Steve demonstrating NeXT OS (vid)

[munkle]

Pretty cool introduction video of Steve demonstrating the NeXTSTEP 3.0 OS (50MB avi). The sites are bound to get hammered so have posted two links, if anybody is willing and able to to mirror, I'm sure it would go down well.

Link 1 (http://www.openstep.se/jobs/)
Link 2 (http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000416.html)

It's interesting to see where OSX came from and very odd to hear Steve talking about Macs as the 'other' computers.

Anyway enjoy :)

[miloblithe]

It's interesting how much his style has and hasn't changed. I'd have to say the Mac expo backdrops are a little more impressive than the blowing trees outside Steve's office window in this video.

It's interesting seeing how much OS X traces it's roots to NeXTSTEP. The Dock is mentioned in the first minute or two, for example.

[munkle]

It's interesting seeing how much OS X traces it's roots to NeXTSTEP. The Dock is mentioned in the first minute or two, for example.

The similarities between the two are startling, it's amazing to think that this vid of NeXT is from 1991-92 (I think) :eek:

[Fredstar]

It is quite strange saying how much better his software is too both Mac's and Windows...he sounds very bitter :p.
NEXT was very advanced for 1991! The search facilities/word processing (similar to Pages now!!) etc was far beyond anything windows had.
Anyone else notice Steves' obscession with the word boom and seamlessly?

[stoid]

NeXT was as much advanced in technology as it was a monumental flop. During it's time NeXT bled cash like a mother ****er. NeXT produced almost zero product and burned hundreds of millions in capital. It's practically illegal what Apple did in acquiring NeXT. Basically, Steve leaves Apple (got fired) and took many of it's brilliant minds into a new company. The new company spins it wheel developing awesome technology but sells nothing. NeXT goes basically bankrupt and is bought by Apple. Compare it to this: Microsoft's OS development team gets spun off into another company. Investors poor hundreds of millions into it because they think that it will be successful. The new company burns all the investment dollars but ships little product and makes almost no money. Once bankrupt Microsoft buys back his company, and finally ships Longhorn that was almost completely done at it's other company. Apple gets to reap the fruits of NeXt labor and investors money. Really nice deal for ANY company if you ask me!

[phreakout13]

Thank-you very much for that. It was awesome to see Next Step up close, especially since I know so little about it. I had no idea it was that similar to OS X. That's so cool!

[Lacero]

This got posted as a story on Slashdot. I have been trying for the last hour trying to view the video. Damn you slashdot geeks!

[Daveway]

I thought it was widely known in the mac community that OS X is based on many things from NeXT.

[bigandy]

finally the proof i need to silence my friends who dont believe MacOS X has been, esentially, under development for fifteen years....

[The Man]

NeXTSTEP File Viewer seems to give you a much better way of navigating, because it shows you the complete path of your file above your icons - and you can go back by clicking on your path. (The same goes for NeXT column view. The path is shown above the columns!) Why doesn't Mac OS X give you this option? In OS X, there's no way of knowing your file path in icon view, unless you command click the window folder icon, but that's much less intuitive.

Also note that the Dock collapses sidewards, which seems much more sound. In Mac OS X the Dock can be hid, but pops up by moving the mouse pointer to the bottom or side of the screen. Sometimes, the Dock just pops up when you don't want to. But what if the Dock moves away sideways to a corner? That way, the Dock will only show when you have your mouse in a corner. Or maybe that sideway slide isn't easy enough on the eyes and becomes anoying, I don't know.

It seems so strange that NeXTSTEP had all these innovative ideas which are not moved to Mac OS X. The classic Mac design was great and I loved the consistent design - especially of the Finder - and NeXT was also great, but Mac OS X has become something less because it uses a bit of classic Mac philosophy and a bit of NeXT philosophy.

[RacerX]

NeXT was as much advanced in technology as it was a monumental flop...
Most people forget (or never knew) that NeXT was barred from competing directly against Apple in the desktop market. Apple sued NeXT over Steve taking all those people from Apple when he left. The settlement agreement limited NeXT's abilities to market their systems.

This left NeXT jumping into the workstation market which was already dominated by the likes of Sun, SGI and Digital. And of course the desktop market was slowly eating away at the workstation market.

It also shouldn't be understated the massive effect that Linux would later have on Unix pricing. NEXTSTEP was running $800 back in the early 90's (with another $5000 for the developer tools). This was low for a Unix based operating system back then. Apple was selling A/UX for around $900 at about the same time.

Most prices of Unix operating system would later drop to compete against Linux. But in the case of NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody there were still a number of other licenses that were keeping the price of the OS high. Even though the most noticeable shift in direction with Mac OS X from Rhapsody was Carbon, Apple also spent much of that development period shedding expensive licenses that had followed Rhapsody from it's NeXT roots. Apple could have just made Mac OS X from Rhapsody+Carbon, but the price would have been well over $200 for a license.

