Year: 2012

NeXT: The Software

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My mini-series on NeXT Computer:

Installment 1: On the Creation of NeXT

Installment 2: NeXT: The Hardware

Installment 3: NeXT: The Software

Installment 4: NeXT: The Apple Purchase

Installment 5: Why Did NeXT Fail?

 

An Introduction to NeXTSTEP

NeXTStep[1] is the operating system built by NeXT to power the company’s line of computer hardware. It is widely regarded to have been ahead of its time, and boasted these features:

  • The Mach microkernel
  • Display PostScript and a windowing engine
  • The Objective-C language and runtime
  • An object-oriented application layer, complete with robust development tools

Compared to Mac OS, NeXTStep looked like the future. It had full-color icons[^2] and modern typography and included technologies like protected memory and multitasking.

NeXT shipped several versions of the operating system, finishing with 3.3 in February 1995, two years after the company stopped producing hardware.

The User Interface

It’s not hard to see that Apple used several concepts from NeXT when building OS X:

NeXTStep’s Dock functioned pretty much the way it does now — it stored shortcuts to often-used applications.

The interface allowed applications to be hidden (but kept running), included smooth scrolling (even with images) and drag and drop functionality. NeXTStep also offered full audio support, including recording audio and saving it as a file, which could then be added to emails, or sent to a network share easily.

Applications

NeXTStep offered applications that had shared core components, like a font manager and a Services menu. This functioned much like Services does now, offering system-wide tools like a Dictionary, text tools and more.

What was magical about this was that every app got these extras, built-in.

This was thanks to the object-orientated nature of NeXT’s tools. Instead of each developer having to build custom controls and resources, they could rely on the tools that came with the OS itself.

Thanks to this, apps running on a NeXT system could do all sorts of new tricks.

Object-linking allowed users to paste one file (such as a graph) in to another (such as a report) in a way that the pasted version would auto-update any time the source file was updated. The user didn’t even have to save the original — it could be live-updated, even across a network.

Networking

NeXTStep users each had a “Home Directory,” thanks to OS’ Unix underpinnings. If on a network, a user could easily navigate to another user’s folder to copy files. Users could even create custom buttons in the file manager to quickly get back to a remote location. Users could connect to file servers running on a PC or Mac just as easily. NeXT worked with Novell to get Netware systems integrated, but, as Steve says in the video below, the company “wrote their own” support for AppleShare.

(I guess Apple wasn’t over Jobs swiping their top guys when he left.)

While it seems dated now, NeXTSep included built-in fax support. Users could send and receive faxes over a networked modem, which would send digital copies of the fax to the correct user, saving paper and time.

Development[^3]

With NeXTStep, NeXT gave developers an all-new way to build applications. Interface Builder included tons of pre-built, standard software controls, all usable with drag-n-drop actions. Apps built with Interface Builder didn’t have to be compiled, as there was no code in play.

(Interface Builder and its counterpart Project Builder lasted until OS X Jaguar, when Xcode was released. Interface Builder has since been absorbed in to Xcode completely.)

The Database Kit gave developers the tools needed to manipulate data in databases from within their apps, easily and quickly.

DOS programs could be run on NeXTStep, thanks to SoftPC. NeXT was quite happy to have the app available, as it meant that the DOS-based enterprise could migrate to NeXT with a minimal amount of pain.

On the graphics end of things, NeXTStep was simply phenomenal. Thanks to Pixar, the NeXT OS shipped with Renderman, giving powerful tools to every user. With NeXT’s powerful hardware, 3D graphics ran smoothly.

So What the Heck is OpenStep?

OpenStep was born out of a partnership between NeXT and Sun Microsystems.[^4] In short, it was a project to build a full API that would bring NeXT’s object model to a system without NeXTStep running as its base OS. In short, it was an extension of the development tools NeXT created for NeXTStep, just on other vendors’ operating systems.

By 1993, OpenStep was successfully running on top of Sun’s Solaris operating system, as long as it was on SPARC-based hardware. The system included NeXT’s PostScript and Objective-C tools, but no NeXT interface.

In 1994, the company announced OPENSTEP,[^5] a newer version that brought updated tools to not only NeXT and Sun systems, but to others as well, including Windows NT. First started here, the prefix NS is still present in Cocoa object and classes.

