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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

#91

Post by bluejekyll »

calcsam wrote: post #45

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.

Technically it was a Mach based OS, with a POSIX compatibility layer from BSD.

The distinction is important IMO, because I beleave part of the ease of them supporting multiple platforms so easily is because it was all built around a microkernel.

Now Apple has more of a hybrid with XNU, but many of the core concepts of Mach are still there.

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

#92

Post by WillyOnWheels »

KirinDave wrote: post #26

My father was a lead in hardware engineering and manufacturing at NeXT. I have tons of footage of the amazing assembly technology that they used. I wonder if people would be interested in it. It was heavily top secret at the time, but NeXT built their own custom robotics system (called thor) and had all sorts of amazing in-house manufacturing tech that was incredibly automated. The hardware itself was just beautiful,…

Inform your dad he is moving into the computer history museum.

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

#93

Post by WillyOnWheels »

delinka wrote: post #90
elvinyung wrote: post #62

If you've read the Steve Jobs biography (or biopic), you might recall Guy Kawasaki's accidentally-prescient spoof Apple press release[1] from 1994 about a (at the time) hypothetical Apple-NeXT acquisition. Choice quote: > As a cofounder of Apple and the father of Macintosh, Jobs brings back to Apple the type of visionary leadership that enabled Apple to create three of the four personal computer standards (Apple II,…

"...and Windows)." Was that supposed to be part of the humor of the article?

Yes.

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

#94

Post by rdsnsca »

delinka wrote: post #90
elvinyung wrote: post #62

If you've read the Steve Jobs biography (or biopic), you might recall Guy Kawasaki's accidentally-prescient spoof Apple press release[1] from 1994 about a (at the time) hypothetical Apple-NeXT acquisition. Choice quote: > As a cofounder of Apple and the father of Macintosh, Jobs brings back to Apple the type of visionary leadership that enabled Apple to create three of the four personal computer standards (Apple II,…

"...and Windows)." Was that supposed to be part of the humor of the article?

http://lowendmac.com/1997/red-box-blue-box-yellow-box/

"Red Box, the planned PC Environment for Rhapsody on Intel hardware, never saw the light of day, although today’s Intel-based Macs have virtualization solutions from other vendors which allow them to run Windows or Linux alongside Mac OS X."

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

#95

Post by valuearb »

georgeecollins wrote: post #78
masklinn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water Surely not in a technical sense. OS2/Warp and NeXT already existed and BeOS would be released a few months later able to play multiple videos in real time (playing MP3 on Windows would preclude doing anything else with the machine for a few more years, lest you liked skipping).

Windows 95 was the best mass market OS at that time. Yes OS2/Warp and NeXT existed, but they were not popular. The Mac and Amiga OSs were inferior at that point.

It had the best bones at that point, but it's UI/Fonts/Graphics were still subpar.

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

#96

Post by valuearb »

konradb wrote: post #85
hota_mazi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it came out, Windows 95 blew everything out of the water, including AmigaOS. Which was itself vastly superior to anything else at the time, including the various Mac OS. It took years for Apple to even support preemptive multitasking, they were easily 5 if not 10 years behind (and still kind of are today).

> and still kind of are today What are you referring to here?

Yeah, I run Windows 10 on my Mac, but only under protest. It's really not as good as MacOS.

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

#97

Post by convolvatron »

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.

it occurs to me that the depth of the AI winter was proportional to the excessive investment. by the end I think everyone was sick of the AI group at every lab and university that had end endless stream of DoD funding and never seemed to go anywhere.

and now we know that at least on the NN side, what seemed like another silly toy was just a little more work and a little more hardware away from being demonstrably useful.

so anyways, I'm positing a maximum after which additional funding does active harm.

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

#98

Post by convolvatron »

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.

it occurs to me that the depth of the AI winter was proportional to the excessive investment. by the end I think everyone was sick of the AI group at every lab and university that had end endless stream of DoD funding and never seemed to go anywhere.

and now we know that at least on the NN side, what seemed like another silly toy was just a little more work and a little more hardware away from being demonstrably useful.

so anyways, I'm positing a maximum after which additional funding does active harm.

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

#99

Post by masklinn »

valuearb wrote: post #95
georgeecollins wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95 was the best mass market OS at that time. Yes OS2/Warp and NeXT existed, but they were not popular. The Mac and Amiga OSs were inferior at that point.

It had the best bones at that point, but it's UI/Fonts/Graphics were still subpar.

> It had the best bones at that point

Windows 95? Had the best bones? The underlying system was just terrible, there's a reason why the line would be replaced by NT two releases later.

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

#100

Post by stcredzero »

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…

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.

So not entirely true -- it's "only" true from the standpoint of typical User Experience.

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