[RacerX]

Also note that the Dock collapses sidewards, which seems much more sound...
The dock can be dragged straight down (by grabbing the NeXT icon) and back up again. None of my systems has a dock that collapses to the side. Also this movement doesn't effect tiled windows across the bottom of the screen.

The video is not the best quality for making comparisons with Mac OS X. The NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP dock is very limited in space. I personally use a dock extender called Fiend to handle all my applications... far more than the dock could handle on it's own. :eek:

[Lacero]

12 years and Steve's appearance has changed so much. The 1992 Steve looks foreign to me. Anywho, NEXTstep definitely was decades ahead of its time. I remember running DOS on my PC in 1992 and I couldn't do 90% of what he was showing in the video.

[The Man]

The dock can be dragged straight down (by grabbing the NeXT icon) and back up again. None of my systems has a dock that collapses to the side. Also this movement doesn't effect tiled windows across the bottom of the screen.

Okay, maybe the term sideward was poorly chosen, but what I was trying to point out that the Mac OS X Dock could be programmed to move sidewards when on the bottom of the screen, and downward or upward when put on the side of the screen.

[vollspacken]

I just finished watching the video (and YES, I will put my impressions here rather than in your second post, because more people seem to respond to this thread...)

incredible, how advanced NextStep was in '91 :eek:

I've read stuff about it online at Apple history sites and general computer hsitory/GUI history sites, but I've never actually seen it in use... what I didn't know was the fact that there was Lotus, Wordperfect and Adobe software for it.

in the end it's good that Apple bought the whole shebang and turned it into OsX

vSpacken

[edesignuk]

That impresses me even today, let alone in the early 90's. Amazing.

[munkle]

That impresses me even today, let alone in the early 90's. Amazing.

I know what you mean, it really is amazing, but on the same token it's odd thinking just how little has changed since over a decade ago! :eek: And then I realise just how far behind Windows really is... ;) :p

[Jason_Bryan]

You think it looks amazing, did any one use it back then. My first job was working for a Managemnet Consultancy. The head guy worked all over the world creating training and development programmes for some of the biggest companies in the world. What computer system did we use, you guessed it. Think how I felt when I moved job. I had had very little computer experience before using the NEXT Computer, so I thought most computers in bussiness would work the same. I was very dissapointed I spent 7 years waiting for Apple to produce OS X so I could go back to the early 90's.

[RacerX]

You think it looks amazing, did any one use it back then...
Yes... I started out with NEXTSTEP 2.0 and have been a consistent user for about 13 years. I still use OPENSTEP 4.2 on my ThinkPad for a number of mathematics applications I use in my studies.

This screen shot is of Geomview which was developed at the Geometry Center while I was there in 1994 (I also have a copy for my SGI Indy).

It doesn't feel all that dated to me. :rolleyes:

[The Man]

Yes... I started out with NEXTSTEP 2.0 and have been a consistent user for about 13 years. I still use OPENSTEP 4.2 on my ThinkPad for a number of mathematics applications I use in my studies.

This screen shot is of Geomview which was developed at the Geometry Center while I was there in 1994 (I also have a copy for my SGI Indy).

It doesn't feel all that dated to me. :rolleyes:

How is that vertical menu system? Is it any good? I am only familiar with the horizontal ones of Mac and Windows. You can place the vertical menu anywhere on the screen and each apps menu can be put elsewhere, is it not? And you can drag off any submenu, I have read somewhere. Doesn't the vertical menu get in the way sometimes?

[Lacero]

Definitely OSX added the beauty and aesthetics to NextStep. To see where we came from, it's still unbelievable Steve had to force everyone to switch over from OS9. He did the right thing.

[RacerX]

How is that vertical menu system? Is it any good? I am only familiar with the horizontal ones of Mac and Windows. You can place the vertical menu anywhere on the screen and each apps menu can be put elsewhere, is it not? And you can drag off any submenu, I have read somewhere. Doesn't the vertical menu get in the way sometimes?
Honestly... I'm not a big fan of it.

This is not because I started out with Macs first, it just really isn't that efficient a use of space.

The best way to illustrate this is with two applications I use a lot and show what the same versions of these applications look like running in OPENSTEP and Rhapsody. The top level of the picture is OmniWeb 3, the bottom is Stone Design's Create 5. Both of these operating systems support tear-off menus, but I've always felt that the Mac menu layout is better (plus I love the Apple Menu (http://www.shawcomputing.net/rhapsody/system/apple_menu/AppleMenu_1.html)).

Actually, to a large degree, this is why I tend to use Rhapsody far more than OPENSTEP even though I have more applications for OPENSTEP than Rhapsody.

[virividox]

thats pretty cool thanks for the link :) amazing that was in the early 90s

[AmigoMac]

There was thread about Next to X ...
here a link...

http://mlagazine.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=17

[aussie_geek]

:eek: :eek: :eek: Unbelievable!! The similarities sent shivers up my spine... NeXT was definately ahead of its time.

aussie_geek

[hob]

Some things I noticed:

Steve is obviously still bitter about the mac thing
He's substituted Blamo (1991) with BAM! (2002)
The demo he give of a DTP app is very similar to the demo Schiller gave of Pages...

My 2 pence

[Phat_Pat]

Dang....... so close..... thats amazing......

[john1123]

i'd like to see build in voice recording for mail in OS X! :D

Edit: now half-way through the movie and :eek: :eek: :eek: why can't i do that on osx 12 years later?!? :eek:

dragging text files to pages doesn't paste the text inside the document into the text box! nor is networking so easy!

OS X looks better but Next OS is pretty damn close in ease of use and - in some regards - even better! True it is slow but that is due to the 'ancient' technology.

I WANT ONE!

[HiRez]

I'm blown away by just how responsive and fluid the UI was back then, most likely running on...what...a 33 MHz 68040 CPU? Sheesh. Consider that today the average CPU is probably at least 20-50x as fast just in clock speed (and many times faster with bus/bandwidth/etc. improvements), plus the very powerful hardware graphics acceleration we have today. Honestly, I don't notice much difference between what Steve demoed on that ancient machine and my dual G5 PowerMac, which is a bit depressing.

Secondly, where is the way-cool "DB Kit" that Steve demoed in the video? That would be so great to be able to use today, one has to wonder why it's not a part of the Cocoa APIs. I assume much of it is was split off to become WebObjects/EOF, but you can't even use that with Objective-C now, and since it's not integrated with Cocoa, developers generally can't/don't use it. That's a real shame, I believe there's a need for standard Cocoa database APIs, as well as a database that is installed by default in OS X, such as MySLQ, like Apache and JBoss are. Apple took most of the best parts of NeXTStep, but they missed a few good ideas too.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Untill I saw that demo I actually thought NeXT to be just another *nix flavour, I knew it was advanced for it's time and the forefather of OS X, but still thought it just another *nix... at the time I actually tried the *nix systen the University in Bergen ran, and this demo blew that system away any way you see it... actually it blows the Mac I bought in 1994 to bits and to some degree it looked just as good as (or even better then) my current system, an iBook G4@800 running Mac OS X 10.3.8... Networking actually takes way longer time today, and those multisystem integration thingies, both networkingwise and against the databases was awsome...

I'm impressed...!

[RacerX]

dragging text files to pages doesn't paste the text inside the document into the text box! Dragging a text file on to a Create window pastes the text inside the document just fine. It helps to use software that was originally developed on NEXTSTEP by original NEXTSTEP developers. Like many Mac users, a lot of Mac developers still have no idea what Mac OS X can do. Add to that the fact that Cocoa functionality comes from NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP and Carbon from the old Mac OS, and you start to see why many apps can't do this stuff. For the first few years of it's life, people were complaining that Mac OS X was too NeXT like. What they were really unhappy with was that it wasn't Mac like enough for them, they had no idea what NeXT software could do.

nor is networking so easy! Just to point it out, that was a demo. I can guarantee that networking is far easier in Mac OS X today than it ever was with NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP. The same basic functionality that you see in the demo is how networking is supposed to work in 10.3. Getting to that point in NEXTSTEP is no easy task (which wasn't demoed) compared to Mac OS X.



I assume much of it is was split off to become WebObjects/EOF, but you can't even use that with Objective-C now, and since it's not integrated with Cocoa, developers generally can't/don't use it Enterprise Objects Framework was always a separate package costing around $300 as I recall. The developer tools were not included in NEXTSTEP either, those ran $5000. NEXTSTEP 3.0 was around $800. NeXT could only sell in the workstation market, so it was assumed that this was being sold to the enterprise and that all the additional software would be bought. This demo wasn't for the general public as they were not the target market for NeXT (thanks to Apple).

Also, Apple didn't drop Objective C in WebObjects until version 5. WebObjects was originally running a few thousand dollars. I knew people who bought Mac OS X Server 1.x just to get the copy of WebObjects 4.0.1 that came with it (it was limited by a bandwidth restriction, but nothing that small to medium businesses would run into, Apple still wanted big businesses to buy the full version).

[RacerX]

There was thread about Next to X ...
here a link...

http://mlagazine.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=17
The author has taken the time to revise this article after I pointed out a few (major) errors in the original.

If you read it before, you may want to read the new version.

[aethier]

Wow, i sure cannot get over how fast the gui seemed to be. he was dragging around pictures with ease. the voice recording, and networking also apeared quite fast.

as to the guy who said the path thing should be in os x. it is.. just not in the default setting of finder..

path thing

[Mr Jobs]

12 years and Steve's appearance has changed so much. The 1992 Steve looks foreign to me. Anywho, NEXTstep definitely was decades ahead of its time. I remember running DOS on my PC in 1992 and I couldn't do 90% of what he was showing in the video.

That's because he is foreign, well partly. He's biological father is Middle-Eastern.