OPENSTEP (for lack of a better word) absorbed NeXTStep, as the company focused on it (after ceasing to produce hardware) until 1996, when it was bought by Apple. That said, some original support documents can still be found on Apple’s site.

For extra credit, be sure to check out this video, in which OPENSTEP is demoed.

GNUStep

GNUStep is “a free, object-oriented, cross-platform development environment that strives for simplicity and elegance.” The project strives to compatible with the Cocoa frameworks, but be available cross-platform.

The project’s website is very clear that GNUStep is not a clone of NeXTStep. It ships with a few pre-built apps, but no window manager or set theme.

These projects, however, do aim to re-create the NeXT experience on the desktop, using the work of the GNUStep team members:

In Closing, a Video

<

p id=”yui_3_10_1_1_1391817482338_13153″>Here’s Steve Jobs showing off NeXTStep Release 3:

Don’t miss the jabs at Apple.

For more extra credit, there are still some NeXTStep and OPENSTEP files floating around on Apple’s servers you can download. I haven’t played with them much, but they’re now archived safe and sound on my external RAID.

  1. I’ll be using the less common “NeXTStep” in this article, since the mostly-caps version makes my eyes bleed.
    [^2]: If your hardware supported it.
    [^3]: I know very little about programming, so I apologize for the brevity of this section. I know it’s probably the single most important thing about NeXTStep, in hindsight. If you know what you’re talking about, and what to write something up, I’d love to share it here.
    [^4]: Ironically, Sun sold to Oracle in January 2010. Oracle was co-founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, who was one of Steve Jobs’ closest friends.
    [^5]: Yes, it was done in all caps. Why couldn’t have someone just come up with a different name?  ↩

App Recommendation: WorldCard Mobile

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I get handed tons of business cards in my professional life. I meet with vendors, contractors, sub-contractors, corporate representatives and more in a normal work week. They all have cards, and they all seem to want to give me as many as possible.

That’s where WorldCard Mobile comes in. I can take a photo of a business card, and the app will work some OCR magic to put the data into a new contact. Thankfully, it allows editing the data before saving it, in case the app didn’t get everything just right. Once edited, the card is “exported” to the iPhone and — in my case — is sent to iCloud within seconds

In the few weeks I’ve had it, I have not needed to correct the app’s OCR-ified text a single time. It’s that good.

It’s $6.99 on the App Store, and well worth it.

The Price of iPad-Based Textbooks

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Joshua Topolsky:

The company had no announcements to make (and that sentiment didn’t change when I pressed reps for comment), but it will be an interesting question to see answered in the coming months. If Apple wants school districts to buy an iPad for every student, it’s going to take more than just a great presentation. When we spoke to Phil Schiller, he told us that he thinks the numbers work out favorably for school districts if you weigh the costs of textbooks and classroom computers against iBooks content and iPads. “It’s affordable for schools,” was the message.

Apple’s leasing plan will go a long way. Again, Topolsky:

The company did tell us that it works with districts to lease iPads on a four-year schedule — so that will potentially ease the strain on budgets.

This is a big issue, but there are several factors at play not mentioned by Topolsky:

  • iPads are several hundred dollars less than laptops, and many schools already have a MacBook 1–1 program. 1–1 machine are usually leased, so costs may come down for some schools.
  • Apple doesn’t publicly discuss education pricing. While I don’t have any insight here, I’m positive schools aren’t paying retail for iPads if they buy them outright.[1]
  • Often, schools can use grant money for technology upgrades.

I hope that schools can easily get iPads in to the classrooms, but I know it will take time. Obviously, it will occur in more affluent school districts first, which is how these things normally go.[^2]

I am interesting at looking at what point the cost of an iPad (plus a few $15 books) meets the cost of textbooks. But I’ll leave that to someone smarter than me.

  1. Several readers have emailed telling me this is not the case. If Apple keeps the iPad 2 around after the 3 is released, maybe pricing will come down. I do know that educational discounts on MacBooks can be pretty decent, depending on volume.
    [^2]: It’s a damn shame, too. The poorest schools are often where things like this can make the biggest impact.  ↩

‘Discerning Good From Great’

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Shawn Blanc:

They say good is the enemy of great, and I agree. Some ideas, as good as they are, should be left alone so that when a great idea comes along there is a place for it. Discerning the difference between a good idea and a great one takes practice and the support of trusted friends and advisors.

