NeXT Station | When Steve Jobs left Apple - Part 2

[@wolvenar]

I always drooled at the ads for Next systems. Was a dream to have owned one back then. I'm at this point grateful to have such a good video showing what all I actually was missing :-)

[@fluffycritter]

I always loved NeXTstep, and it turning into OSX was a big part of why I switched to Mac in 2001 (from Linux). So many of the windowing features in NeXTstep are things I wish we still had in macOS - like having the recycle bin pinned in the corner (which used to be available as a hidden preference but they removed it some time ago), and the tearable menus are friggin' useful, even though they seem kinda, well, tearable.

[@brianarmstrong234]

If it is possible I would love to see similar treatment given to BeOS. If it is possible to get a hold of an actual BeBox that would be awesome. I am not sure if many people today know this but BeOS and NeXTSTEP were the 2 finalist OS's in the running of who would be come the core of Apples "next-gen" operating system. It would be great in your coverage of Be to mention the reasons why BeOS was passed over in favor of NeXTSTEP. While I think that NeXT was a better fit for Apple, BeOS was a great OS in its own right as well

[@zh84]

20:30 Though this would have taken you a long way afield, the reason Apple needed a new OS so badly at that time was because they had made such an appalling mess of their own development, Copland. They hired an executive from National Semiconductor to sort the project out: she had a good hard look at it, decided it was beyond saving, and had them buy in a solution instead.

[@MarkyShaw]

Wow! I definitely learned a lot from this video. It was great to see the developer kit in action. They put such a huge emphasis on giving better tools to developers, although the machine wasn't widely adopted in the hands of regular users, it's certainly obvious that its innovation is what has given us what we have today. Coming from a background where the only thing I've ever known about NeXT was using Window Maker for Linux back in the 90s while reading the documentation and seeing mentions of OpenStep. It was always a mystery to me what NeXT was until the name started to resurface in KZbin videos and Steve Jobs documentaries. This video helped to glue the remaining pieces of the puzzle for me. Thanks so much RMC!

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you for watching! Please consider supporting my content at Patreon www.patreon.com/RetroManCave - A special thank you to Neil at Oxford University for loaning the machine, and Michael for his part on this video. Michael made some fascinating discoveries in the WWW code which he updated for the purpose of the demonstration and he hopes to make a video soon to show you the code. Neil - RMC

[@legin3753]

done

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you it's very much appreciated

[@MarcosCodas]

That Object-Oriented Programming demo blew my mind. I was using 3.1 at the time as well and there was NOTHING even remotely similar to this. It wasn't until much later that I was introduced to cross-platform OOP, which now serves as a pretty big foundation to a lot of the work that I do (specifically HTML5/JS/CSS programming for web, desktop and mobile applications).

[@AngelaTheSephira]

Question for you: Is HTML4 a security risk, or just not as slick or fast as HTML5? I can't find solid info on this that isn't conflicting.

[@GordonjSmith1]

Excellent video. I was at HP and IBM as the NEXT story took place, and your telling of the story is very much as I recall.

[@jabelsjabels]

That's neat! What was your own personal thoughts of the whole NeXT thing at the time?

[@maxhodgson4462]

Only 55000 made, wow quite rare. Someone I used to work with bought one 2nd hand many years ago. It was on his desk at work. He asked me if I could change round the mouse buttons, within 15 minutes I'd made the machine unsable. Ooops! He had to reinstall the OS in the end. They were very sexy machines and in hindsight I was quite privileged to have used (broken) one. Around the time there was one machine that was slightly sexier though...the Silicon Graphics :-)

[@brianmiller1077]

I saw a Color NextStation (slab) at a demo at my University and the graphics editor supported 32 bit color (8 bits for red, blue and green + 8 bits of transparency) which completely blew me away. I think that without the DSP that would not have been possible,

[@ingusmant]

The irony is that the next was far more revolutionary from a software than a hardware standpoint, had jobs not being so pig-headed and obsessed with hardware it could've been built on top of x86 from the start and become a major competitor to windows att. Who knows, we might all be using nextstep today.

[@tineocedric]

we are, it's called macOs, iOs, iPadOs, WatchOs, TvOS, VisionOS

[@BaudBand]

I love how much research and effort you're putting in with this series. Excellent job, looking forward to part 3.

