NeXTSTEP Release 3: A Demonstration with Steve Jobs

[@jordanhedlund]

Steve shitting on DOS doesn't get old

[@WikiPeoples]

Computers in the 90s were so magical… it’s all ubiquitous now so it’s lost its magic, but man I feel lucky to have lived through those times as a kid.

[@mike.1]

Can't even run aqua interface 😂

[@aboutthiscomputer]

NeXTstep was SO ahead of its time. You see, this demonstration is from the early 90s (NeXT was still a hardware company, as he mentions the NeXT machines), and still the system already had everything other Ones were struggling to have: advanced networking, modern multitasking, memory protection, a solid graphics foundation and very good performance. Microsoft was just starting to ship Windows NT, and Apple still had the old Mac OS with its many quirks and instabilities. The early versions of Mac OS X were basically OpenStep with a more visually appealing UI.

[@kenm2709]

OpenStep seems very similar to mac os 9

[@aboutthiscomputer]

@@kenm2709 on the surface, maybe; deep inside it was so much more advanced. As much as I love the classic Mac OS, by the late 90s it was already falling behind even Windows in its underpinnings. It had the same multitasking as Windows 3.1 (although it was more stable than 98).

[@thegoodguyalwayswins]

The main difference is Steve Jobs. Imagine if he were alive today, how much further ahead in technology we would be

[@petrmiskerik]

Unbelievable. Steve was so special, so visionary. Even with today measurements, still awesome os.....

[@linuxization4205]

all for the price for 6,000 to 8,000 eagles (USD) ( not even counted for inflation )

[@race_]

Both my parents worked at WordPerfect, so seeing Jobs mention it makes me proud.

[@icantollie]

I was a freshman undeclared humanities major when I took a shortcut through the engineering school on the way back to my dorm after a night partying with friends and got lost and ended up in one of the engineering school buildings when I took a wrong turn and stepped into what I would later learn was the UNIX lab which was this cavernous hall with more than fifty NeXTstation Turbo Color workstations running the latest version of NeXTSTEP. I thought I had just time-traveled to the future. I changed majors to computer engineering the next semester lol

[@andrewfierce2703]

Incredible story!

[@asimian8500]

NeXTSTEP truly was ahead of its time. The hardware was beautiful--even to this day. I had a NeXT workstation with the highest specs. I was a NeXTSTEP developer for one of the top financial institutions. I had a lot of experience developing enterprise software with C, C++, and Sybase. However, developing software in Objective-C was so much easier than for Windows or Sun Solaris. My Windows and Sun Solaris workstations just sat in my cubicle. As many of you know, NeXTSTEP was acquired by Apple and became MacOS.

[@aminesheridi995]

Amiga 1000 could do all this stuff in 1985 with less cost not like NeXTstation US$4,995 , NeXTcube US$7,995 1985 launch kzbin.info/www/bejne/pWTbYWOGl9hlgZo&pp=ygUNYW1pZ2EgbGF1bmNoIA%3D%3D

[@vibecity5381]

This is not true, my first introduction to MacOS was the lovely 7.5 (Steve was not CEO) and NeXT was acquired almost ten years later

[@unpeople]

@@vibecity5381 You're confusing macOS with Mac OS. System 7.5 was Mac OS, which was followed by Mac OS 8 and 9. Then Apple bought NeXT, and NeXTstep became Mac OS X. Mac OS X then became just OS X, and then macOS, which it is now.

[@karlimo4034]

Yes, Nextstep doesn't look like anything MacOS.

[@VideoArchiveGuy]

@@karlimo4034 NeXTSTEP was the basis for what became MacOS X, not the original monolithic System 9 and earlier.

[@pdjhh]

He makes it look like the future even now.

[@fawkewe]

I like how different this is compared to apple Keynotes. This is more akin to a KZbin OS review channel. Steve literally seems like just a normal guy using the OS instead of a hypeman. Gotta say i like both approaches.

[@vogonp4287]

It is amazing how much of modern Mac Os is still NextStep.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

Isn't modern "MacOS" pretty much all built on Next step?

[@vogonp4287]

@@WhatALoadOfTosca Most of it. There are a lot of new components built upon it though.

[@icantollie]

To this day all the foundation classes in macOS’s core frameworks begin with “NS” prefixes…guess what “NS” stands for lol

[@TheSimoc]

@@WhatALoadOfTosca Yes, just spoiled with tonnes of ugly, frivolous, unprofessionally developed bloat.

