometimes with discussions of PPC Macs, but they're getting to the point where they're getting to be quite antiquated. Think about it--the 68KMLA was founded in 2001, just five years after the last 68K was discontinued. We'll be coming up on five years for the discontinuation of the PPC next year. Also, there is no solid PPC forum online--PPCMLA is deserted, as many have said. I also think it's fine to have the subforum for Apple II/III/Lisa discussions, since they are Apple products (and are also OLD Apple products, going with the theme of the site).

Personally, I think this is just a bit of changing times. I've been a member here for four years. PPCs were just being discontinued when I joined and at the time nobody really thought of them as "old". However, a lot has changed since then--Apple dropped support for them in the operating system, most of us have upgraded to Intel Macs, G3 iMacs are gaining popularity as collector's computers, and there are fewer 68Ks still standing. We can certainly keep the focus on 68Ks, but I think we'll see more PPC discussions for these reasons. And no, I see no reason to change the forum name--Radio Shack is still Radio Shack despite now selling TVs and other equipment in addition to radios and radio parts.

However, the NeXT systems are completely different animals altogether. We're comparing Apples (literally!) and oranges here. In reality, it's no different than adding Amiga, IBM, HP, Commodore, or any other brand to the site. Pretty soon we'll have forums for each brand of computer, the TI calculators, Atari VCS, GameBoy Advance, you name it. I'm against the creation of NeXT subforums for this reason.

I think we should stick with Apples for the actual forums and discuss anything unrelated (NeXT, IBM, etc) in the Lounge--just like we do now. Of course, it's fine if non-Apples come up in an example such as networking on one of the Mac forums, but an actual discussion about a particular feature in NeXT Step would need to be a Lounge topic.

Just two cents from an oldtimer on the forums...

 

slomacuser

Well-known member
hey, you all forgot that the NeXT and Mac computer's share the same father
cube.png
& :beige: =
jobs.png


 

Scott Baret

Well-known member
Steve Brecher! He wrote Pyro and a few other goodies for early Macs and was a huge part of FreePPP's development. A quick web search reveals he's no longer a programmer, but a professional poker player.

However, as Nathan said, this isn't a fan club for any one individual named Steve. We support them all here...Larry, John, Steve, and Bruce! (Bonus points to anyone who knows where this combination of names came from!)

 

Scott Baret

Well-known member
Ah, very close! It was actually "About the Finder" until System 7.0, but served the same purpose and was in the same location.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I miss those days when software had a personal touch and the authors had their names in lights. Aside from a few shareware/freeware programs, you'd never see any of that in today's programming.

 

LCGuy

LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Ah, yes...I haven't used System 6 in a while, and forgot...but yeah, thats what I meant :)

 
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