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NeXTSTEP To Mac OS X

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the after-all-these-years dept.

*no comment* writes "the folks over at OSviews have a nicely done article that explains the evolution of NeXTSTEP into Mac OS X. 'With the beginning of 1996, Apple realized that with the next generation PC's running Windows NT to be released within the decade, they would need a new, modern operating system to run on their machines. ... Amongst Apple's other options were to license Solaris from Sun, NT from Microsoft, or to purchase a small net services company called NeXT. Apple chose the latter.'" OSNews had another nice Mac-oriented look at NeXTSTEP last year; the Wikipedia entry is also worth looking through.

3 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Re:BeOS by Kenja · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "I think the Mac platform would eb even further ahead if they went with Be."

    As a licensed BeOS devloper who still has a Rev2 BeBox sitting around I must say you're wrong. BeOS was NEVER as far along as Nextstep was even when taking into acount the hardware transition. BeOS had poor to no network or print servies. We where promissed that they would be released "real soon now" for years. Granted what Be had was better then the same stuff on Next. But Be lacked a lot of very important stuff.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  2. The NeXT big thing by RealProgrammer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I first used NeXTStep in about 1989, when NeXT was still a hardware company.

    NeXT made a big splash in the trade magazines by using standard UNIX industry hardware like the 680x0 processor, standard RAM, SCSI drives, etc. They did some neat stuff like having a 600M rewritable optical disk, unheard of capacity at the time. Unfortunately, no one else followed suit.

    The big thing was the apps, though. Everything was done in Postscript, and there were several desktop publishing applications. As a math student at the time, Mathematica made my jaw drop. I figured out how to use it under ASCII mode via dialup, and checked all my homework that way.

    The programming environment was interesting, though I never really delved into it. Underneath (or beside) the pretty GUI there was a 4.3BSD system with a Mach kernel. I was mostly interested in this compiler they had for it, gcc. They wanted you to copy it! And hunting around the ftp sites I found this new scripting language, perl, that was really great.

    Too bad stuff like that will never catch on.

    --
    sigs, as if you care.
  3. This Article is riddled with inaccuracies. by tyrione · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • Steve Jobs didn't ask the board to oust Gil Amelio (I know I know, working there had me not seeing the forrest for the trees). Steve's frustrations resided in the fact that Gil didn't listen to his advice on what to do with the direction of the company: What's the point of being a Special Consultant if your years of experience in this industry gets ignored? He was fed up and was ready to spend more time at PIXAR, which really doesn't like Steve's nitpicking but just his skill at negotiation. Fred Anderson came to Steve and asked him to return--his trump to Steve was they already wanted to get rid of Gil. Steve insisted on being able to revamp the board and begin by settling the Microsoft bad public relations.
    • We at NeXT were in the middle of filing for an IPO as a WebObjects Enterprise Company. We lost one hell of a CFO during the merger.
    • NeXT Engineers began working with the Linux team at Apple to piggy back a non-commercially released version of Openstep onto PowerPC architecture. The idiot wars to parallel what the OS should be and not be have continued since 1997. In two more releases we'll finally get an OS that all the Mac Zealots will accept actually was the original intent of OS X. Glad to see it took forever to drown out the whining.
    • "Unlike OPENSTEP, users were able to save files directly to the desktop." --This was a design choice Keith Ohlfs, Steve Jobs and several others specifically didn't want in NeXTSTEP that obviously carried over to Openstep:: A non-cluttered Desktop to keep the clean, minimalistic look; hence THE SHELF: Reuse via the Shelf which is a collection of symlinks to files.
    • "Ultimately, Quartz performed better than Display PostScript, while maintaining very high output quality." --Ultimately PDF cost Apple nothing to license and Peter Grafanino(sorry if I spelled your last name wrong Pete--you are a genius and always will be) and his team who developed Quartz chose PDF firstly for cost saving measures and then to extend it in their own rights.
    • "Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia and Quark, the keystone of Macintosh development, had all yet to release their flagship products for OS X, and in the case of Quark, would not until two years later." --They didn't release their products because they insisted upon CARBON.

    Now that Cocoa is finally getting its just dues how long before we see replacements to these Gorillas? They didn't want to invest in Cocoa programming then, but now six years later will they have taken the time to find the talent to do it now? Hard to tell but these are my predictions.

    If they don't they'll be left behind. Adobe sees it by Apple entering into the market with better products.

    Macromedia sees it but lets see if they really see it.

    Quark seems to be the most cautious and I'm guessing they'll hedge their bets and have invested in such talent already.

    Microsoft? Never. They'll figure that Office will always guarantee them supremacy in the platform. Then again I'm sure they'll be quite pissed if Apple releases a compatible Office suite worthy of knocking off Office. Afterall, XML is the measure of compatibility on all future Office suites.

    The last section is obviously just conjecture but conjecture with history.