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Steve Jobs Demos NeXTSTEP 3.0
node 3 writes "Following the current trend of posting video from product demos long past, openstep.se has posted a 55MB video from 1992 of Steve Jobs demoing NeXTSTEP 3.0. They already have 4 mirrors hosting the file, but hopefully someone will set up a torrent (I would, but I don't have a place to post it). If you find the demo compelling and want to try out NeXTSTEP for yourself, you can always go here or here to get started."
Anyway, think about it people. This video was made in 1992!!! It is amazing how advanced NeXT was at that time. I mean, that machine is what?...a 68030? 040? 33MHz? Amazing! A lot of the technologies that we take for granted in MacOS X were already around at the time, as well as some other things (such as OpenDoc) which were not introduced in other systems for years and have yet to be re-implemented.
Truly an impressive OS.
Oh, and it is great to hear Steve Jobs say "BOOOM!" during his demos. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
but think about it. Back in the 80s and early-mid 90s, a lot of things on computers were VERY hardware limited and developers had to program efficiently to get things to run with some semblence (sp?) of speed. IANADeveloper, but it seems to me that that kind of efficiency has for the most part disappeared (and this is not a knock on developers...you guys are doing amazing things!).
I guess I just imagine about what it would be like if the same kind of efficiency that was used to make things run quickly on an 040 was used to make things run on a G4 or G5 today and it blows my mind.
Of course, there is a lot that I don't understand about developing and the hardware has also advanced so much that programming for efficiency due to hardware limitations like developers had to back in the day probably doesn't apply as much any more.
thoughts?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
The technology behind OS X is going on almost two decades. :)
.NET? Adobe, Macromedia, id Software, and so on aren't going to rewrite their apps in unmanaged C++ .NET code just to fit in. At least on OS X, Apple offered the Carbon APIs to allow old apps to compile with few changes and suddenly take advantage of the new environment.
The only thing immature about OS X coming out of the gate was the Aqua interface, which they finally patched up around 10.2.
On an unrelated note, on Panther, and with Tiger upcoming, the interface is so polished that everything else feels six years behind. I can't help wondering what Apple will offer to compete with Microsoft in the update after Tiger, which might be coming out the year Longhorn ships if Longhorn doesn't delay again. Longhorn sounds like they're ripping off a ton of OS X technology, like a new display technology, hardware-accelerated window drawing, and so on. And what new apps will take advantage of
Honestly, though, it would be nice of more of the major OS X apps took advantage of Cocoa instead of hanging onto Carbon for dear life. Dreamweaver MX 2004 runs like a dog, and Photoshop CS is little better.
I got a chance to play with a friend's NeXTStep 3.0 box tonight, and fiddling around in the OS, I was quite amazed with how similar it is to modern day OS X, despite being over a decade old. A few things that were damn near identical that come to mind:
- the color picker (except for the fact that it was a grayscale monitor)
- Interface Builder
- Terminal.app is dead-on, except in his NeXT it took me a couple of tries to get an actual prompt to come up
- Drag and drop everywhere
- The beachball when an app is loading
And when I saw Jobs demo the WordPerfect, I thought, "So what's the big deal about Pages again?"
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
I find it facinating that a lot of the stuff I consider compelling in OS X existed in NeXTSTEP 14 years ago, and it reminds of how disappointed I was with the direction the Linux Desktop took in the mid to late 90s (and today) when the vast majority of support went behind the Win9x-esque KDE and Gnome desktops.
The designs, ideas, and concepts were all there in the 90s waiting to implemented. And, as hardware improved, there could have been an advanced desktop built on top of Linux that would have been a very compelling alternative to Win9x, if not the leading edge of desktop innovation.
Instead, we got a start menu, a task bar, and a dump truck full of skins.
At least nowadays the Gnome people have set their sights much higher, which is great to see.
I loved WindowMaker and wished it was so much more than a lowly window manager. Ironically, I suppose, it took Apple to make that happen for me. At least these days I can afford to buy a Mac.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!