FLAME Concerning Apple's pricing of A/UX 2.0.

[Gray Abbott]

I had to add my 2 cents.  I just got a demo of AUX 2.0.
I need a machine which can serve multiple purposes: a Mac for working on
proposals, a Unix box for development work and as a home base, and an
X terminal for development on other machines on a network. 

I wanted a chance to take a good hard look at how good AUX is.  I've
been using various flavors of Unix on various workstations,
supercomputers, and PCs for several years now, and I've gotten to be
pretty cautious about what someone will deliver when they promise
Unix.

IMHO, AUX 2.0 DELIVERS! It is the most complete version of Unix I've seen,
other than SunOS.  For your modest $800 you get all kinds of stuff which
is often missing from other, more expensive versions of Unix.

For example, most of the PC Unix's (SCO Xenix, ISC) are "unbundled".
For $800-1000 you get the basic system, which means the kernal and
misc. tools like "cat", etc.

What you don't get are development tools, like a C compiler, FORTRAN,
lex, yacc, cb, prof, sdb, and all of those familiar goodies.
Sometimes you don't even get "sed", "awk", or "grep" - I've written
product delivery systems which depend on these tools; it hurts when
they're not there.

You also don't get any of the text processing tools, like troff,
nroff, and spell.  Try reading man pages for PD software without
nroff sometime!  These other bundles will cost you another $500-1000
each.  Now you're talking about $1800-$3000. AUX comes with all of it
for $800.

In addition, lots of Berekley tools are missing from even professional
workstations.  Just as I was getting to like "style" and "diction", I didn't
have them anymore.  Another nice Berekley feature is "sendmail" - I'm trying
to set up a mail/news server on a Xenix machine now, without "sendmail" - ouch!
AUX has them.  (I looked!)

On top of this, you get all of the added functionality of AUX.  You can
use either a Mac style "icons and folders" interface, or a standard command
line interface, or both.  You can run Unix processes, Mac processes, and
X windows all on one machine.  You can drag files back and forth between
the two file systems.  You can "launch" a Mac application with a Unix command.

Come on folks, this is a nice piece of work.  Yes, the hardware is a little
steeper than your basic 386 box, but I promise you the software is much
nicer than any Unix you can run on that 386.

Yeah, the X windows is an additional charge.  It is on Xenix and ISC Unix, too.
(I didn't get to see X windows working on the demo system - anyone have any
experience with this? Please mail me your comments.)

I understand the initial poster's complaint - he is trying to deliver a product
and wants an unbundled "minimal" system at a lower, VAR price.  I agree that
there is a need here.  But most of you are griping about the fact that AUX
isn't free.  As one who has priced and bought several of the alternatives,
I think you're wrong - it's a bargain!