3 ms·

NeXT software though became the base of OS X. BTW Mac Pros did not find many customers either. I bet Silicon Graphics did not sell very many boxes; it was impo

by nine_k 1y ago

NeXT software though became the base of OS X. BTW Mac Pros did not find many customers either. I bet Silicon Graphics did not sell very many boxes; it was important who bought these boxes.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Yes but the software wasn’t selling until it was forced upon the Apple customer base. You could buy NeXTSTEP for an Intel PC in the 1990s but nobody did.
- nine_k 1y ago
  The right people bought NeXT though. Carmack and his team developed Doom on NeXT computers [1], and the result has profoundly changed the mass-market PC scene. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)#Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)#Engine
  - linguae 1y ago
    In addition, NeXT had a successful pivot to selling a web server framework named WebObjects, which had many big-name customers such as Dell (which infamously abandoned WebObjects once Apple purchased NeXT due to the optics of having an Apple competitor’s web store backed by an Apple product). It’s conceivable that had Apple not purchased NeXT, even though NeXT probably would’ve ended up getting purchased by another company, its technology would’ve likely lived on. Perhaps a 1998 or 1999 NeXT could have open-sourced the OpenStep API and WebObjects as a Hail Mary move…talk about a completely different “what if” path for the Linux desktop and server!
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      You're missing OpenSTEP from that picture. On which NeXT and Sun collaborated on, and thanks to that collaboration, and WebObjects (Java port), Java and Java EE came to be. Patrick Naughton on what actually influenced Java's semantics and object model, https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html Distributed Objects Everywhere genesis, and its evolution into Enterprise JavaBeans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere While in parallel, NeXT refactored WebObjects into Java as well.

by nine_k 1y ago

NeXT software though became the base of OS X. BTW Mac Pros did not find many customers either. I bet Silicon Graphics did not sell very many boxes; it was important who bought these boxes.

SoftTalker 1y ago

Yes but the software wasn’t selling until it was forced upon the Apple customer base. You could buy NeXTSTEP for an Intel PC in the 1990s but nobody did.

nine_k 1y ago
The right people bought NeXT though. Carmack and his team developed Doom on NeXT computers [1], and the result has profoundly changed the mass-market PC scene. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)#Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)#Engine
- linguae 1y ago
  In addition, NeXT had a successful pivot to selling a web server framework named WebObjects, which had many big-name customers such as Dell (which infamously abandoned WebObjects once Apple purchased NeXT due to the optics of having an Apple competitor’s web store backed by an Apple product). It’s conceivable that had Apple not purchased NeXT, even though NeXT probably would’ve ended up getting purchased by another company, its technology would’ve likely lived on. Perhaps a 1998 or 1999 NeXT could have open-sourced the OpenStep API and WebObjects as a Hail Mary move…talk about a completely different “what if” path for the Linux desktop and server!
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    You're missing OpenSTEP from that picture. On which NeXT and Sun collaborated on, and thanks to that collaboration, and WebObjects (Java port), Java and Java EE came to be. Patrick Naughton on what actually influenced Java's semantics and object model, https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html Distributed Objects Everywhere genesis, and its evolution into Enterprise JavaBeans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhere While in parallel, NeXT refactored WebObjects into Java as well.