Indeed. NeXT was 10 years ahead of the industry in terms of operating system stability and development. If you want to think of it, back in 1990, all the PC world had was Windows 3.0 with PC-DOS 4/ MS OS/2 (for the serious PC users) or in the Mac world, a Macintosh II with System Software 6
NeXT was ahead of Microsoft and Apple, by at least 10 years (I used to joke in the late 90s that NeXT had 10 years advance 10 years ago, and more than that now). If Jobs could have made the NeXT at Apple, with Apple resources, computing would look very different today.
In term of OS stability, it was miles ahead Windows and MacOS, but not as good as Solaris. In term of ease of development, it was 20 years ahead the industry...
If Jobs could have made the NeXT at Apple, with Apple resources, computing would look very different today
IDK. Jobs always seemed to be his best with a resource crunch. Whether it was time or money that was in short supply, he seemed to turn that into the pressure needed to create diamonds. It could be argued that the failure of NeXT hardware resulted in the work needed to put NeXTSTEP on x86 and that in turn paved the way for its transition to PPC. This work can be directly tied to the nearly seamless transition of OS X to x86 and then to Apple Silicon.
If Jobs had Apple's resources he might have stuck with 680x0
Jobs always seemed to be his best with a resource crunch
NeXT was a indeed a resource crunch all the way. IIRC, 75 engineers for system software + dev software + user software.
It could be argued that the failure of NeXT hardware resulted in the work needed to put NeXTSTEP on x86 and that in turn paved the way for its transition to PPC
Could be argued the opposite, too.
Jobs was in charge of NeXT when it changed CPUs. There were rumored internal ppc versions. There was the pa-risc version. There was the sparc version. And the i86 version. And the kernel and window server ran on the i860 of the dimension board.
If Jobs had Apple's resources he might have stuck with 680x0
Jobs was in charge of Apple when it switched to x86. I don't think jobs gave any fuck about the specific CPU tech, as long as it was "the best".
So, no I don't think he would have stick to 68k. And when we see what he did with Apple's resources (OSX, iPod, iPhone), I don't think he was unable to manage a large resource pool. But we can disagree, of course ! :-)
yeh its true that CDE wasnt the most beautiful - but now looking from long perspective it worked and was super reliable. I have couple Sun machines: Sparc Station 20, IPX and a Blade2000 - Blade2000 was my "daily" for long time - now its a weekend machine, but if my life depended on a computer - this would be my choice.
This is such a niche thing, but I will say that NeXT (and eventually OS X) had one UI advancement that I still love and wish I could replicate: Miller Columns in the file browser. I think OneCommander has them, so I may try that out, but I reckon there are still missing features compared to the default file manager.
NeXT was ahead of Microsoft and Apple, by at least 10 years
15 maybe at the outside. .Net was fairly comparable by 2005, and although the objects in OS are still better than some of the older stuff in .Net, it's been pretty usable in WinForms for quite a while now.
Yes, but that’s a system that’s been heavily viewed through rose colored glasses these days, thanks to modern macOS. I have no personal experience with A/UX, but from what I’ve read, it wasn’t quite as fully fleshed out and usable as it seems.
It was System V UNIX with a Mac OS shell on it. Most UNIX programs at the time could be ported to it as easily as to other UNIX systems at the time. You had the Mac environment, shell, and X available.
I used that a bit on the Workgroup Server my work had for a time, managing DNS, email and some other services. It wasn’t great. The mix of Unix and Mac was clunky and it was just not very pleasant to use. An attempt to transform A/UX into OSX for example would have never worked.
Oh, interesting, thanks! The style reminds me of Motif / LessTif though, wonder why they went with it.
On an unrelated note, I genuinely wonder, those who downvoted my comment - why? Did I hurt your feelings by suggesting it was Motif / LessTif? Is it personal for you?
Because if not, why on Earth didn't you comment like u/xternocleidomastoide did, pointing out what it really was?
Now, I understand that smacking a button and moving on is much easier than any constructive criticism. But it also adds no value to the conversation, it's a lazy cop-out.
If you're not ready to enrich everyone around you with the knowledge you (think you) have, maybe you should just pass by?
In 1987, IBM published a document called Common User Access, or CUA, which was the foundational standard for the look-and-feel of Motif, OS/2, and early Windows, which is why CDE, IRIX, and Windows 3.0 all have a "—" button in the top-left corner and min + max buttons in the top right. More precisely, the OSF published their own design recommendations for Motif based in part upon CUA; the various Unix workstation vendors then implemented Motif or something similar. CUA and Motif together us things like the 135° lighting angle and chunky buttons that dominated UI design for over a decade.
