NeXTSTEP vs Mac OS X - System Demo and Comparison

Ever wonder where a majority of Mac OS X's roots came from? Watch this NeXT video, and find out… (see what I did there?).

While Steve was away from Apple, he created NeXT, a company that would later be acquired by Apple. It probably wasn't known at the time, but NeXT's technologies would form many elements inside the macOS we use today.

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[morezco]

“If we were doing this on a mac we’d be waiting til next week for the windows to repaint”

holy shit Jobs

[amberdean]

This is wonderful - thank you for delving into vintage technology. It's important that we keep the history alive.

[BrianBoniMakes]

Nice video, brings back lots of memories. I used many NeXT systems and went to the seminars and had the training, from a professional standpoint the systems were the best deal in computing at the time. Notice I used the word professional, these systems were for business, science and education and no where do I remember them marketing them for home use so comparing the price to the PC junk of the day would be useless. A better comparison would be to other high end unix systems and by that measure NeXT were a steal.

Some of the features of NeXT were so useful we bought machines that just did one thing all day long, for years. That example of the screen redraw, we had a system setup to preview postscript on a large gray scale display, that's all it did and it paid for itself within a few months and lasted for years, now that's value. Many manufacturers of machines included NeXT computers with their machines because it was so easy to develop powerful software with them, many of the NeXT machines that came into my shop actually came as the controller for a much larger machine.

You mention the interface builder that came with the system, a compiler also came with the system, I don't remember any version of windows that came with a full development kit. The APP and the object along with the interface builder allowed you to create your own applications that used functions from any of the software you had loaded on the machine. In other words you could pull data off a number of servers, save dump it in a spreadsheet, massage the data in Mathematica, image it with Illustrator and display the results in Framemaker and wrap the whole thing up to look like you created a application all in a couple of minutes, nothing else at the time could do this. Another thing you don't get with a computer today is support, I had the phone number of a NeXT engineer that I could call directly and he'd help me and if he couldn't help he'd talk to someone and they would call me back usually within a couple of hours, what's that worth?

You also didn't mention the shaking head password fail response.

[mattl_]

NS stands for NeXT/Sun from the OpenStep specification. NX was the previous version, from NeXTSTEP

[compactc]

Really the whole core of OS X came from NeXT, Apple was having so much trouble with a replacement for OS 9 that the basically gave NeXT's OS a facelift, but the Unix core of it was what they were really after.

[janrusthaug]

I've. been using a Mac since 2002. Just found out I have Chess installed.

[brianh]

Nice video. It's not just features and design that came over from NeXTSTEP. OS X is the evolution of the same OS. It never died, and iOS is a NeXT descendent too. Also worth noting is that the World Wide Web was first developed on NeXT, as was id Software's DOOM.

[mylesl]

was lucky enough to have a NeXT machine when they first came out, was so amazing and so much fun i can't even describe it, still have it still works loads of fun to reminise

[Erik_The_Viking]

Lovely memories of NeXTStep - I used those computers in undergrad. Loved them! Most people don't realize how much of Mac OSX comes from that OS.

[MajurathanS]

I used to feel bad for having code in my app that's a year old...this video is reassuring

[chriscross]

It’s strange hearing Steve Jobs dis the Mac when not working at Apple.

[johnsim]

So much of what you showed with NeXTSTEP was already on the Acorn Achimedes with its RISC OS. It was a fully 32-bit OS that came in the late 80s, and as the name suggests using a RISC processor. You'll know that as the ARM processor, which you've probably got in your phone. So really it was Acorn who set the look for Next and is also powering just about every smart phone on the planet!

[GerhardAEUhlhorn]

And all the stuff was made in Display Postscript! Every window, every menu was Display Postscript! It was possible to send anything from the screen directly to the Postscript printer.
In macOS the screen is now Display PDF.

[Kilo]

Cool video. The 80s to early 00s was an awesome time to be a computer nerd. There was so much innovation, and wonder. Now everything made is geared toward ad delivery.

[PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

Best part of next was how it was built on postscript. At the time when desktop publishing was a print media end game this was huge to bring print consistency from screen to printer.

[coryplum]

Yes, macOS X was NextSTEP's son.

[BilisNegra]

1:15 64 megs of RAM and 2 Gb disk drive are killer specs for a 486 era computer! Well, that machine must have been obscenely expensive.

[TheJamieRamone]

NS stands for NeXT-SUN, not NEXTSTEP. That's because that prefix is exclusive to OPENSTEP, developed by NeXT and SUN in 94. Before that, they used NX for the API.

[ianzen]

Kinda funny hearing Steve talk shit about the Mac at that point in time.

[mgabrysSF]

The menus were pretty handy - not only could they be placed anywhere - but sub-menus could be 'torn off' and also placed elsewhere. The method was similar to Irix which ran on SGI workstations around the same time. This meant you didn't have to constantly scroll to the top of the screen - handy on large monitors - which would have been particularly nice today if it had been transferred into the macOS / OSX. Apple's acquisition of NeXT has been often cited as a 'reverse merger' since - besides Steve Jobs taking control - most of the principal people at NeXT took leadership roles in Apple and the Apple board was replaced.