[@LambdaCalculus379]

Older operating systems seem to have a strange quality that no modern OS possesses. I don't know what it is, but the quirkiness of older OSes is something I don't feel anymore in today's rather homogenized OS market.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

They worked quite well on lower resolutions, Something completely missing in "modern" UI design.

[@desther7975]

Undoubtedly like comparing early automobiles to modern ones. Incidentally, the NeXT Step interface is still available to use in the form of Open Step on modern *NIX systems. I have tried it on Fedora Linux. It was a pleasant surprise to see so much familiar from Mac OS X.

[@theironsword1954]

I dunno, it feels like pre 2012 internet is also much like that.

[@bmmcwhirt]

www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gnustep Toss that in a VM and have some fun.

[@leberkassemmel]

That's those times when I feel the urge to install NetBSD on really crappy hardware. Or Windows 98 on my Main PC (Why does Windows 95 always GPF...)

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

Steve's destiny was quite amazing really...he literally gets punted for several years from Apple Computers. Years later he picks up Pixar, for a great price, and ends up being one of the largest single share holders of Disney stock and starts Next computers that became the future and "life force" of Apple, which was dying a slow death. I should have tried to grab a Next cube in early 2000s on eBay, but even then, there were few to purchase. However, a working Lisa went for literally $350 US among other things. Nevertheless, Next was such an amazingly small company that ended up dramatically altering the world of computing...also Doom was first created and run on it? I would have never guessed it was first created and developed on a Next and literally ported to DOS for mass market sales...great video.

[@asgerms]

Looking forward to that 486 comparison. As I remember the early 90s, those cheap clone 486 PCs (especially with DX2/66) provided a remarkable bang-for-the-buck. Wonder if the next price tag really was justifiable.

[@jessepatterson8897]

yeah, but to them, it was about the complete package. Someone has to pay for the OS; which is what made next special anyway. An entire generation has really questionable morals in regards to software piracy.

[@StrangerHappened]

Sun Microsystems' or IBM's Unix workstations would be more fit for comparison.

[@MegaManNeo]

I love seeing videos like these that show us the origins of today's technology. Thanks alot for making these two parts about the NExT system.

[@rbus]

I've spent hours in that factory. It became Hurricane Electric, a co-location provider. Also have one of these black slates. With monitor, soundbox, two keyboards and no mouse ;)

[@MartinKronstrom]

...that year and a half when you could sell anything with a rap.

[@PixelOutlaw]

I like the GUI a lot better than the regression we're sunk into today. I like that buttons look like buttons and Next doesn't hide GUI garbage requiring mystery swipes to reveal.

[@RMCRetro]

I like to think of it as when OS's knew their place.

[@PoignantPirate]

You can still install several similar window managers on modern linux/BSD/etc systems.

[@nickwallette6201]

Amen to the above.

[@mylesl2890]

SteveJ wanted to make the current OSX the current, but all the mac folks cried so they tried to comprise to make the mac folks happy and still have a gui/os sorta function as to what they were used to while brining over the stability and cool stuff of NeXTStuff ....But to me, when I boot my ol' NeXT gear it's the best.

[@mylesl2890]

meant to say NS the Current for OSX

[@Atomic_Haggis]

I absolutely love your videos, Neil. The Mac family heritage is surprising, and Steve taking the risk of dumping the old System/Mac OS releases can't be understated. It was one of the most influential decisions ever made by a company. Thanks for taking the time to make this for us avid followers. As soon as I can afford it, I'll be subscribing to your Patreon.

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you I appreciate it and am glad you enjoyed it. The more I explore old OS's the more bewildering it is that Windows prevailed...for now 😁

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

A smooth transition from one architecture to another, with system and software updates to lead through it. If Intel ever decides to move away from x86, this is what they need to do. (Be it StrongARM, XScale, Larrabee, i432, Itanium/IA-64 or whatever they come up with)

[@Atomic_Haggis]

Yeah, it's extremely surprising, but unfortunately NextStep was priced so far out of the common user's reach that it never really got any traction. macOS and iOS, on the other hand... Oh well. I hope we see some revolution in the next few years, as Windows is getting a bit tired.

[@kolamik2]

Great detailed knowledge of the Next and it’s legacy. It always amazes me how many meaningful technologies Jobs have been involved in.

[@Thiesi]

What a great video series about a long forgotten platform. Really looking forward to the 486 comparison now!