NeXT's place in this history is actually a bit of a mystery. They would have been designing their UI simultaneously with the authoring of CUA, since they were in start-up stealth mode from '85 to '88, but their UI changed very little after that. It's possible the Motif authors took some notes from NeXT, but most people who use CDE and NeXTSTEP for long periods of time tend to prefer the later.
NeXT's influence was felt in other ways, too—every OS with light gray windows in the 90s got the idea from them. Amiga Workbench 2.0 and Windows 95 are the best-known examples. The Amiga devs have admitted to the intentional homage. Windows 95 rather conspicuously pinched the X-shaped close button from NeXT and its placement in the top-right corner. (Atari TOS and Acorn RISC OS both had X-to-close buttons also, but they were in the top left and each looked rather different from the standard appearance we knew in the late 90s.) OS/2 seems to have always been gray-leaning or gray-curious; the Windows 3 "Emerald City" color scheme strongly resembles contemporary OS/2, which suggests the choice of name is perhaps lingering vitriol from the MS devs who had worked on it before the collaboration was canned...
it was a great environment - I still have a NeXT Cube.
Funny thing is these icons representing folders were also getting thicker if there was more content inside - I just discovered it recently.
If you like the look&feel and simplicity of NeXT, checkout GSDesktop - https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html is NeXT/OpenStep reimplementation using GNUStep libraries running on Linux :-)
WindowMaker is just a window manager (which GSDesktop uses).
GSDesktop goes further by giving complete NeXT-like desktop environment. Filemanager, preferences, terminal, mail app, webbrower and also many services NeXT was known for like dictionary or librarian app.
Ahh, the days when individual developers were publicly credited for their work in the "About" window of the application. I wonder if software would suck less today if companies still allowed individual devs to take ownership (and get credit) like that.
Always loved the NeXTStep/OpenStep UI, especially in monochrome. Never liked the icons though, they always looked like they speak a completely different design language to the rest of the UI
The UI also had some annoying inconsistencies, that become obvious once you had to use it for extended periods of time.
But then compared with the Unix UIs of the time. NeXTStep was a much more user friendly experience. Although I think aesthetically Irix was better looking.
I've never heard of this one. Know very little about old school computers, but I always find it fascinating, to say the least. Feel like I started far too late for the good stuff.
Never too late to learn, my friend. It’s a fairly circuitous tale, but worth reading if you’re so inclined. Terms like Copland, Blue Box, Yellow Box, Carbon, Cocoa, and others can be confusing even to the initiated lol
Here’s a decent primer—if you want to delve deeper, there have been many books written on the topic as well as an army of podcasts, YouTube videos, and many, many other ways to historical nirvana:
Just FYI, with several customization add-ons and enough work registry hacking and tweaking, I've managed to wrestle Windows 11 into something that I think is even better.
To be clear, it wasn't easy. Windows 11 fought back mightily to continue sucking but, in the end, I managed to prevail - at least for the moment anyway. MSFT is always coming up with new ways to screw up Win11's usability and appearance. I wish I'd actually stuck with Win10 as it's just as easy to mod and since MSFT is no longer trying to monetize it, it's not a moving target like Win11.
Of course, thematically it looks not that different from a more modern descendant of NextStep but a modern GPU, dynamically variable typography and 3000 x 2000 x 24-bit color resolution does enable a lot of refinement like rounded corners, subtle shading and shadows, etc.
I currently have NS 3.3 running in Previous (emulating a Turbo ND cube) and OS 4.2 running in 86Box (emulating a 440BX Pentium 2/266), both hosted on an M2 Max Mac. I really should post screenshots at some point...
From this gallery of mine. The OPENSTEP (for Intel) screenshots are of them running under the Parallels virtual machine running on an Intel-based iMac. The NEXTSTEP screenshots show the OS running the NeXT hardware (MC68K) version of NEXTSTEP under the Previous emulator (based on the HATARI Atari ST emulator).
I bought the student version of NeXTSTEP 3.3 in 1996. I think it was $300. I remember I had to send in a copy of my student ID and driver's license showing my age. I think the full price was $5000 so it was a huge discount. But as a college student $300 was not a small amount of money for me.
