Redwood City, CA Ð Representatives of ProNeXT, the loosely organized corporate-site user group, met with NeXT officials and third-party developers here in December to offer pointed feedback on NeXTSTEP 3.0, the ADB keyboard, and e-mail. NeXTSTEP '486 and the need for a notebook computer were also discussed.
"We talked a lot about bugs in [NeXTSTEP 3.0]," one source said. NeXT officials, including the NEXTSTEP product manager, the directors of software engineering and NeXTedge, and President Peter van Cuylenburg, outlined objectives for Release 3.1 and promised attendees that 3.0 bugs would be fixed in the new release and incorporated into NeXTSTEP '486.
NeXT is reportedly keen on getting as much feedback on NeXT-STEP 3.0 as possible before releasing 3.1 and '486 later this year. "'486 will be [an iteration of] 3.1," one source said.
Representatives from Swiss Bank Corporation; Ultra Systems and Logicon, system integrators working with the Air Force; the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department; Williams Telecommunications; Temerlin McClain (formerly Bozell, Jacobs, and Eckhardt); and the William Morris Agency were also "real upset about the thought process, or lack thereof, that went into the ADB interface for the keyboard," the source said. Hardware-preference settings in enterprisewide apps like WordPerfect have to be constantly updated as workers move around large organizations.
Attendees also clamored for an e-mail system with a standard interface to other systems. While users at larger firms are "very happy" with NeXTmail, they are having problems integrating NeXT machines into heterogenous networks. NeXT is reportedly looking at rebuilding e-mail to accommodate these concerns.
The need for a NeXTSTEP notebook was also discussed. Users said they are willing to consider alternative windowing technologies, because notebooks currently available can't draw the entire NeXT workspace, but were adamant about giving workers who travel access to documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. According to sources, NeXT could get away with a scaled-down version of NeXTSTEP.
Another source stressed that despite its critiques, the group's mission is "to help NeXT succeed, help them do the right thing, get market share." Obviously, we're called ProNeXT for a reason.
Formed last year to trade information and concerns of users at large sites, the group also appointed several officers and considered adding McCaw Cellular, Mobil, and Chrysler to its membership.