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Tangentially... The OpenStep spec was a collaboration between NeXT and Sun. Essentially, it was the NextStep API but cleaned up and made more OS-independent. A
by ksherlock 4y ago
Tangentially... The OpenStep spec was a collaboration between NeXT and Sun. Essentially, it was the NextStep API but cleaned up and made more OS-independent. Aside from running on NeXT (Mach), it ran on top of Solaris and Windows NT.
This was back in the day when Apple's preferred adjective was "beleaguered" and every 6 months there was a rumor that Sun would buy up Apple (while we're at it, Apple sold Mac Execution Environment that was a MacOS emulator for Solaris), so in a slightly different universe, Sun bought Apple and OS X happened 5 years ahead of schedule.
- mpweiher 4y ago> "beleaguered" I thought "Beleaguered Apple Computer" was the official name of the company...
- mistrial9 4y agoSun and Apple were drawn together as my-enemy-is-your-enemy due to Microsoft. There the cultural overlap stopped. It is not surprising to hear about some inside lower-upper-management plot among stock owners, to M&A their was to personal Lambo riches. Neither user community wanted this, and the World was a very different place at that time.
- steve1977 4y agoSome sources actually say the NS prefix in Cocoa/OpenStep classes stands for NeXT/Sun. (others say it’s simply NeXTSTEP, however considering that those classes had a NX prefix initially, the NeXT/Sun bit might actually be closer to truth)
- SeanLuke 4y agoI'm pretty sure NS was NeXTSTEP. That was the assumption of developers at the time IIRC. Before NeXTSTEP existed there was just NeXT, hence the NX.
- retrocryptid 4y agoAha. I think that explains why NS<foo> methods started creeping into NeXTStep 3. That's about the same time frame as the yellow box, NeWS and sparc becoming a first class supported platform for gnu/objc.