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I have a dead NeXTStation that I'm going to mod to fit an ITX board and three drives. I'm also hoping to figure out a way to maybe use something like a notebook DVD drive in place of the floppy port.

Actually modding these, though, is tougher than a standard PC case -- they're thick cast metal, which looks difficult to cut.

Next thing to do is find a monitor and keyboard that look like they belong with it. Or, I might just use it as a MythTV setup, as it'd look good beside a TV.

It's now in iMacs and the new displays. Looks like Steve basically took what they did in NeXT and moved it into Apple, piece by piece.

You're right! It's the descendant of the NeXTstation.

Nah, you're thinking of something else. There have been numerous aborted attempts at creating a next generation Mac OS under a variety of strange code names like Pink, Taligent and Copland.

Rhapsody was the name of the OS [strategy] developed under the leadership of Gil Amelio, it was heavily based on OpenStep (moreso than OS X), hence it's cross platform capabilities. Apple also had a version of the Rhapsody frameworks that ran in NT, which they inherited from NeXT. At that stage, the name for Cocoa was YellowBox, and the Classic environment was called BlueBox IIRC. There was no equivalent to the Carbon frameworks in those early days, which was the subject of much debate.

Steve Jobs became Interim CEO after Amelio's departure in 1997 and killed the cross platform versions of Rhapsody along with the Mac 'clone' industry. About a year later Apple announced the name change from Rhapsody to Mac OS X. They released Mac OS X Server in 1999, followed a year later by the almost unrecognisable OS X Public Beta.

Check out these screenshots, which (in order from top to bottom) show the gradual progression from NeXTstep's multi-column Browser to Mac OS X 10.3's Finder*.

NeXTstep
Rhapsody
Mac OS X server 1.x
Panther

*yes, I skipped the aqua Finder.

Indeed, I just recently installed and ran Rhapsody on an x86 system of mine. The networking didn't work properly (due to lack of a proper driver), but it was kind of cool, and I suppose in some way ironic, to have an Apple OS running on an Intel processor... :)

It was interesting, but it felt kind of awkward with the NeXT influence just kind of thrown in there, because it didn't really fit in with the Mac OS interface.

You can definitely see how Rhapsody became Mac OS X, as Rhapsody was based upon the Mach kernel just like Rhapsody, and NeXT before it. I think one place where Apple made a large change is when they decided to have the UNIX side further integrated into the Mac OS itself, creating a closer-knit combination of the two, rather than having them so seperate and awkward-feeling as it was with Rhapsody.

Of course, you can see that many NeXT and Rhapsody elements survived, like the layout of the File Manager which is almost identical in OS X to what was in Rhapsody and NeXT.

For some screenshots go here or here.

Also, here's something pretty interesting: screenshots of Mac OS X server before the Aqua GUI was added, still existant on the Apple website!

Indeed, I just recently installed and ran Rhapsody on an x86 system of mine. The networking didn't work properly (due to lack of a proper driver), but it was kind of cool, and I suppose in some way ironic, to have an Apple OS running on an Intel processor... :)

It was interesting, but it felt kind of awkward with the NeXT influence just kind of thrown in there, because it didn't really fit in with the Mac OS interface.

You can definitely see how Rhapsody became Mac OS X, as Rhapsody was based upon the Mach kernel just like Rhapsody, and NeXT before it. I think one place where Apple made a large change is when they decided to have the UNIX side further integrated into the Mac OS itself, creating a closer-knit combination of the two, rather than having them so seperate and awkward-feeling as it was with Rhapsody.

Of course, you can see that many NeXT and Rhapsody elements survived, like the layout of the File Manager which is almost identical in OS X to what was in Rhapsody and NeXT.

For some screenshots go here or here.

Also, here's something pretty interesting: screenshots of Mac OS X server before the Aqua GUI was added, still existant on the Apple website!

Indeed, I just recently installed and ran Rhapsody on an x86 system of mine. The networking didn't work properly (due to lack of a proper driver), but it was kind of cool, and I suppose in some way ironic, to have an Apple OS running on an Intel processor... :)

It was interesting, but it felt kind of awkward with the NeXT influence just kind of thrown in there, because it didn't really fit in with the Mac OS interface.

You can definitely see how Rhapsody became Mac OS X, as Rhapsody was based upon the Mach kernel just like Rhapsody, and NeXT before it. I think one place where Apple made a large change is when they decided to have the UNIX side further integrated into the Mac OS itself, creating a closer-knit combination of the two, rather than having them so seperate and awkward-feeling as it was with Rhapsody.

Of course, you can see that many NeXT and Rhapsody elements survived, like the layout of the File Manager which is almost identical in OS X to what was in Rhapsody and NeXT.

For some screenshots go here or here.

Also, here's something pretty interesting: screenshots of Mac OS X server before the Aqua GUI was added, still existant on the Apple website!

The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here, with sample screenshot from the VR UI.

Most of those make it look more like Microsoft Bob than any useful sort of file manager. In general, 3D doesn't have a foundation for efficient file management. Current 2D technology involves direct manipulation, and users will not be drawn to a system that makes you run around to do things. It might be cute in the short term for a game, but for a real system it will fly about as well as Bob did.

In fact, the VR Dock looks almost like a real Dock from MacOS X, introduced many years later. I wonder if Jonathan Ive played this game...

Only if he was Dr. Sam Beckett. The Dock in Mac OS X is a direct evolution of the one from NeXT (screenshot), which pre-dates the game. Ive did not work at NeXT. Ive further does industrial design, not software design. He's got a good eye, but nothing points to any relationship between any of the elements listed.

NeXT OpenStep for Windows NT

The next cube (PDF) had already an optical disc. And that was in the 80'ies. While different from the CD technology, it had already all the principles described in the silly patent "Recordable CDROM accessing system".

. . .

Apple's a little new to this UNIX desktop thing.

Erm, not really, there's AUX, oh and a little thing called NeXTStep and even UNIX for the Lisa (mention only). You might add MAE the Macintosh Application Environment which was written for Solaris and HP/UX, or to a far lesser extent (because it's hard to say that this was other than a split away organisation eventually subsumed by IBM and turned into frameworks for VisualAge amongst other things), the Taligent OO-OS initiative, which was targetted to interoperate with AIX at least at one stage in its life.

Since Jobs left Apple - 1988 iirc - Job's has been involved in UNIX on the desktop. It's no secret that the NeXT technologists / staffers supplanted the previous Apple corporate hierarchy.

Some interesting reading is this USENIX paper The Challenges of Integrating the UNIX and Mac OS environments.

My point is that Apple has a fair deal of relevant experience, and the NeXT - Apple merger is almost distant history, in corporate terms, when Be Inc. seemed to have a chance. And man, that feels a long time ago, even though it isn't _that_ long :)