[@Cenot4ph]

seems thats where all the innovation ended, most Linux desktops are more capable than Macs these days

[@iAPX432]

This was 3 decades ago, but seems so actual except for the presentation of the UI! I could use that for my work... And Steve Jobs was an incredible presenter, one of the best ever.

[@raf.nogueira]

NeXTSTEP was a really advanced operating system for its time, that was incredbile

[@ProBloggerWorld]

What I really admire and what impresses me is the breadth and detail of Jobs' product knowledge - besides business acumen. Ask any regular tech company C-level dude, and he/she gives you a pass on any specifics of a product beyond that it is, of course, "awesome" and "will revolutionize the world at least." This is the standard Jobs set in here and considered normal. As a product lead, this is your baseline. Imagine that. Working with such a boss who knows every detail is of a product both demanding and rewarding.

[@harambetidepod1451]

90s computer world was magical

[@jamestheredd]

As somebody who makes videos daily, I can say that Steve's ability to speak and present on camera was unmatched.

[@potatosalad5355]

Hey Steve Jobs when hin was CEO of Aplle put FIVE MILLIONS DOLLARS IN THAT TIME on one a small and unknow company call ADOBE...Like they say " the rest is history..."

[@keaton718]

He speaks fast, yet you can understand it all as if he were speaking slow. And his cadence is like he’s entertaining a child, which we all learned later is the key to succeeding on KZbin. He really intuitively understands people very well, he understands how people listen, how they think, how they will use future technology.

[@TheSteveSteele]

Steve loved the technology himself like a kid. It was obvious that all of this excited him. He also knew his company’s technology really well because he spent so much time using it. And that’s what you can’t manufacture in a CEO.

[@willemvdk4886]

Note how he uses the word "app" extensively. Back then, nobody did this (yet). The PC world used programs, software or applications. Not "apps". Love it. We all talk about apps these days.

[@linuxization4205]

calling applications or programs "apps" seems like calling them simple

[@vborovikov]

he used the term application as an email attachment

[@DirectorDanielMason]

Next was like the ultimate Apple secretive skunkworks team, with total control given to Steve. It would not have flourished and been given time to be developed at Apple- but Steve in the wilderness, burning away his fortune (alongside Pixar), was the perfect environment for incentive to innovate and test out the future. He had such intrinsic desire to show the industry he could still out-innovate all others, even Apple. And in the end Apple bought it (and its brain trust), and it has been the the foundation of the Mac OS all the way until recent re-writes have diverged somewhat- and the Mac OS was the eventual original foundation of iOS, etc…. It could all be traced back to the free-reign- and eventual pressure to ship and compete…. Much of that origin is evident in this video here…

[@RWDY]

This is great and displays workflows that to this day people outside of IT/geek circles don’t know how to use

[@halfsourlizard9319]

Geeks are running Vim, not doing all this GUI crap.

[@dennisaleander5175]

@@halfsourlizard9319I bet you use Mac or Windows 11 at home.

[@its0xFUL]

@@halfsourlizard9319 omg shut up already

[@technologic21]

Doom was made using NeXT. You can also see a bit of NeXT unit hardware design in the Playstation 2.

[@user-cf7de1ch4n]

my first computer was a 386DX purchased back in '94 and was running MSDOS. If someone would had shown me that such a computer existed back then, I would had thought that it came from the future!

[@martinewski]

Amazing how we still use many of those features today.

[@thomasbates9189]

12:44 "Without the user having to play system integrator." What an articulate statement.

[@dmn1n]

This was groundbreaking for the time.

[@TheMuffinMan01]

it’s still the basics of macOS, really amazing.

[@sosopwsi829Jjw9]

It was basically a personal supercomputer OS then.

[@TheSimoc]

Just wish today's operating systems would be nearly as professionally designed.

[@Naitrio]

@@TheSimoc Same, old UNIX OSes were really cool looking.

[@ryz8]

i like how it’s windy outside. i can imagine that day being sunny yet windy, where it’s nice to be indoors in the AC. makes me want to work in there.

[@serloinz]

i like your thinking :)

[@BenjiFriedman]

Palo Alto

[@drygnfyre]

@@BenjiFriedman NeXT was actually based in nearby Redwood City, that specific office is even visible on Google Maps (I don't know who is there today, though). NeXT was based there for their entire existence. A 1996 documentary that focused partially on NeXT featured that office building briefly.

