NeXTSTEP, from NeXT Computers headed by Steve Jobs, is a Unix based operating. This OS offered many unique things, in addition to the unique hardware it.

Steve Jobs’ career at Apple was unique. His unconventional leadership helped create Apple’s two most important products of the 70s and 80s: the Apple II.

Unfortunately for Jobs, the CEO he had recruited, was not happy with the risks Jobs was willing to take. After a short power struggle that left Sculley in control of Apple, Jobs left the company in 1985.After puttering around for several months, Jobs decided that he would return to the computer industry. He invested $7 million to create a brand new company, NeXT Inc.Unsatisfied with the software available at the time, Jobs set about building a team of software developers to create a new programming environment that would run on top of another operating system. The environment would be object oriented, which to an end user means that programs could share information and features.Jobs also hoped to integrate many of the features that were only available on high-end workstations and Macs, including a WYSIWYG interface, an intuitive user interface, and a fully multitasking operating system (which the Mac did not yet have).Reluctant to release a brand new operating system and computer, NeXT searched for a host operating system for their environment. The company considered SunOS and several other Unix derivatives but was unable to find a platform where all of the features Jobs wanted could be implemented easily.Jobs went to several Macintosh developers and sold them on the idea. Because of Apple’s copyright policies, several unreleased programs that had been developed at Apple were owned by developers, who now worked at NeXT. As a result, the first commercial product that NeXT released was, which was developed in tandem with (it was meant as a fail-safe in case MacWrite didn’t pull through).WriteNow generated some needed revenues for the company and also attracted new investors.

In early 1986, Ross Perot became the second largest shareholder in the company. NeXTstepStill focused on development of the new operating system and computer, Jobs recruited Avie Tevanian, a major developer of the Mach microkernel, to help create the new NeXT operating system, later dubbed NeXTstep. (Mach was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon and was meant to be a proof of the microkernel concept.)Instead of incorporating many features into one large kernel, microkernel operating systems contained only enough code in the kernel to act as a basic interface between the software and core hardware.

Everything else was handled by other programs, called servers. Each server sent data to other servers through the microkernel.Carnegie Mellon managed to port BSD (a version of Unix developed at UC Berkeley in conjunction with Bell Labs in the 1970s) to Mach, where each part of the system functioned as a server. This structure lent itself well to an object oriented operating system, and Jobs was enthusiastic about the proposition. HardwareThe hardware that the new software ran on would be almost as important as the software itself. A slow, unresponsive computer would reflect poorly on the software. As a result, the hardware engineers were eager to adopt a high performance CPU. At the time, several new RISC designs were being introduced, including the ARM, MIPS, and SPARC.Hesitant to adopt one of the more established (and very expensive) processors, NeXT wanted to adopt Motorola’s RISC chip, the 88000.

Unfortunately, the 88000 would not be available for several years, and its biggest customers were moving to new chips (Apple had intended to use the 88000 in, right). Instead, NeXT adopted the 68030 processor, the same CPU that was used in the Macintosh and early Sun workstations.At this time, NeXT’s efforts attracted Apple’s attention. Because so many NeXT developers were from the Macintosh team, Apple accused NeXT of stealing Apple’s intellectual property. Apple sued, and in an out-of-court settlement, NeXT was barred from competing with the Macintosh.

As a result, NeXT was relegated to the high-end market not populated by Macs. NeXT was also allowed to continue marketing any unreleased software that the former Macintosh developers had created at Apple. Objective-C and Display PostScriptWork on NeXTstep pressed on through 1986 and 1987. It was relatively easy for the developers to port Mach and BSD to the new hardware platform, but it proved more difficult for the group to create the new servers that would differentiate NeXTstep from its competition.

Objective-C and Display PostScript were the two most ambitious project.In order to have an object oriented operating system, an object oriented programming language was required. C was not available at the time, so NeXT decided to use Objective-C. Developed in the early eighties by Brad Cox at Stepstone, Objective-C was one of the most respected object oriented programming languages available at the time. Unlike “object oriented enabled” versions of languages like Ada or BASIC, Objective-C had a very low overhead.

Sony bravia help. It also had a syntax similar to C, making it easier for most programmers to learn and use.Not satisfied with the Mac’s method of using QuickDraw for the display and PostScript for printing, Jobs wanted what the user saw on the display to exactly mimic the printed page. Traditional methods of rendering the graphics were not suitable, so Jobs approached Adobe about bringing PostScript to the desktop. Adobe was interested. NeXT began the arduous task of porting PostScript to NeXTstep and actually creating Display PostScript. The NeXTstep InterfaceBy 1987, all of the major components of the operating system were finished or almost finished. The user interface was still in its infancy, but it was progressing well.

Instead of using a strict desktop metaphor (like the Macintosh) to manipulate files and programs, NeXTstep used a looser interpretation. NeXTstep display showing dock on right.The most defining feature of the NeXTstep interface was its dock, where frequently used programs or filed programs could be linked and where applets could dock. There was no desktop in NeXTstep; users would access their file system through an icon in the dock. Because of the use of Display PostScript, the graphics were all very crisp, which made the interface look very good.At the same time that the software was being developed, the hardware was being created. Centered around a, the NeXT workstation’s most unique features were its enclosure and its inclusion of a magneto-optical disk drive.Hard drives were very expensive at the time, and the NeXTstep operating system was very large, requiring around 200 MB.

A hard drive of that capacity would cost thousands of dollars, so the hardware engineers decided to adopt the up-and-coming magneto-optical (MO) format. Slower than an ordinary hard drive, a magneto-optical disc was also substantially faster than floppy disks. NeXT was the first company to incorporate aan MO drive in a production computer.Designed by frog (the same company that had designed the Apple IIc and the Mac II series), the new computer’s case was unique. Eschewing a standard desktop case, NeXT used a 12″ magnesium cube.

A completely automated factory was constructed to produce the computer (named the ), and the first Cube was shown to a packed audience in New York city in October 1988.Using a beta version of NeXTstep (version 0.9), NeXT began shipping Cubes in limited numbers to universities and publishers in 1989.Most of the reviews and articles written about the computer focused on the hardware, not the software. Because of the choice to use a magneto-optical drive, performance was very sluggish in comparison to hard drive-based computer, but reviewers usually blamed it on the software.

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NeXTStep 4.xNeXTSTEP, from NeXT Computers headed by Steve Jobs, is a Unix based operating system designed to run on m68K NeXT workstations. It later became the basis for, with APIs and concepts preserved today.This OS offered many unique things, in addition to the unique hardware it originally ran on. It had Interface Builder, a tool to create UIs with little to no code.

To make building the UIs and code easier, it had robust database support to bind data with. Objective-C was the preferred programming language, a hybrid of C and Smalltalk. Underneath was a Mach microkernel and a 4.2BSD subsystem.