[@zero0ryn]

Wow! I used to own a next slab, mine had the tank mouse and I think a 68030 cpu. I remember it having lots of ram slots, like loads. It was very slow when I used it. I got it from a trading firm located above Victoria Station. One guy ended up with a stack of slabs from floor to cealing on which he ran Seti @home. I'm not sure what happend to my slab, I seem to remember selling it. One thing I do remember was that it had AUI on the back and in it's original configuration was connected using fibre running at 10Meg to a dedicated port on a Cisco router. I later head that they ripped and cut out all of the fibre in the building and replaced it with CAT5. There must have been miles of it. I'm not sure it used ADB. The keyboard was very different to the one you had.

[@RonLaws]

lets not forget that Google was Birthed on the NeXT! (And some lego) and the early google interface was hosted on a NeXT work station before they expanded.

[@stevedekorte]

I’ve never heard that. Can you provide link to a source for that?

[@TheDarkHour684]

I don't understand why you don't 1 million subs at this quality!

[@chrismac777]

This is quality. Keep up the great work!

[@filanfyretracker]

After chess I expected the NeXT to offer a game of Global Thermonuclear War.

[@janquieldapper]

Watching a lot of your videos... loving my Thursday video library!!! Thanks for this special videos!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for watching!

[@GameHammerCG]

The development kit looks pretty cool. It feels a lot like what Microsoft managed to throw together for the likes of Visual BASIC.

[@madcommodore]

The Amiga 4000/040 on launch day was the poor man's Next Color Station but the Amiga OS was a mess by version 2.x to be honest and no match for NEXT STEP 3.x. In an alternate universe half a decade of innovation by the original Los Gatos Amiga designers (more or less sacked by Commodore in 1986) would have taken us from Amiga 1000 to a true spiritual successor of that machine which would have given you this type of machine and OS sophistication for 1500 bucks.

[@melanierhianna]

At home, in the 90s, I used Acorn RISC based machines. At work I used SGIs and Suns. I always wanted a NeXT but knew I couldn’t afford one so I held out, and in the early 2000s got myself an OSX Mac.

[@NeilGrevitt]

Great video! NextStep completely passed me by. It was all Windows and VAX/VMS at college in 1992!

[@RMCRetro]

I think it passed the vast majority of us by outside of magazines. It was a real pleasure to dive into though. Thank you for watching it!

[@RockwellAIM65]

True that the NeXT Computer cost $6500+ for academics tho' if you were in California, you could score a used one for $2500 from Sam Goldberger... which is what I did. In any case we were a group of engineers that easily made $100k per year once trained... so the cost of the machine was minimal. OSX overall is a fairly good compromise, tho' I still miss Display Postscript for many things I do. Apps could be launched multiple times... which is another thing I miss in clunky old Finder. I much prefer Digital Librarian to the "google metaphor." Would like to have most of what google+wiki have to offer, since I often don't have signal.

[@Johanniscool]

I reckon you have the best voice on KZbin. Better than LGR even.

[@RMCRetro]

My Duke impression sucks!

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

Okay, I like RetroManCave. Like, a lot. But saying his voice is better than the sweet ASMR goodness that is LGR? Sacrilegious.

[@brianboni4876]

Watching the demo brought back a lot of memories. That was a super simple example but it should be noted that not only were almost all of the system functions available but as soon as you added applications their functions also became available too. If you had say Mathematica and Adobe Illustrator and the external database connection tools loaded you could pull live data process it with Mathematica and display it in a complex Illustrator drawing with not much more trouble than the example in the video.

[@gsxerwhite]

That is pretty wild.

[@stevenbliss989]

You are NOT KIDDING, that was way ahead of it's time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@markteague8889]

When one examines the higher level class definitions of the NeXTStep object-oriented programming environment and compares them to the Microsoft Foundation Classes library an almost one to one correspondence can be observed; at least, in the naming and intention of the classes. While this may be a manifestation of evolutionary convergence in the world of object-oriented software development, it is difficult to argue that Microsoft didn’t merely begin with NeXTStep as a model and adapt it to create the MFC library for Windows 95.

[@MaddTheSane]

Mark Teague and this wasn’t the first time MS did this, either: IIRC, the drawing primitives used by DirectDraw are similar, if not identical, to QuickDraw’s

[@osgrov]

Outstanding video, thanks! You've gained another happy supporter. :) Looking forwards to many more interesting videos.