It took me forever to get it installed due to IDE and SCSI issues. Then just months after I got it installed Apple announced they were buying NeXT. I was really into Linux then but also loved playing around with other OS. I had Solaris x86 student edition for $99 with the Wabi windows "emulator" too.
blissed_off@reddit
Such a masterpiece of an operating system.
richardsequeira@reddit
Indeed. NeXT was 10 years ahead of the industry in terms of operating system stability and development. If you want to think of it, back in 1990, all the PC world had was Windows 3.0 with PC-DOS 4/ MS OS/2 (for the serious PC users) or in the Mac world, a Macintosh II with System Software 6
frederic_stark@reddit
NeXT was ahead of Microsoft and Apple, by at least 10 years (I used to joke in the late 90s that NeXT had 10 years advance 10 years ago, and more than that now). If Jobs could have made the NeXT at Apple, with Apple resources, computing would look very different today.
In term of OS stability, it was miles ahead Windows and MacOS, but not as good as Solaris. In term of ease of development, it was 20 years ahead the industry...
ksuwildkat@reddit
IDK. Jobs always seemed to be his best with a resource crunch. Whether it was time or money that was in short supply, he seemed to turn that into the pressure needed to create diamonds. It could be argued that the failure of NeXT hardware resulted in the work needed to put NeXTSTEP on x86 and that in turn paved the way for its transition to PPC. This work can be directly tied to the nearly seamless transition of OS X to x86 and then to Apple Silicon.
If Jobs had Apple's resources he might have stuck with 680x0
frederic_stark@reddit
NeXT was a indeed a resource crunch all the way. IIRC, 75 engineers for system software + dev software + user software.
Could be argued the opposite, too.
Jobs was in charge of NeXT when it changed CPUs. There were rumored internal ppc versions. There was the pa-risc version. There was the sparc version. And the i86 version. And the kernel and window server ran on the i860 of the dimension board.
Jobs was in charge of Apple when it switched to x86. I don't think jobs gave any fuck about the specific CPU tech, as long as it was "the best".
So, no I don't think he would have stick to 68k. And when we see what he did with Apple's resources (OSX, iPod, iPhone), I don't think he was unable to manage a large resource pool. But we can disagree, of course ! :-)
blissed_off@reddit
Maybe, but Solaris had the world ugliest interface. Given the choice between NeXT and Solaris, that’s an easy W for NeXT.
frederic_stark@reddit
That's an absolut no brainer. To be honest everything looked butt-ugly compared to NeXT UI, but CDE was abject.
Tahionwarp@reddit
yeh its true that CDE wasnt the most beautiful - but now looking from long perspective it worked and was super reliable. I have couple Sun machines: Sparc Station 20, IPX and a Blade2000 - Blade2000 was my "daily" for long time - now its a weekend machine, but if my life depended on a computer - this would be my choice.
LeeTaeRyeo@reddit
This is such a niche thing, but I will say that NeXT (and eventually OS X) had one UI advancement that I still love and wish I could replicate: Miller Columns in the file browser. I think OneCommander has them, so I may try that out, but I reckon there are still missing features compared to the default file manager.
DeepDayze@reddit
I could imagine the Mac would have been a much different system had NeXT been adopted by Apple.
the_real_jamied@reddit
This did happen though. macOS is a direct descendant of NS/OS
richardsequeira@reddit
NeXT had a better fate than Sun Microsystems. Oracled justed plundered the company to bits.
hughk@reddit
Larry needed another boat.
frederic_stark@reddit
Lawnmowers mow lawns. Can't blame them... (ref to that fantastic Brian Cantrill talk, of course)
bobj33@reddit
Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison.
maurymarkowitz@reddit
15 maybe at the outside. .Net was fairly comparable by 2005, and although the objects in OS are still better than some of the older stuff in .Net, it's been pretty usable in WinForms for quite a while now.
IWearHawaiianShirts@reddit
In 1990 you could also have A/UX running on a Macintosh II.
blissed_off@reddit
Yes, but that’s a system that’s been heavily viewed through rose colored glasses these days, thanks to modern macOS. I have no personal experience with A/UX, but from what I’ve read, it wasn’t quite as fully fleshed out and usable as it seems.
IWearHawaiianShirts@reddit
I ran A/UX on a II (later upgraded to a IIfx) as my main system, it was quite useable and even ran most Mac applications without issues.
blissed_off@reddit
Mac apps of the day were probably fine but it wasn’t as unix-y as it needed to be.
IWearHawaiianShirts@reddit
It was System V UNIX with a Mac OS shell on it. Most UNIX programs at the time could be ported to it as easily as to other UNIX systems at the time. You had the Mac environment, shell, and X available.
smallduck@reddit
I used that a bit on the Workgroup Server my work had for a time, managing DNS, email and some other services. It wasn’t great. The mix of Unix and Mac was clunky and it was just not very pleasant to use. An attempt to transform A/UX into OSX for example would have never worked.
