Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: trekiej on April 16, 2008, 02:09:32 AM
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Has anyone here ever owned a Next computer?
Tells us about it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
I had access to one for a while.
There's really nothing to tell.
It was an interesting computer, tough I think at times it was more interesting innovation wise then for broad market appeal.
Sigmason
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I never owned one but I suppose it resembles Mac OS X.
On December 20, 1996, NeXT was bought by Apple for US$400 million.[2] Parts of NeXT's software were later used as the foundation for Mac OS X, often referred to as OPENSTEP 5.0 by those within the NeXT community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
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Kind of...perhaps the dock is the most similar part of the comparison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#NeXTSTEP
Many of the concepts were later brought into Mac OSX but the interface was actually pretty simple in NeXTStep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NeXTSTEP_desktop.jpg
You could even say the UI visuals were Amiga-like.
They were just different enough from X at the time I can't really compare the 2.
One of the biggest differences being that NeXTStep was programmable in PostScript.
That said OpenStep looks a little different then NeXTStep as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPENSTEP
Sigmason
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Thanks.
I hear that hyper text and/or web browser was made on it.
edit:
It was a super computer for the rest of us.
It 68030, 68882, and a 65001 dsp.
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The first web browser was developed on the NeXT.
http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_lee.htm (http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_lee.htm)
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trekiej wrote:
Has anyone here ever owned a Next computer?
Tells us about it.
I own a NeXT machine... ok it's called a MacBook Pro... but it was designed by NeXT engineers and it runs the NeXT operating system... ok it's called MacOS X... but it was designed by NeXT engineers... and the company is run by the guy who set up and ran NeXT computers... so yeah, I own a NeXT machine and it's very nice :-)
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sigmason wrote:
You could even say the UI visuals were Amiga-like.
Not sure I agree here. There's a MUI theme which looks a bit like NextStep, but I don't think Workbench as it is looks much like NextStep.
--
moto
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@ bloodline:
:-D
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I'll admit I'm being a bit too broad with that comparison.
I'm referring to the some of the aspects of the UI more then the general look and feel.
Here's a fairly lengthy look at various graphical UIs...
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/taouu.html
Obviously with themes in the mix the comparison gets a little messy.
Specifically I'm referring to the up and down arrows below the sliders next to each other, the use in Workbench of groupings in the Workbench folder itself (IE the drives and folders which, if you look at NeXTStep interface in the link, is kind of what that menu on the left manages to do in grouping functions), the ability to call window functions from the upper left of a window (functions like close), the ability to maximize the window from the upper right, and if I recall the NeXTStep windows didn't have that narrow frame on the windows like Windows started using in 2.0 and above, much like Workbench used that bottom right corner facing arrow to free resize a window.
Obviously that doesn't make them the same.
However there are some things they share.
Sigmason
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Thanks for the link. It is more than I can intake in a sitting at the moment.
It has info. that I have heard only a little about. I have not looked into the Xerox end of things concerning the GUI.
Winders1.0 looks rough.
The Next Cube looked like it stood up to its name as a personal mainframe in power for the time it was made.
I may build a case that has a similar style to the NeXT one day.
The GUI seems to have brought the computer to the masses,
not forgetting the personal computer it self.
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sigmason wrote:
I'll admit I'm being a bit too broad with that comparison.
I'm referring to the some of the aspects of the UI more then the general look and feel.
Here's a fairly lengthy look at various graphical UIs...
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/taouu.html
Sigmason
The Amiga information on that site ranges from the inaccurate... ¨Weak graphics hardware¨ to the just plain wrong... ¨The Amiga suffered from the same limitaion as the Macintosh, no preemptive multitasking¨
Shame... :-x
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The next cubes(and slabs) are pretty cool machines - seem to be a better mac than the mac itself(less restrictve)
I lurk Here http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/
and here http://www.nextarchive.net
a bit
seems they dont have a m68k emulator
but as there are old versions of x86 next/openstep and of course osx - the successor to nextstep they arent in a dire need.
I really like the idea of a functional 68k version of osx minus 30% padding of the current version - leopard
They seemed to move up in the way amiga community would like to go- but way to fast - no chance to ripen.
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I used one in a digital music class. I signed up for the class only because there was a next machine and I wanted to use one. The guy said that there was some special department in some university somewhere that was set up to invent devices to do sounds and sound effects and whatnot, but that that department was dissolved once the next was invented because it could do everything that that department was set up to try to invent.
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NeXTs were interesting machines, but what makes you say they are less restrictive than OS X? It seems to me the openness of OS X is a direct result of it's NeXT roots.
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I think you are giving them more credit than they deserve. Besides the high resolution screen the A3000 of it's day had more power. I used admin NeXT machines, the original CUBE was a 68030 machine with a 56001 DSP.. There were also later color "Pizza Box" versions and they move to INTEL white when they moved their OS to run on the super powerful 80486 chipset..
If you want the NeXT UI, you can get a decendent of it, in Mac OSX, or you can go get the freely available openStep which runs on many platforms. Most NeXT applications were designed to be portable to OpenStep.. The UI was ahead of it's time, but not by much. and the Mach kernel was pretty cool for a Unix type box.
You should check out
http://www.gnustep.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPENSTEP