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20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

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Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#161

Post by jcims »

rootbear wrote: post #25

I was working at Pixar at the time and a couple of us went out to lunch when the news broke to figure out What It All Meant. We passed Steve's office on the way out and one of our party, who had worked with him since early Apple days, congratulated him. The big question was whether they would keep the Unix plumbing visible and useful, or would it be buried under some API layer of no use to us Unix graybeards. Fortuna…

Didn't Steve have an email that was in your mailbox by default when you got a new account on a NeXT machine? It had some embedded images and an audio file of him talking.

Anyway, I sent whoever it was, pretty sure Steve, an email with read receipt enabled and he bitched me out for invading his privacy. This was ~93 or so.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#162

Post by brians »

threeseed wrote: post #118
lemoncucumber wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that Palm's technology was designed for mobile and NeXT's wasn't turned out to be a huge advantage in the long run. If Apple had planned to build the iPhone in 1996, they probably would have bought Palm and ended up with something a far cry short of the iPhone as we know it, for obvious reasons. Palm's OS was designed for what mobile hardware was capable of in the 90s, whereas NeXT's OS was designed…

Owners of the Treo would disagree with you there. Palm OS wasn't even suitable for 90s mobile hardware. It was a buggy mess.

"Scheduled get failed."

Ten years into the iPhone age and I still can see the Treo IMAP client error as plain as day.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#163

Post by icedchai »

brians wrote: post #160
beautifulfreak wrote: post #155

In the early 90s, I remember reading in NeXTWorld Magazine many articles about the speed of development under NeXTStep. Ten times faster, according to John Carmack, who was creating Doom. Every developer agreed. Each issue showcased apps with surprising and elegant capabilities, really new features available nowhere else. The proposition was that NeXT Cubes were really worth the price, that they enabled magical solut…

So where's the $15k super machine for today? I'd absolutely look to pay that for something with a similar advantage over a MacBook Pro.

Most of the advantage was the software. NeXT gave up on hardware by 94 or so. Oh, and then the web happened, setting us back 20+ years in terms of application development productivity.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#164

Post by flomo »

wineisfine wrote: post #56
dglancy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS (and older OSX releases) are UNIX (see http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm for certifications). Linux is not UNIX (its not certified - not many are - see http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/index.html ) and could best be described as POSIX like.

Thanks for the explanation. I thought Unix and Linux had something to do with eachother, but looking at the downvotes, I was wrong :D

UNIX is an open standard with a certification program, and Linux certainly tries to follow the standard.

The only real reason that a Linux distribution hasn't been UNIX-certified is because RedHat and IBM found there was very little marketing value in calling it UNIX, that is, Linux is a stronger brand.

And I suspect the only reason MacOS is UNIX-certified is because they advertised it as "UNIX" and were sued by The Open Group, who owns the trademark. [1]

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-in-court-dispute-over-unix/

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#165

Post by flomo »

scholia wrote: post #148
eschaton wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed. Microsoft applications like Multiplan were available for a variety of platforms, running CP/M and a variety of other operating systems. You could get Multiplan for systems as small as the TI-99/4 and as large as Xenix!

> Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed. Not actually true. DOS was already done when Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi from Xerox Parc to start its application division in 1981. Multiplan and Word were the first results, released in 1983, by which time it was obvious that Lotus 1-2-3 was going to win. Simonyi had big ideas about "metaprogramming" and using what was basically a VM to make applications port…

Supposedly, Microsoft Office used a bytecode language for a long time afterward, at least into the 1990s. Old time Mac users probably remember MS Office 4.2, which was an identical clone of the Windows version and ran like molasses.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#167

Post by PacketPaul »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #21

I was applying for jobs back in 1997, and during that time they had a huge career fair called the Brass Ring fair. Employers from around Silicon Valley would have booths and hire people on the spot. I distinctly remember Apple's booth being completely barren, they were practically dead to most engineers. How the tables have turned since then. The big question is, Apple's path appears to be following the path after St…

It will. No company remains dominant forever.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#168

Post by mypalmike »

jahewson wrote: post #107
Apocryphon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an amazing factoid. "NS" standing for NeXTSTEP would then be a popular misconception, then. It also introduces an interesting hypothetical of what if Sun ended up adopting OpenStep, if Java was not developed in time or fell through or whatever.

Actually it's just a fact! A factoid is something which sounds like a fact but is actually false.

I always thought a factoid was a tiny fact.

Merriam Webster actually lists both meanings (small fact and non-fact). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#169

Post by PacketPaul »

njharman wrote: post #76
sbov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I start to think like this, I remind myself that it's about as useless as thinking "if only I bet it all on 00" at the roulette table. Crystal balls that see the future are certainly in short supply. But if I had one there's a lot better ways to make money than using it to buy 10 shares of Apple 20 years ago.

That's an utterly ridiculous comparison. Companies / stock prices are not a normal, random distribution like roulette results. There are masses of information available on companies / stock market. Assuming roulette wheel is fair, there is none other than 1/32 chance known.

Actually a lot of people believe they are a random distribution. There is a great book "A Random Walk Down Wallstreet" which explains it.

The basic idea is the market is efficient (the Efficient Market Theory) and all information about the stock is alreay priced into the stock. Picking a stock to beat the market average is basically a random chance.

Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

#170

Post by mypalmike »

Someone wrote: post #68
FreeFull wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Apple has never used Linux for anything in any capacity. OSX's kernel is XNU, and it's a hybrid of BSD code and Mach.

Not never , but it is close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux : ”MkLinux started as a project sponsored by Apple Computer and OSF Research Institute, to get "Linux on Mach" ported to the Macintosh computer and for Apple to explore alternative kernel technologies on the Mac platform. At the time, there was no officially sponsored PowerPC port of Linux, and none specifically for Macintosh hardware”

I actually ran this OS for a little while. I wonder if I still have the CDROMs...
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