[@BenjiFriedman]

@@drygnfyre Cool, thanks for the information. I was thinking it was 3475 Deer Creek Road in Palo Alto

[@carstenmaul7220]

This guy was amazing and totally devoted to what he did

[@harveylong5878]

being a snake oil salesman? ego manic hellbent on making everything closed system as to screw over the end user? yep Jobs was great at those

[@fokthewef]

​@@harveylong5878the fanboys here are hilarious. Had IBM and Microsoft not been around the world would have probably never moved at the pace it did with regards to personal computers. Jobs was the Hitler of personal computers.

[@keaton718]

Probably an egomaniac, but the results don’t lie, he had a lot of reasons to feel good about himself. Apple, Pixar, NeXT (which itself became the core of the modern Mac after his exodus from Apple was over). He should never have been an ass to other people, but he deserved to think highly of himself imo.

[@MarcDoughty]

The beautiful thing here was the libraries. Instead of bespoke programs that maybe made use of GDI or Mac Toolbox to draw widgets, NeXT had a rich set of libraries that apps could use, and by using them, become interoperable with each other. Text in a document in Program A could be treated the same as text in a document in Program B, with the libraries offering services to work for and upon them in common ways. That was new to this space at that time.

[@HowieIsaacks]

Watching this Mac users will see a lot of familiar features. All of Apple's operating systems today are based off of NeXSTEP. The NeXT software is what really revived Apple.

[@perseusarkouda]

*BSD users will too

[@DanJanTube]

so much foundational work here, amazing

[@peymanx]

"File Viewer" on the NextStep is the best File manager I've ever seen; I like the Shelf idea 10:27

[@AgrimGupta]

Steve seemed to have this unparalleled clarity of thought to deliver a holistic product that is useful in actual use cases.

[@doomguy1001]

30:46 Steve begins to throw Lotus 123 for MSDOS under the bus for demonstration purposes.

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

31:31 ‘right alongside your good applications’ that’s absolutely savage

[@stivvits1067]

Listened to Steve referring to Macs as something inferior is soo weird

[@Taras-Nabad]

This was the computer people dreamed of owning.

[@archieil]

NeXTSTEP was Amiga with a better hardware and development not trashed by CBM (with a 10 years of actual development of the platform not stagnation). I had it on my Linux for some time in late 90s but without highres display it was kinda masochistic. The cool thing was that you could tear and drop part of menu anywhere on the screen.

[@archieil]

btw. OS/2 was using a lot of objective ideas inside the system. The problem was a long term strategy of development and growing users for such system.

[@linuxization4205]

More accurately it was a powerful Macintosh, I'm calling it that because the Amiga did not have this type of bitmap graphics.

[@megatronskneecap]

Never did I think I'd Hear Steve Jobs saying "Better than a Mac".

[@drygnfyre]

Watch any of his interviews from his days at NeXT, he got in a ton of jabs at Apple/Macintosh. Although he was pretty justified, Apple was shit in the 90s and had no clue what they were doing. NeXT wasn't a huge success but the vision was well established: workstations. Problem was they never got a foothold in the market the way Silicon Graphics did. But Apple in the 90s was just putting out generic computers with an outdated OS that was falling way behind Windows.

[@Taras-Nabad]

The man was a genius.

[@Tom-lh2ki]

2:30 "We have smooth scrolling throughout the system". Technology has evolved so much and redefined what "smooth" means.

[@terrayi]

You should have used computers in 1980s and 1990s to know the different, kid.

[@neurosecure]

Amazing, Wat a visionary leader 😁

[@TechCrazy]

Bill gates was not very impressed with this and called it something like a warmed-up Unix, implying that it was not original. But the fact is neither was MS-DOS as it was developed by Gary Kildall.

[@sosopwsi829Jjw9]

HAH!

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

MS-DOS was developed by Kildall? It wasnt. It was invented by Tim Paterson, and it was original. It didn't use any resources from Kildall. This is based on Unix. Jobs did not invent Unix - he's using open source software and building on it. Modern MacOS is the same.

[@drygnfyre]

@@WhatALoadOfTosca The tech industry is built on borrowing, adapting, sharing, stealing, copying. It's almost impossible to point to any individual and say they "invented" something because they were always inspired by something else. MS-DOS specifically started life as PC-DOS, which itself came from Q-DOS, the one written by Tim Patterson. Patterson in an interview explained he was in turn inspired by CP/M and most of the APIs were modeled after that. (Thus it's true there were no shared resources, but side-by-side, the two look very similar). The GUI is similar. Many people will point to Xerox PARC, but they were in turn inspired by the "mother of all demos" and the work that was being done at Stanford in the 60s. Many other tech titans, not just Steve Jobs, also realized the value in GUI and developed their own takes on the concept around the same time.

