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Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

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Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#21

Post by jorisw »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #4
ktallett wrote: post #3

They are hardly forgotten considering the OS was a key influence of Mac OS X and you can see clear features of it today. It was hugely important in the mid 90's graphics and 3d animation era too. Such a fabulous piece of design, both software and hardware. I would much have prefered a world where Next and Mac OS never combined and we had both, as the Mac O7-9 were also a real treat to use.

NeXT would have died and Mac OS would have been replaced by something . All macOS is is just a different window manager (to borrow a Unix term). Windows and Linux probably be more dominant . macOS is a better system than classic macOS when you realize you still have access to the NeXT internals and even many applications in utilities are really GUIs on top of command line utilities and you can roll back many features…

> and Mac OS would have been replaced by something

The facts are: The only other contender was BeOS, after Talligent flopped and Copland imploded.

But Louis-Gassée overplayed his hand.

Source: all of the (other) Steve Jobs books

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#22

Post by jorisw »

praneetbrar wrote: post #2

One thing that often gets overlooked is how much failure and constraint shape better leadership. It seems like the NeXT years gave Jobs the space to rethink product focus in a way that likely wouldn’t have happened if Apple had kept succeeding uninterrupted.

Such indeed is the gist of the story that Becoming Steve Jobs tells

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#25

Post by ghaff »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #20
hi41 wrote: post #7

Much respect to Steve and the engineers at Apple. However, I hate using a product from Apple that actually causes me physical pain after using it. The magic mouse. I use that for 10 minutes and my palm and wrist hurt badly. Many have experienced the same symptoms and yet Apple hasn’t changed its design. I get that Apple is creative. Do they change their product design based on feedback from actual users in their crea…

The Mighty Mouse (the one with the little trackball on the top) was so much better except for the weekly cleaning required. My last one died a few months ago. I still use the first generation Magic Mouse when I have to, and I hate its sharp edges. I don't know anyone who likes it, they usually say they prefer the trackpad.

It helps that non-Windows trackpads were the first ones I could really use. (Deliberate phraseology; trackpads on Thinkpads running Linux worked pretty well for me too.)

Interestingly, seem to work better on Windows these days as I've discovered inadvertently. Bought a cheap used/surplus Thinkpad to install Linux and discovered it came pre-installed with Windows 11 and it actually works well.

Depends what I'm doing. I'm very happy just using a trackpad day to day but there are some things like photo editing where I prefer a mouse.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#26

Post by ipython »

jazz9k wrote: post #17
yardie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be overly dramatic about that period. Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away from filing bankruptcy. They were still a multi-billion dollar company even then. They just had very bad supply chain management. A bunch of old Macs sitting in warehouses not selling and too many people on payroll without any clear objectives. As Steve put it, "the ship was sinking and Gil (D'Amelio) was wo…

It's funny how many people Jobs had to fire during this period, but is still seen as a good guy to many in the tech community. Not that different from when Musk took over Twitter.

It’s not the same at all. The only equivalence is firing people.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#27

Post by hedgehog0 »

jorisw wrote: post #16
dmazin wrote: post #5

If you want more on this, I recommend Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing by Stross. I’m not sure, but it might be the only extensive book about Next other than this new one. Though it’s essentially a long hit piece. The author really had it out for Jobs. In fact it’s a completely uncharitable book now that I think about it. Hopefully this new book will be a lot less biased.

Another book that focuses on this period is Becoming Steve Jobs

I love “Becoming Steve Jobs” much more than the official biography.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#29

Post by WillAdams »

jorisw wrote: post #18
WillAdams wrote: post #13

Presumably, the book goes into depth about the folks who actually did the work: - Susan Kare and Keith Ohlfs who did the UI design - Caroline Rose (Author of _Inside Macintosh_) who wrote the documentation - Avie Tevanian (the most heavily recruited CS student at that time w/ job offers from Apple, AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft) who wrote the Mach Micro kernel - Brad J. Cox (author of https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho…

Weird to state all these details, leading with 'presumably'

I don't have the book, and I don't have much faith in writers, esp. when writing about NeXT, e.g., David Pogue writing in his column in _MacWorld_ and noting that Steve Jobs used a ThinkPad (correct) running Windows 95 (incorrect) since he couldn't be bothered to check that the ThinkPad model in question (I believe a 760C) was of course on the NeXTstep Intel compatibility list, and so, was of course running NeXTstep --- Lighthouse Design's Presentation.app was used as the model for Apple's Keynote.app

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#30

Post by elzbardico »

jazz9k wrote: post #17
yardie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be overly dramatic about that period. Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away from filing bankruptcy. They were still a multi-billion dollar company even then. They just had very bad supply chain management. A bunch of old Macs sitting in warehouses not selling and too many people on payroll without any clear objectives. As Steve put it, "the ship was sinking and Gil (D'Amelio) was wo…

It's funny how many people Jobs had to fire during this period, but is still seen as a good guy to many in the tech community. Not that different from when Musk took over Twitter.

If Apple went bankrupt, Everyone would be without a job.
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