[@kjamison5951]

Some kudos has to be given to Steve Jobs for the drive he put behind Apple then Next then Apple again for the scale of processing power we have now. If we were still waiting for the likes of IBM, Intel and Microsoft to drive computer development, we might just be reaching dual core processors in 2018.

[@MindFlareRetro]

This was an excellent series, very well produced and quite informative and enjoyable. Very nice work.

[@lpseem3770]

I am still using WindowMaker on my laptop. I like Next desktop in concept and don't mind tweaking with scripts to add functionality. It is fast, it is light and it stays out of the way.

[@foxsux6000]

Dell actually ran their webstore using webobjects for years, even when Apple took over Next and OS X was launched.

[@1337penguinman]

For the longest time in the computer industry, a running joke was people getting Doom to run on random pieces of hardware. You can thank the Next dev environment for that being possible.

[@quantumfoam42]

Thanks so much for doing this series! I've always been fascinated with the NeXT era.

[@jkdsteve]

Never had a chance to play with a NEXT but right in the door with Mac OSX Rhapsody, good times. Thanks for the 2-parter.,,,lathe machines doing great things in hardware and with great software integration..so far ahead of it's time, still sad the WINTEL boxes took over...and still miss Steve Jobs,

[@soapyfrog]

Nice couple of episodes, thanks. I was lucky enough to use a NeXT cube in the early 90s , porting obj-c code to Windows 3. I've hated Windows ever since :-) nice trip down memory lane.

[@joncarter3761]

Not the biggest fan of Apple products (having to use underpowered eMacs at college in 2004 for a photography a-level certainly didn't help!) but this was genuinely a revolutionary step towards the modern development environment. I just wish modern Apple would be this forward thinking... instead of doing anti-consumer stuff like their third-party repair policies or overpricing hardware which in some cases is last generation (hopefully them going back to in-house processors will stop this trend though).

[@markteague8889]

The similarity between the NextStep user-interface classes and the Microsoft Foundation Classes that accompanied Windows 95 is remarkable. One can't help but to imagine that the Microsoft design team for Windows 95 had a NeXT based system at their disposal when architecting the MFC Library of classes and objects.

[@markteague8889]

I suppose it could be argued that, as with evolution of lifeforms within a particular landscape converging on similar solution, that Microsoft simply converged on the same solutions for doing object-oriented development of GUI based applications. But, when many of the objects have the same names, only prefixed with C vs. NS?

[@Zakalwe-01]

Such an interesting story. I still remember Jobs standing over the coffin of MacOS, on stage, and repeatedly saying ‘what’s the Next Step?’ Apple died that day, and Next put on its skin!

[@dangelus_the_watcher]

Fantastic overview of the NeXT system and it's legacy. Very interesting hardware and software. A++

[@antigen4]

correction: tevanian didn't develop mach et.al. as an 'engineer' at carnegie mellon but rather as a grad student. true - he did some behind the scenes 'wrench work' for them because he was so into computers but that wasn't the capacity in which he developed what became nextstep - it was his Ph.D. thesis, man!

[@TT-qg7xz]

Excellent overview, very well done thanks

[@hanniffydinn6019]

This next computer is literally a magical highlight of computers OS. Making UNIX more friendly gave us the www, doom and quake. So really just magical Steve jobs all around. I want one desperately....

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

I have OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach, the successor to NEXTSTEP, running on my 800 MHz Pentium-III PC, with 32-bit colour graphics, SoundBlaster audio, SCSI and 100 Mb networking. Performance is amazing as you'd expect since this OS was originally developed for machine with 25 or 33 MHz processors.

[@rachelwindsor850]

You should do a video on BeOS. It's not hardware related, but it's definitely interesting and it has a nice history.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Rachel I'll add it to the ideas list

[@rachelwindsor850]

You're welcome! Love your videos! :D

[@roberthayden5103]

Very good! As a NeXT fan boy, this is worth a Join.

[@jbmaru]

I still choose the grey theme for Office because of this.

[@spidereyes6290]

"And today, our products go together with almost no screws at all, making it nearly impossible to repair them" :-) The development software reminds me a little bit of Visual Basic. Or maybe it's more Visual Basic reminds me of this...hmmm. An interesting video either way :-)

[@NCommander]

Visual Basic actually was essentially built ontop of COM/OLE. VB objects are OLE Control Extensions which are basically Win32 (or third party) UI components wrapped up in a OOP environment. Unlike NeXTstep, VB works more on an event basis, than sending messages between objects. It's been a *really* long time but I don't believe classic VB even had the concept of classes for user-defined code.