[@tjackson1210]

Unix is an excellent base for an operating system

[@peterwindle4453]

When Steve met Jonny, they created magic.

[@peymanx]

Here we are, the NEXT computer!!!

[@TYNEPUNK]

looks excellent, reminds me of AmigaOS.

[@kolanos]

If you were an engineer under Steve Jobs, you knew he was going to use your stuff, so it better be good. This video is proof of that. Sadly today there are product managers who don't know how to use the products they manage.

[@TheMuffinMan01]

33:35 steve makes a dank meme

[@hansvetter8653]

Steve Jobs describes what the Internet with CMS years later will be able to achieve effectively ... Irony of it is the fact that Tim Berners Lee (IT-Admit @ C.E.R.N.) invented the hyperlink as the foundation for his W W.W. ... on a NEXT-cube ... ;-) But he also underestimated the power of standardized protocols like TCP/IP ... which I leveraged already on my Sun-workstation as the quasi standard engineering workstation ...

[@nickfromm5315]

This video wasn’t for next users, next investors, next employees, or next developers. It was for apple executives. This is a job application, and Steve got it.

[@pillblue2156]

This reminds me the first iPhone presentation by him. Like someone commented Siri wouldn’t be the same if he had lived more

[@Lion_McLionhead]

Interesting to see a lot of features we don't have anymore & seemingly ahead of their time but also realize it's all a shot in the dark, might hit a home run for a year but most of it will be thrown away & replaced by a completely different feature set next year, just like so many modern big things.

[@JPALMS]

Amiga should have been at this level by this time - it could have continued on to have been the standard for publishing and entertainment.

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

Next was very much ahead of its time. We ran a publishing company and I would have loved to have jumped into this system for collaboration, etc. just one huge problem and several smaller ones. The biggest, cost!! These things were ungodly expensive. Then, software. Yes, the next apps were integrated, and so were some of the lacuna titles….but the industry as a whole had already decided that windows was where devs were going to spend their time. macOS owned the graphics and design services and those developers didn’t want to re-dev everything for next. A real shame.

[@Hello-pl2qe]

Legend

[@DrDutch]

most mac os apps are still coded with some objects that start with NS

[@MegaDraadloos]

Now i want one...

[@keaton718]

Have to wonder if it ever occurred to Jobs that Apple would have him back and acquire NeXT and their technology. Was it has plan all along, in a million years did he not think it would happen and was happy to do his own thing? He sounds happy here.

[@drygnfyre]

NeXT was not intended as a competitor to Apple, they were aiming for the workstation and enterprise market. He also makes several jabs at Apple/Macintosh throughout this presentation. I don't think he foresaw Apple buying the company (and indeed, NeXT wasn't even the first choice, others such as Be were considered first). I'm sure he was happy to get bought out, though, as NeXT wasn't doing so well at the time of their acquisition. He likely sounds happy because NeXT was HIS company. He was in charge of everything, which is what he had early on in Apple before they went public and had shareholders and what not. Of course, even he would tell you his managerial style is one of the reasons NeXT ran into issues.

[@mathewsiame3006]

Next was so ahead of it's time 😨

[@baseballguy2001]

Interesting that A/UX, a Unix-based operating system from Apple, never really got off the ground and was abandoned a few years after it was built. Today, every Macintosh has a Unix based operating system as well as every iPhone and iPad. Sadly, the design and innovation at Apple and other companies is now incremental small steps instead of huge, giant leaps under Jobs leadership.

[@drygnfyre]

Because that's inevitable. Once you make the "huge, giant leaps," all that's left is incremental improvements. Happens to every industry. The original iPhone was lacking in many areas, it was improved a lot with the 3G, then 4, etc. But then you reached a point where all the low-hanging fruit was addressed, and you move more towards iterative improvements. There are always attempts to create paradigm shifts, but not all of them catch on.

[@robertbodnar8745]

Wow!...

[@from_spb]

the wind outside the window is the wind of change

[@whalesalad]

Remarkable how much of this lives on inside of modern day macOS

[@petersuvara]

Amazing that NeXT was never a profitable company, and Apple was about to die, but combined, well, the rest is history.