Old Mac of the Month: The PowerMac 8100/100 AV

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Editor’s Note: This month’s post is by Erik Schmidt, who is a software product manager who lives with his wife and two boys in Santa Cruz, California. He can be found on Twitter as @erikschmidt and at his blog, Luxury Bauble.

The PowerMac 8100/100 AV wasn’t the first Mac I used, or the first that I owned. It certainly wasn’t the last. But it stands out as the one computer that truly transformed my life.

The summer of 1995 was a bewildering time for me. Only a year prior I had left the Army, and I was adrift. My work running the daily operations for a university-based nonprofit paid peanuts, but it was the only job I could find. Employers weren’t exactly lining up to pay ex-Infantry officers, and I had no connections. The economy was flat, I was still paying off undergraduate student loans, and I had no idea what sort of career I wanted.

The 8100/100 AV retailed for $4,600 and the 15" Apple Multiscan CRT monitor I bought with it retailed for $500. Because I was working for a university, I was able to purchase the pair for around $4,000. That’s still a lot of money. By any objective measure it was foolish to shell out so much money at such a precarious time in my life.

Using the Macintosh IIvx at the office, I’d already built some rudimentary web pages. I had this notion that I’d be able to use the 8100/100 AV to build websites. Maybe I’d get lucky and someone would pay me to do it.

After unpacking the 8100/100 AV and firing it up, I promptly named it Merlin. Like the Arthurian sorcerer, Merlin made magic. It ran at a blistering 100MHz, which was ludicrously fast at the time. It contained a 2 GB hard drive. How could I possibly fill up a drive that big?

Video. Yeah, I’d fill it with video. Merlin’s built-in video capture card made it easy (if slow) to digitize video from analog sources like my DVD player.

I used Merlin to conduct my first experiments with video, capturing short segments from The Right Stuff and saving them with different compression settings. After a while I realized that without an actual video camera and some sort of video project in mind, Merlin’s A/V multimedia capabilities were wasted on me.

Not that I minded. There were plenty of other tasks for Merlin. The Mac IIvx I’d been using at the office ran Photoshop 3 at a snail’s pace, and I’d actually had to use a Bernoulli 88 as a Photoshop swap disk. Even the most basic Photoshop tasks required the patience otherwise reserved for building ships in a bottle or reasoning with toddlers. The first time I fired up Photoshop on Merlin, it felt like I was cheating. Surely it couldn’t be this easy?

With Merlin, everything was easy. I tried in vain to keep up with all the changes taking place on the Web. I chatted in a few usenet history discussion groups. I became an eWorld regular and a Civilization addict. I played A–10 Attack! poorly, routinely botching takeoffs and landings. But I was crashing with higher polygon counts!

Merlin served as my home office and entertainment center. It was also the springboard for my entry into the world of professional web development. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. I put in many hours after work and on weekends building web pages with BBEdit, Photoshop, and Fetch. I learned enough to get paid to build a couple of sites. Then I got a job partially on the basis of my web skill. Finally, a government agency hired me as its first official webmaster. I’d found a career.

Ultimately my crazy purchase paid off more than I could have imagined. Arguably I could have learned just as much using a Performa or one of the lesser Mac towers, the 6100 and 7100. But the 8100/100 AV gave me room to grow. I used Merlin for a long time.

I had to have its internal battery replaced in 1998. I also upgraded the RAM. This was a time when you practically had to take out line of credit to afford memory upgrades. Finally in 1998 I bought a spiffy new iMac and gave Merlin to my dad as a replacement for the Mac SE/30 he’d been using without a glitch since 1989.

In 2000 Dad received a ruby red iMac DV as a gift, and Merlin found its way back to my house. I was just discovering Linux, so I downloaded MkLinux and installed it on the old beige beast. To my surprise, it worked fine. Admittedly, I didn’t use it for anything truly productive, but I did tinker around with it for a while, getting my feet wet with Linux in the process.

A year or two later during a move I gave Merlin the heave-ho. I did so with a sense of sadness. Merlin was more than a machine; it was an agent of change.

Want to write about an old Mac you love? Get in touch! In your email, please indicate which Mac model you are planning to write about, so I don’t have systems covered more than once.