[@d2factotum]

It wouldn't be unreasonable to believe Microsoft got the idea for a visual programming paradigm from NEXT, though, even if they didn't go all the way down the OO rabbit hole. First version of VB came out in 1991, after all, which was a couple of years after the original NeXT computer hit the shelves.

[@Ichinin]

The word is "Worked". VB.NET isn't what VB was, there are callbacks and stuff today in all .NET languages. And it doesn't stop there, C# is basically C++ and VB put together. If you had ever tried making a GUI in MS VC++ 6.0 and have compared that against Visual Basic 6.0 (or even 3.0) - you know. I'd rather put my foot in a blender than design software with a GUI in C++.

[@NCommander]

I've actually managed a not completely crap experience using Qt, but having inherited more than one MFC program, it has caused a rather massive dislike of the C++ language as a whole. VB6, despite it's reputation, was remarkably good for quick "drag and drop" one off apps. I've heard Delphi is close to that. C# isn't quite that "easy/slick" but at least the programming language itself doesn't make me want to shoot myself.

[@KuraIthys]

Ichinin Oh, don't remind me. I spent so much time with 'visual' C++ 6.0. It's GUI builder was an atrocity and basically useless. I quickly moved on to creating GUI elements using raw windows API calls, since the 'visual' tools were more trouble than they were worth... Then again most of the time I was doing game development and ignored windows stuff to the maximum extent possible. Create a window. Hook up basic events like 'quit', maybe keyboard input since using windows api calls for that is easier than DirectInput for simple tasks... Call directX, initialise a DirectDraw surface inside the window... ideally switch to fullscreen mode ... Then try as much as possible to pretend windows doesn't exist. XD

[@Dorelaxen]

Very interesting! That rap, though, is now like my favorite thing ever.

[@Kbrusky15]

I am in no way a Steve Jobs fanboy but after watching this I feel like he had a genuine eye for being able to mass produce the "next" best thing in computer technology to offer to the masses.

[@Kbrusky15]

Also this is the first time I really hear "applications" for the first time with the "next"

[@theceruleandolphin2829]

Actually, Jobs had become so disillusioned after offering the Lisa and the Mac to the business market and meeting only mediocre success with what were actually very good products that for Next he was concentrating solely on the Educational market. Next was never meant for the masses, not the hardware anyway. At that price, it's no wonder.

[@reedfrey8745]

What fascinated me when it came out was that it came with Mathematica, I could only dream.

[@pweddy1]

The hardware is very similar to the Falcon. But Unix and preemptive multitasking were huge in 88. We didn’t get preemptive multitasking til Win95. Did it cost too much? Yes. The failure of every innovative computer company in the 80 & 90 was missing the mass market. I was using Sun Spark Stations that were bought for $60,000 apiece. By the time they hired me the PCs we were using were more powerful than the Suns and getting replacement parts had me searching the internet for used equipment vendors.

I heard there were some issues with sun and the adaption of openstep. Also there's GNUstep which is based on the code of openstep.

[@MaddTheSane]

Not code, but APIs. Apple/Jobs would have raised a big stink if GNUstep somehow got the source code to AppKit/Foundation.

Amazing job, as always!

[@MrKelaher]

I developed on both these and pretty much every other Unix workstation of that decade. Display PostScript was cool but the Sun had that too. Raw power-wise, the RISC and VLIW architecture machines just pissed all over this (as in orders of magnitude faster). "Real" devs where unfussed by the fancy IDE - we all used XEMACs and major modes (plugins) anyway and that worked across all machines. Was a very slick package though, good for prototyping, but not better than a Sun in my estimation - cheap is great but devs are your real expense then and now and Suns monitors, mice, keyboards etc where top notch - you have not lived until you have used a Sun paper white portrait display with two 21" trinitron pro color displays as "wing mirrors". You needed to deploy to "big iron" servers anyway for web work and Sun had relatively cheap "mini" machines for end user "client server" use. Also Java was uber optimised on Sun as time passed. Thus lack of success for NeXT. Good to see it live on in Macs, though I utterly dispute the "first OO dev environment" idea - that is plain incorrect marketing hype from Jobs - Xerox star/alto was the first and sold in about the same numbers (10k overall) - never mind a couple of generations after that and was I was DEFINITELY exclusively doing OO development, with very good tool chains, well before this. Nice package, but "meh" from devs.

[@justice4g]

I wouldn't have a Mac if it weren't for NeXT -> OSX, when you started with Amiga OS and then BeOS, Windows just didn't cut it.

[@AndreasToth]

As a software engineer, hearing a widget/component-based development environment called an object-oriented language showed lack of understanding of what an object-oriented language actually is. An object-oriented language does NOT refer to any possible visual components that may be included with the language as part of an integrated development environment (IDE) but the language itself. As it happens, the actual language employed by the demonstrated IDE is in fact an object-oriented language, namely Objective-C. However, to mislead the public that the visual components are what constitutes an object-oriented programming language is simply WRONG.

[@ElectricNikkiGames]

Very good little series

[@fortnitegod2647]

I like the next I hate the mouse. Overall a great review the next was the system of the future. A great computer with Unix OS what's not to like. Thank you Neil for this series.😁Kim😁

[@RMCRetro]

It's not so bad but certainly not ergonomic. Better than the vax and imac pucks as it has a little more length to rest your hand on

[@KuraIthys]

What's not to like? Unix. XD Seriously though of all possible early operating systems to become the 'standard', why that one? Unix is to high end operating systems of the 70's and 80's what DOS is to Unix. ... Unreliable trash. Yet here we are, everything else died out and only the trash remains. XD

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Only Unix -> BSD -> NextStep -> OSX and Windows NT are still around. Oh and of course the license free alternative to Unix: Linux!

[@cms1138]

Really enjoyed this. Thank you!

[@RMCRetro]

You're welcome and thanks for watching

[@mikethemaniacal]

8:45 I've seen hypertext on the web throughout my whole life, but dang, hypertext actually looks nice and coherent, like it belongs there. idk, i see why it was such a thing at the time.

[@kron520]

@ 21:09 I had the pleasure of supporting one of those abominations. I wish I'd held onto it; it would be worth a heap of money on ebay now.

[@RMCRetro]

There's one on ebay now for £1600

[@kron520]

If only this community of tech scavengers was accessible in those days... So much stuff - binned!

[@drhoads08]

I really enjoyed this video. Thanks!

[@localtechnique]

Interesting concept shot of Taligent @ 22:41. I'd never seen any visual trace of this until now. The striking similarity to BeOS has me wondering who copied who.

[@Decat50]

Thanks you for this video. Now I know the origins of Mac OSX.

[@richardkoerper1630]

Thanks for this, always love NeXT

[@SergiuszRoszczyk]

Is there a multiple I like this video button anywhere? Great job!!

[@SudosFTW]

Damnit. I just got the damned Power Shift video OUT of my head. and now you just brought it riiiiight back in.

[@RMCRetro]

"The 700 series is what you need" #trumpets 👍

[@SudosFTW]

"PA-RISC has set the pace...WOOOOOOAH HEWWWWLET PACKARD NOW LEADS THE RAAYAAAAACE" doh-da-da-da-doh-da. if I ever get my hands on a clean VHS copy of the promo tape you'll be the first to know. 👍

[@VSigma725]

I sure do like myself some 90s Unices! IRIX is quite the smooth operator as well, though not as ambitious as NEXTSTEP. Haven't tried out Solaris, HP UX, or Tru64 UNIX yet.

[@numbers9to0]

No fans on anything (except the power supply), only heatsinks. Good old time.

[@jamesfmackenzie]

Great video! Didn’t realise how many iOS dev concepts came from NextStep

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks James

[@Cooe.]

iOS is literally a direct descendant through OSX, so when you think about it, it's really not that strange.

[@maciejkornatowski3026]

@@Cooe. Not only NeXTStep is iOS ancestor (everything that is Apple in fact), iOS itself was developed under no other than Avie Tevanian.

[@philrod1]

Anyone else notice how little Finder has changed since those early days as File Viewer?

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

Yep. And Finder is still lacking certain things which Windows Explorer has, and Windows Explorer is still lacking certain things Finder has... Super annoying switching between them, always missing features...

[@MaddTheSane]

Finder was more based around the Classic Finder than NeXT’s file manager. Early versions were even written mostly to use Carbon. This changed when Apple moved to 64-bit in 10.6.

[@UnforeseenConsequences586]

This is the path that system's should have continued on, but alas it lost out to "right now" and "where's my money". Just think, if we all got back on this path to take the time to build together and make software enjoyable and solid, instead of what the demands have been made from society of today, sure it will give you what you want, not exactly what you needed so you end up still empty inside, but you got it right now....

