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NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

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Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#41

Post by milcron »

MrTonyD wrote: post #31
mrbill wrote: post #18

UnixWorld asked on it's April 1993 cover: "Does Steve Jobs have a future in software?" https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/29870210 One of my prized possessions is my NeXT Cube[1], finally acquired in 2014. I'd wanted one ever since I saw the "Actual Size" marketing brochure that came out in '89 or '90. I owned a series of slabs (mono, color, turbo color) throughout the years, but never managed to get my hands on a…

One time when I worked at NeXT I accidentally kicked my cube with my tennis shoe - it was under my desk. Sparks flew. I told the fellow sitting in the next office what had happened - and he wanted to see it too. We both laughed as we watched sparks flying. Before long there was a crowd around my desk - maybe six people - incredulous that it was so easy to create fireworks. Well, what we didn't know was that Steve was…

IIRC the cases were made out of magnesium. There are videos of lighting them aflame on youtube.

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#42

Post by milcron »

ci5er wrote: post #39
lngnmn wrote: post #2

Like Symbolics, it was way ahead of its time.

Aren't Lisp machines always ahead of their time? What killed them? The advances in COTS microprocessors that also killed the minicomputer?

Yep... Lisp machines were thoroughly in the "mini"computer (cabinet-sized) category and completely missed out on the microcomputer revolution. IBM PCs were cheaper and got the job done. To an extent.

The AI winter didn't help Lisp's popularity.

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#43

Post by switchbak »

Taniwha wrote: post #22
bitwize wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Apple was faffing about with Taligent and Copland, Microsoft shipped something that provided preemptive multitasking and memory isolation for 32-bit apps. Windows 95 was a collection of hacks that never should've worked but it put Apple behind the 8 ball to bring its OS tech into the present.

Apple also shipped A/UX which did all that

They also shipped the Lisa prior to that, which also had protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. This died for other reasons however (too expensive, upstaged by the mac, etc).

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#44

Post by bdrool »

buserror wrote: post #11
stcredzero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System 9 still lacked preemptive multitasking, due to a pragmatic decision from the very beginning of MacOS. (Perhaps even predating the Mac?) That alone would be enough to say that it was showing its age. As someone who was using System 9 at the time, I would say that this is indeed what knowledgeable users were thinking.

It's not entirely true. Copland microkernel was in (hidden) in System 8.5 onward, and provided preemptive multitasking, file mapping, timers etc. It's just that the only real 'task' on it was the old cooperative OS. They had made a LOT of work on that, and the driver model by the time System 9 arrived. What really failed on Copland was the 'userland' equivalent. At the time, Apple had gone into a completely bizarre w…

Slight correction: it was called the "nanokernel".

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#45

Post by calcsam »

OSX is one of Steve Jobs' least-discussed successes.

The original Mac, Pixar, the iPod, the iPhone are all talked about -- but without OSX as a Unix-based OS, application-development on Macs, and adoption of Macs in the '00s would have been much slower and more sparse.

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#46

Post by ci5er »

milcron wrote: post #42
ci5er wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Lisp machines always ahead of their time? What killed them? The advances in COTS microprocessors that also killed the minicomputer?

Yep... Lisp machines were thoroughly in the "mini"computer (cabinet-sized) category and completely missed out on the microcomputer revolution. IBM PCs were cheaper and got the job done. To an extent. The AI winter didn't help Lisp's popularity.

I only played with one on a VMEBus on a Sun, so I wasn't aware of their stand-alone form factor (i.e. I was guessing)

> The AI winter didn't help Lisp's popularity.

Really? I wouldn't have thought a symbolic machine company would have been noticeably affected by the Minsky-triggered AI winter. Or are you talking about the post Japanese Fifth Generation project slow down? The MCC project in Austin Texas (and Doug Lenat's Cyc) took some hits from that one...

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#47

Post by kls »

wilsynet wrote: post #15
zeveb wrote: post #6

The article in general is pretty good, but this is off: > The Macintosh’s operating system was showing its age, especially compared to Microsoft’s Windows 95. I don't think that there was ever a point where Systems 7, 8 or 9 were worse than Windows 95.

> I don't think that there was ever a point where Systems 7, 8 or 9 were worse than Windows 95. Systems 7, 8 and 9 had better font handling, prettier icons, a more comprehensive GUI experience (eg. drag and drop worked everywhere), and a richer desktop publishing ecosystem. But with respect to multitasking, 32-bit application support, protected mode, and networking, including support for, you know, the Internet -- Wi…

Agreed, watching a Photoshop filter lock up an entire machine was painful in those days. Not to mention all of the other random beach balls one would get.

I actually came over to the Mac (for my home machine) for a little while after the writing was on the wall for the Amiga and it felt like a painful step backwards. At work we had been running NeXt boxes for a while, which made it's deficiencies all the more apparent.

I was not a big fan of Win95 but it would be a far stretch to argue that System 7/8/9 where anywhere near it in terms of actual use without regular crashing, which plagued MacOS at the time. Everyone was familiar with the bomb icon back then.

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#49

Post by flukus »

compuguy wrote: post #34
mrbill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by a long shot! Put in there by the friend who threw together a working system for me from the ones he had lying around. A lot of those original sub-gigabyte drives in the slabs eventually went out with bad bearings (oh my the screeching sounds...) We had a few Turbo Color slabs at an ISP that I worked for in the late 90s that had been acquired from a surplus place; they had "PROPERTY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGE…

I still don't understand why they strip memory from machines from a classified setting. Once powered off, the data is only recoverable for a short time.

Just in case? If a technique was developed to get information off it tomorrow it would take months/years for department policy to catch up.

It could also be a hold over from when memory wasn't so volatile.

Re: NeXT: Steve Jobs’ Dot.com IPO That Never Happened

#50

Post by avn2109 »

compuguy wrote: post #34
mrbill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by a long shot! Put in there by the friend who threw together a working system for me from the ones he had lying around. A lot of those original sub-gigabyte drives in the slabs eventually went out with bad bearings (oh my the screeching sounds...) We had a few Turbo Color slabs at an ISP that I worked for in the late 90s that had been acquired from a surplus place; they had "PROPERTY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGE…

I still don't understand why they strip memory from machines from a classified setting. Once powered off, the data is only recoverable for a short time.

Actually this might be evidence in favor of the claim that the NSA has fancy methods for RAM data recovery.
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