Following up on, what must be considered the raging success of the 1984 video of the Macintosh launch (several thousand extra visitors that day). Here is now a 30 minute video of Steve Jobs presenting NextStep OS to the world, recorded back in 1992.
I finished The Second Coming of Steve Jobs on audiobook a few months back, and so this NextStep (I’ve given up on that whole capitalization thing they had going) video was pretty cool to see in conjunction with that.
What’s even more interesting, is drawing parallels between NS and OS X. There’s just so many things that have been brought over.
First, and perhaps most obvious, is the dock. Then of course the brilliant services menu, which makes it possible to tie together applications in all kinds of neat ways. The shelf is not a far cry from the Finder’s shelf either. And finally there’s how both NS and OS X seem to be made around the idea that windows are supposed to take up only as much space as they need; something I guess OS 9 also used.
One thing that struck me as peculiar, was how the Digital Librarian carried undertones of what will later this year become Spotlight.
In much the same way, the NextStep machine, which was a jetblack cube coated with magnesium (yes, magnesium!) became the doomed Apple Cube which became the Mac mini.
Of course, the high-points were when Jobs took potshots at the Mac for being slow as molasses. Ever the pirate.
While we’re at it: Here’s a Bittorent of about every Apple commercial ever.
Actually it’s all of them. But it’s a good chunk, and best of all, most of the ones that Jeff Goldblum voiced over are there.
Downloaded and watched it in Quicktime and VLC, audio is out of sync and 18 minutes instead of the 30 minutes it says in the title. Wonder where the .mp4 version is ;-)
Really interesting :). Look forward to your commentary.
Im partway through it now, and I vaguely remember NextStep and BeOS all those years ago (though I think BeOS came quite a bit later). Im quite suprised at how much of it is in OS X and how they dont seem to have really twisted the envelope that much since then.
Andreas, stops for me after 18mins too. Interesting to see some stuff which isnt even in OSX yet, like the drag n dropping from different Apps onto another (I personally blame Quark tho :-) ) and the underused Services window. Mind you, one App just to kern headlines is a crazy idea.
Interesting to see the demo of WordPerfect just after seeing the keynote on ‘Pages’.
It’s a shame OS8/9 didn’t include some of the ‘OS X’ stuff that NextStep did.
It is amazing to see how much of NextStep is in OSX. It goes to show that sometimes it’s easier to reinnovate than innovate.
It was crazy to see the whole “see the picture of who sent it in mail” thing. I could have sworn he said the exact same thing when he demo’d OSX’s Mail.app.
I read that book on Jobs too some years ago, and I must say it’s interesting to learn a bit more about the man behind Apple. I enjoyed that movie, “Pirates of Silicon Valley”, aswell, which tells about the period before the book. A must-see imo, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere :(
Wow, this is really something. It’s sad to see that it works better than my XP box. I really oughta buy a Mac. Though I don’t know how far Mac OS goes with the drag-and-drop fun. But it’s really awesome.
Mathias, you rule. Thanks – I’m with you Mr. BB – more Goldblum rocks the shit outta the apple. What about the Pentium bashing; I miss pentium bashing :(
I love the fact that he goes gaga over the font Stencil.
i was weaned on NeXTStep OS.
i used it for several years, for daily work, papers, and dabbled in writing software with Interface Builder & Objective C.
it was the best thing since sliced bread, and enjoyable to use. It was a wonder when i left that school (we had them at rose hulman) and had to use PC’s…text menu based joints. it was as if i stepped into a primitive world. There i would gravitate toward the macintosh computers, which still IMO couldn’t hold a candle to the NeXTStep boxes, even if the NeXT boxen were monochrome!
looking forward to peeping the videos.
j.
“In much the same way, the NextStep machine, which was a jetblack cube coated with magnesium (yes, magnesium!) became the doomed Apple Cube which became the Mac mini.:
The Next Cube was coated with paint, not magnesium. The case was actually made almost entirely from magnesium alloy and painted black.
This website has information about the paint, the magnesium case, and explains why nobody except distress flare manufacturers would dream of coating anything in magnesium, ever.
This may be an embarassing post but I have a question I would like to know the answer too and as you guys are talking about NeXT I thought I would post here.
Actually, I visited the NeXT website about a few months back (for the first time) and it loaded just fine but now cannot seem to access it anymore. That is why I am asking this question:
What ever happened to NeXT Inc. after Apple bought the company and made Mac OS X based off their NeXT Step OS. Is the NeXT company still alive or did Apple just rebrand NeXT products as Apple products like Microsoft did with Connectix (which does not exist anymore) in effect renaming Connectix Virtual PC as Microsoft Virtual PC.
I know the original concept of the Dock Menu came from NeXT Step OS. Is the company still alive today as a subsidiary of Apple like Great Plains is a subsidiary of Microsoft? Or was the company completely consolidated and not in existence anymore?
I find NeXT interesting, but never used any of their products and found out about it through Mac OS X. Instead I ran Windows for years and recently switched to Mac OS X just 2 years back in winter 2003.