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All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

nytimes.com

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Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#71

Post by Bud »

spitfire wrote: post #10

The most interesting part of that article was that they produce prototype boards on the same assembly line as production. No waiting for boards to come in. If they want a board made simply queue it and it's done. They were agile before it was cool to be agile. EDIT: Also, I had a NeXT Cube and NeXT Turbostation with laser printer. They were fantastic. We've barely budged the needle since then.

Completely agree with this. I also had a Cube, and then a NeXTStation Turbo Color (which I still own), and while Mac OS X has certainly evolved, basically all the important things we have today, and the elegance of design, were already present in NeXTStep 3.x. If I were required by law to stop using OS X tomorrow, I'd go back to NeXTStep.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#72

Post by philwelch »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #51
wheels wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hardware was a resounding flop and building a state-of-the-art production facility for something for which there was no demand is in retrospect clearly a mistake. Also, given that NeXT was bought for about 15% of Apple's market cap (after laying off most of their employees), it's disingenuous to imply that Apple == NeXT. What saved Apple was the iPod, not OS X and Cocoa.

NeXT, effectively, acquired Apple for negative $429 million (and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock): As everyone knows by now, what began as an Apple purchase of NeXT has been turned inside out and become a NeXT takeover. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/03/2596 edit: I want to add a couple points to my followup. 1. NeXT's hardware was a resounding flop. Their state-of-the-art factory turned out to be for…

The only highly visible and critical Apple employee I can identify who pre-dated Steve's return to Apple is Jony Ive.

Fred Anderson, the CFO under Amelio, was kept on until the backdating scandal. He played a key role in saving Apple--they were almost cash broke when Amelio took over, and Anderson arranged a key bond issue to keep the company afloat.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#74

Post by sambeau »

philwelch wrote: post #72
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NeXT, effectively, acquired Apple for negative $429 million (and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock): As everyone knows by now, what began as an Apple purchase of NeXT has been turned inside out and become a NeXT takeover. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/03/2596 edit: I want to add a couple points to my followup. 1. NeXT's hardware was a resounding flop. Their state-of-the-art factory turned out to be for…

The only highly visible and critical Apple employee I can identify who pre-dated Steve's return to Apple is Jony Ive. Fred Anderson, the CFO under Amelio, was kept on until the backdating scandal. He played a key role in saving Apple--they were almost cash broke when Amelio took over, and Anderson arranged a key bond issue to keep the company afloat.

And Ive was a mostly invisible, disenfranchised employee then.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#75

Post by acg »

patrickgzill wrote: post #54

I used to sell NeXT software and hardware when working for a company called OpenSource (they actually owned the opensource.com domain name before RedHat got it). At that time "open" meant interopable rather than the current "open source software" meaning. For instance, the DBkit and EOF database software could talk to Sybase or Oracle or any other database for which there was a driver. As a result we used NeXTstation…

My understanding is the use of Open was used before this by Symbolics and possibly other lisp machine manufactuers. I'd argue too that their systems were more open, where the user could read the system software and patch it in while it was running.

The foundations of the open source movement too stem from these communities (the GPL) not from NeXt. It would appear to me, like other Unix manufacturers, NeXt claimed openness when mostly it was marketing-speak for "based on Unix".

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#76

Post by RexRollman »

Being what I call a "computer hobbyist", I have used quite a few operating systems over the years, and one of my all time favorites is Nextstep (along with BeOS). In fact, I still prefer the overall look of Nextstep over Mac OS X, even now, many years later.

Back in 1996, I bought a used Nextstation from a company called Spherical Solutions, run by a man named Sam Goldberger (IIRC). I loved that computer, but sadly, it was killed by a good old Florida lightening strike in 1998.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#77

Post by RexRollman »

ary wrote: post #13

The best I could find on the fate of this factory was from Wikipedia [1]. "NeXT withdrew from the hardware business in 1993 and the company was renamed NeXT Software Inc; subsequently 300 of the 540 staff employees were laid off. NeXT negotiated to sell the hardware business including the Fremont factory to Canon. Canon later pulled out of the deal. Work on the PowerPC machines was stopped along with all hardware pro…

What's sad was how expensive Openstep was once Next was solely a software company. I had a Nextstation and decided I wanted a copy of OpenStep 4 for my PC. Next was asking for something like 800 dollars for a copy.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#78

Post by atomicdog »

bane wrote: post #63
sehugg wrote: post #49

I almost forgot how DOOM, although primarily a DOS game, was created on NeXT systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_of_Doom#Building_the_gam...

If I recall correctly, id built much of the software on NeXT systems for as long as it was reasonably possible. I have a feeling Carmack loves his current work on iOS.

TIL Carmack's been using Objective C since the Doom days.

Re: All NeXT Inc.'s Plant Lacks Is Orders (1990)

#80

Post by zppx »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #51
wheels wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hardware was a resounding flop and building a state-of-the-art production facility for something for which there was no demand is in retrospect clearly a mistake. Also, given that NeXT was bought for about 15% of Apple's market cap (after laying off most of their employees), it's disingenuous to imply that Apple == NeXT. What saved Apple was the iPod, not OS X and Cocoa.

NeXT, effectively, acquired Apple for negative $429 million (and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock): As everyone knows by now, what began as an Apple purchase of NeXT has been turned inside out and become a NeXT takeover. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/03/2596 edit: I want to add a couple points to my followup. 1. NeXT's hardware was a resounding flop. Their state-of-the-art factory turned out to be for…

Takeover for me means change of hands of ownership and power of decision in the company, and whatever your technical or managerial arguments are I think the resulting company was owned by Apple's stockholders, Steve Jobs probably among then after the acquisition, not by NeXT investors.
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