Zdrobot@reddit
Motif / LessTif widgets?
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
It was it's own native UI toolkit. It later evolved to become aqua on the original OSX.
NeXT also had its own windowing system unrelated to X-windows, which used display postscript.
Zdrobot@reddit
Oh, interesting, thanks! The style reminds me of Motif / LessTif though, wonder why they went with it.
On an unrelated note, I genuinely wonder, those who downvoted my comment - why? Did I hurt your feelings by suggesting it was Motif / LessTif? Is it personal for you?
Because if not, why on Earth didn't you comment like u/xternocleidomastoide did, pointing out what it really was?
Now, I understand that smacking a button and moving on is much easier than any constructive criticism. But it also adds no value to the conversation, it's a lazy cop-out.
If you're not ready to enrich everyone around you with the knowledge you (think you) have, maybe you should just pass by?
*RANT OVER*
rhet0rica@reddit
In 1987, IBM published a document called Common User Access, or CUA, which was the foundational standard for the look-and-feel of Motif, OS/2, and early Windows, which is why CDE, IRIX, and Windows 3.0 all have a "—" button in the top-left corner and min + max buttons in the top right. More precisely, the OSF published their own design recommendations for Motif based in part upon CUA; the various Unix workstation vendors then implemented Motif or something similar. CUA and Motif together us things like the 135° lighting angle and chunky buttons that dominated UI design for over a decade.
NeXT's place in this history is actually a bit of a mystery. They would have been designing their UI simultaneously with the authoring of CUA, since they were in start-up stealth mode from '85 to '88, but their UI changed very little after that. It's possible the Motif authors took some notes from NeXT, but most people who use CDE and NeXTSTEP for long periods of time tend to prefer the later.
NeXT's influence was felt in other ways, too—every OS with light gray windows in the 90s got the idea from them. Amiga Workbench 2.0 and Windows 95 are the best-known examples. The Amiga devs have admitted to the intentional homage. Windows 95 rather conspicuously pinched the X-shaped close button from NeXT and its placement in the top-right corner. (Atari TOS and Acorn RISC OS both had X-to-close buttons also, but they were in the top left and each looked rather different from the standard appearance we knew in the late 90s.) OS/2 seems to have always been gray-leaning or gray-curious; the Windows 3 "Emerald City" color scheme strongly resembles contemporary OS/2, which suggests the choice of name is perhaps lingering vitriol from the MS devs who had worked on it before the collaboration was canned...
Zdrobot@reddit
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
agate_@reddit
No, NeXTstep had its own window manager, which later flavors of Unix tried to copy but never quite reached.
Tahionwarp@reddit
it was a great environment - I still have a NeXT Cube.
Funny thing is these icons representing folders were also getting thicker if there was more content inside - I just discovered it recently.
onflapp@reddit
If you like the look&feel and simplicity of NeXT, checkout GSDesktop - https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html is NeXT/OpenStep reimplementation using GNUStep libraries running on Linux :-)
sambuchedemortadela@reddit
Also there is https://www.windowmaker.org/
onflapp@reddit
WindowMaker is just a window manager (which GSDesktop uses).
GSDesktop goes further by giving complete NeXT-like desktop environment. Filemanager, preferences, terminal, mail app, webbrower and also many services NeXT was known for like dictionary or librarian app.
Adorable-Cut-4711@reddit
A cool flash back, but boy were those workstation GUIs ugly!
techdistractions@reddit
I used the LiteStep Win9x shell replacement back in the day - good memories :-)
olliec42069@reddit
Damn Preview.app goes back that far?
Starshipfan01@reddit
Haha. Caught the bit about fixing Y2K issues too!
eugenemah@reddit
InterfaceBuilder was the bomb!
Starshipfan01@reddit
And was used for Mac OS X in XCode too.
TheBellSystem@reddit
Ahh, the days when individual developers were publicly credited for their work in the "About" window of the application. I wonder if software would suck less today if companies still allowed individual devs to take ownership (and get credit) like that.
themightyug@reddit
Always loved the NeXTStep/OpenStep UI, especially in monochrome. Never liked the icons though, they always looked like they speak a completely different design language to the rest of the UI
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
Yeah, the icons were too big, non scalable.
The UI also had some annoying inconsistencies, that become obvious once you had to use it for extended periods of time.