[@drygnfyre]

IIRC, Steve refused to outsource production, and wanted his factories to be clean and brightly colored. So it was very expensive to make NeXT hardware, and the market he was aiming for was already crowded. NeXT was going for the workstation/enterprise market, but that was largely dominated by Silicon Graphics at the time. When they tried to turn themselves into more of just another OS vendor, well, Windows dominated the consumer market. So NeXT always had trouble making money, as they just couldn't really find that one niche that let them succeed.

[@agou1980]

When he developed this database app in two minutes time, I wanted to stand up and clap.

[@Fluterra]

We miss you Steve. Apple is not so slowly becoming Microsoft without you.

[@lifeafterdev]

Great quality 👌

[@tambarskelfir]

Technically an advanced OS, the UI and design is stuff of nerd nightmares.

[@dreedee]

some of the stuff here we only saw with google drive and the like... wow

[@jaqian]

Wish I had a Digital Librarian today, looks great

[@krunkle5136]

He really was just introducing the iMac and Mac OSX before its time.

[@manalalo9136]

Steve fue lo mejor que tuvo Apple.

[@navidpey194]

In 1991 I didn’t know what email was

[@Dountman]

This is wild….

[@ukranaut]

Ok, where can I buy this "NeXTSTEP" machine?

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

“One 500 dollar fax modem…” I couldn’t help but laugh. Later to be 25 bucks. We used is fax on our windows system and it did eventually work very well by version 10.0! Hheheh

[@danh5637]

Now powering every iPhone……

[@amonynous9041]

just imagine how'd you react today if Tim Cook sent you an email with huge header stencil font that says "check this out" LOL

[@MrChadLedford]

Like others have said. So before it's time. The precursor to modern MacOS.

[@safetydoge]

OSX/MacOS is literally built off of NeXTstep :)

[@Aragubas]

the first time I've seen steve jobs says that "something is better than the mac" xD

[@MazusChannel]

I love how he keeps dissing apple

[@Arsche]

実機、触ったこと、ある。 ポストスクリプト、おもろかったー

[@jubalbiggs4559]

I just want to know how it's possible that document search was so good on NeXT and it sucks so bad on OSX now...

[@DanielGorski777]

windowmaker !

[@JAYEKAZE]

the birth of the now MacOS. the whole reason why apple merge with NeXT

[@harveylong5878]

Crapple was on the ropes, in desperate need of modernizing its ancient OS. NeXt was in desperate place moneywise. it was cheaper, easier for Crapple to buy NeXt, shuffle NeXtstep around call it a Crapple original innovation

[@AlainSylvestre]

The problem... nobody has it. It was so expensive,,,,

[@ffm3424]

잡스 풍성한거봐라... ㄷㄷ

[@AdrianJarvis-zk7ld]

Still ahead of Windows 11

[@wchaun]

And people say Steve jobs couldn't code

[@guysingerii]

32:56 I thought that was Todd's line.....

[@TheMuffinMan01]

wizzywig… what were you thinking steve! 😅

[@victormejia2983]

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) I know I’m old.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

He was probably thinking "a good thing we stole that idea from Xerox" ;)

[@kommanderkeen]

IPhone operational system :)

[@tanithk5054]

1991.

[@00bikeboy]

Why was Steve so enamoured of cubes?

[@drygnfyre]

There is another product demo you can find from 1988 or so where he explains a cube offers a lot of space for cards and expansion despite taking up a small footprint. But beyond that, I guess he just liked cubes? He also loved rounded rectangles.

[@sporefergieboy10]

Its the OS that made DOOM

[@yamil.343]

He was so accomplished by the time he was 20. I feel like such a lesser form of a human😅

[@LaRoche_]

1:28 😂 if this was a Macintosh ... He was hating hard 🤣

[@Ketofit62]

We still don’t have this technology!

[@imranetic]

We do. macOS.

[@d.b.1176]

Neowww

[@CheeseEnjoyer2007]

Man I wonder what would happen if Apple Went into bankruptcy and Next became the next big thing

[@judewestburner]

The only thing that killed this really was the price. If they had PC pricing they were I'd say about 8-10 years ahead of Windows in particular, but also cost 8-10 times the price.

[@dgusev]

Year 2024, microsoft still not implemented these concepts right, but keeps improving, so they say 😁🤣😂😆

[@MikeLikesChannel]

They think so. Us? Ehhhh.

[@djtomoy]

Can it run ms teams?

[@realdomdom]

Excentric puts it mildly.

[@famousmwofficial8046]

this should have been the dominant os right now