[@RMCRetro]

I agree but are those demands made from society, or are they demands made by businesses that OS's serve a secondary purpose to direct us to cloud services and walled app stores etc?

[@UnforeseenConsequences586]

RetroManCave oh clever observation, I was blinded by the fact of how quickly the majority of the people took to that idea of software without much of a fight or even questioned the purpose, even though it didn't take much to see it was only beneficial to the conglomerates..... sigh. Thankfully the light hasn't burnt out, Your example and many others still have the passion and love for tech with a purpose and respect of the creators that worked so hard before it was taken from them.

[@higgins007]

Looks absolutely wonderful for the time. Pity about the price. But you can really see the genes laid down for the subsequent success of Macs. Great vid.

[@vix_in_japan]

Fantastic stuff as always, heartened to see the poor Next struggling with the Doom frame rate compared to how well it used to run on my Amiga 1200 with a 68040 40MHz :) I think Commodore were seriously looking at PA RISC for future Amiga hardware before their bankruptcy, I believe they were making more overtures to Microsoft and their new fangled Windows NT I seem to recall but I wonder could they have taken a look at OpenStep on PA RISC and built the new Amigas from that....Curious thought! Still Mac OS X is fab to use so win win :)

[@pauledwards2817]

I remember at the time that HP were supposed to have licenced so technologies from Commodore and wonder what an earth it could be. I have a HP 9000/712 running Nextstep and you can see a HAM8 type display of 24 bit images in all the glory. I must confess I do know little more than that as the rest of the GUI elements are free of any fringing. It is hard to capture with a screen from the OS itself as it is still represented internally as a full 24bit images.

[@drdrumbeat3010]

Absolutely fascinating :)

[@RonJohn63]

8:02 VAX NOTES FTW!!

[@Zyfiels]

I'm almost a year late to seeing this video. But this was really fun and educational!

[@RMCRetro]

Retro content is never consumed too late 👍 thanks for watching

[@stevojohn]

Coding for COM on Windows in C++ was an absolute nightmare.

[@markteague8889]

Was the NeXTStep / 486 episode ever made? As I understand it, one needed an EISA based system board to run NeXTStep / 486 in color.

[@RMCRetro]

Here you go! kzbin.info/www/bejne/iKuVn4OAfN1nh8k

[@belstar1128]

They seriously had a nextstep 90s rap advert haha.

[@leocomerford]

That's nothing. You should see some of the pep videos that Ballmer did for internal consumption at MS.

[@niamaru2]

id love it if you could go into more details describing the stuff that was started on next but became mainstream else where ( like your doom example)

[@seanstar2578]

I just realized, I've been watching your videos for a while now and never subscribed O.o, fixed that now, keep up the good work!

[@RMCRetro]

Well welcome to The Cave sir! And thank you

[@atomicorang]

I don’t have much to add but it’s very cool.

Lovely to hear Jobs. If only he still were young creating stuff. I have no idea how involved he was with that and whatever Wozniak was involved with Next too.

[@cjmillsnun]

Woz had nothing to do with NeXT.

[@bustarock666]

Very good video. Thanks

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Nothing like an old computer to brighten your day 😀

[@wclifton968gameplaystutorials]

you should do a video on BeOS and the BeBox which is similar to the NeXT workstation in that it ran on the IBM PPC Architecture and was object oriented I think.... BeSoftware were going to be purchased by apple but the CEO was asking too much cash for the company so NeXT was a better option for them. today NeXT Step and OpenStep is macOSX and BeOS is HaikuOS an Open-source version only based on Unix and not Linux which is a common misconception.

[@MaddTheSane]

wclifton968 fun fact: NeXT was thinking about migrating to PowerPCs, but they abandoned their hardware division before they could do that. The first time NeXT software ran on a PPC was in Apple’s Rhapsody project.

[@wclifton968gameplaystutorials]

thats cool.

[@i3utm]

NeXTSTEP (Non-FOSS) > OPENSTEP (Semi-FOSS) > GnuSTEP (FOSS) > Raspberry Pi (Arm-only) < SPARC (Arm-inclusive) < NeXT Station (Non-Arm) My Gnu Arm wins!

[@cromulence]

It is BONKERS just how much of this looks the same in macOS today.