But then compared with the Unix UIs of the time. NeXTStep was a much more user friendly experience. Although I think aesthetically Irix was better looking.
themightyug@reddit
Not sure I'd go that far, I prefer NeXTStep, but Irix definitely looked better than other UNIX UIs, aside from those bloody icons
GraniteGargoyle77@reddit
I've never heard of this one. Know very little about old school computers, but I always find it fascinating, to say the least. Feel like I started far too late for the good stuff.
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
Actually, this is the best time because it is relatively easy to run these systems under emulation and basically at no cost.
This OS cost a few thousand $$$ in the 90s originally...
NorCalNavyMike@reddit
Never too late to learn, my friend. It’s a fairly circuitous tale, but worth reading if you’re so inclined. Terms like Copland, Blue Box, Yellow Box, Carbon, Cocoa, and others can be confusing even to the initiated lol
Here’s a decent primer—if you want to delve deeper, there have been many books written on the topic as well as an army of podcasts, YouTube videos, and many, many other ways to historical nirvana:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/70268.html?
cazzipropri@reddit
No prettier window manager was ever made or could ever be made.
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
It was gorgeous for the first couple of hours. Until you had to get stuff done. Then it was undeniable it was getting in the way... :(
cazzipropri@reddit
That's your mistake!
mrandish@reddit
It is great. And simply incredible given the era.
Just FYI, with several customization add-ons and enough work registry hacking and tweaking, I've managed to wrestle Windows 11 into something that I think is even better.
To be clear, it wasn't easy. Windows 11 fought back mightily to continue sucking but, in the end, I managed to prevail - at least for the moment anyway. MSFT is always coming up with new ways to screw up Win11's usability and appearance. I wish I'd actually stuck with Win10 as it's just as easy to mod and since MSFT is no longer trying to monetize it, it's not a moving target like Win11.
Of course, thematically it looks not that different from a more modern descendant of NextStep but a modern GPU, dynamically variable typography and 3000 x 2000 x 24-bit color resolution does enable a lot of refinement like rounded corners, subtle shading and shadows, etc.
No_Transportation_77@reddit
I currently have NS 3.3 running in Previous (emulating a Turbo ND cube) and OS 4.2 running in 86Box (emulating a 440BX Pentium 2/266), both hosted on an M2 Max Mac. I really should post screenshots at some point...
mccurry1@reddit
Please do !
blakespot@reddit
And running at extreme resolution.
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
Brilliant! How?
blakespot@reddit
From this gallery of mine. The OPENSTEP (for Intel) screenshots are of them running under the Parallels virtual machine running on an Intel-based iMac. The NEXTSTEP screenshots show the OS running the NeXT hardware (MC68K) version of NEXTSTEP under the Previous emulator (based on the HATARI Atari ST emulator).
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
Awesome, thanks. At those resolutions you can totally see the resemblance between modern OSX and NS/OS.
ScalarWeapon@reddit
WHOA
cazzipropri@reddit
Gorgeous
Foreign-King7613@reddit
Brilliant.
daddyd@reddit
On linux in 1997, i used Afterstep, which was inspired by Openstep.
Primo0077@reddit
Love the NeXT derived software stuff, if for no other reason than it's just plain neat. I like to use WindowMaker on a few of my BSD machines.
tuberlord@reddit
I ran WindowMaker back in the 90s. Maybe I should revisit it.
trembl@reddit
Running OPENSTEP in a browser: https://infinitemac.org
ReddyBlueBlue@reddit
Looks better than it’s modern day version (Mac OS)
sotiredaboutus@reddit
Strange that i who have been a Unix/Linux user since 95 havent heard about this os 😀
frederic_stark@reddit
You may have heard of it under its current name: "OSX" (OSX is based on OPENSTEP).
spilk@reddit
the current name for that operating system is "macOS"
sotiredaboutus@reddit
Well yeah but not knowing it's origin sucks 😄
Oscarcharliezulu@reddit
Hey that’s Unix !
bobj33@reddit
I bought the student version of NeXTSTEP 3.3 in 1996. I think it was $300. I remember I had to send in a copy of my student ID and driver's license showing my age. I think the full price was $5000 so it was a huge discount. But as a college student $300 was not a small amount of money for me.
It took me forever to get it installed due to IDE and SCSI issues. Then just months after I got it installed Apple announced they were buying NeXT. I was really into Linux then but also loved playing around with other OS. I had Solaris x86 student edition for $99 with the Wabi windows "emulator" too.
BigBagaroo@reddit
I worked on this! It cannot be vintage! 1992 is not so long ago. Damn you!
midnight-salmon@reddit
My current Linux setup looks very similar :) Lovely simple interface.
Retro-Egg@reddit
NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP just looks so classy. Love it.