Steve Jobs Demos NeXTSTEP 3.0 465
node 3 writes "Following the current trend of posting video from product demos long past, openstep.se has posted a 55MB video from 1992 of Steve Jobs demoing NeXTSTEP 3.0. They already have 4 mirrors hosting the file, but hopefully someone will set up a torrent (I would, but I don't have a place to post it). If you find the demo compelling and want to try out NeXTSTEP for yourself, you can always go here or here to get started."
old apple ads (Score:2, Insightful)
Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it would be sad if after these things being rescued from the ravages of time and analog media, they were lost to the ravages of time and the broken Slashdot search function the instant that the blogosphere's attention span moves on...
Re:Next NeXTSTEP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dissapearing History (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Next NeXTSTEP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost looked like a demo of OS X (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:old apple ads (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Dissapearing History (Score:3, Insightful)
Might want to take a step back there, to rejoin us in reality.
It's More than Just a Dock redux(was Re:Afterstep) (Score:4, Insightful)
- Display PostScript --- true WYSIWYG, and the ability to do rich on-screen stuff like display (auto-updating) dimension lines in a drawing program by just typing up some PostScript code.
- Services --- these allow any app to take advantage of any other app which provides a Service. There're Services for sorting text, convert TeX source to in-place graphical equations, printing envelopes &c.
- Customizable UI --- tear off menus allows one to decide which command is most easily available and where it's available at.
- Dynamic run-time binding means that installing a filter service affords said capabilities to any other app, w/o recompiling.
William
(who misses NeXT's vertical menu, Display PostScript, Webster.app, pop-up main menu, concise shortcut descriptors and lots of other things on his PowerMac G4 at work in Mac OS X, and appreciates them greatly on his NeXT Cube at home
Re:Next NeXTSTEP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
This demo is staged (Score:2, Insightful)
Flawed management helped keep NeXT out of sight. (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of the apps that came out for the OS were profoundly overrated and overpriced. There were some unquestionable gems here and there (some gems were even available with source code so one could learn from them, like the sorting demonstration application which allowed you to sort groups of bars of varied heights using different sorting algorithms), but I think many people looking back on what NeXT had to offer are wearing rose-colored glasses and are likely to have never owned NeXT hardware.
My experience with my NeXT Cube (ownership starting with NS 2.1, user experience starting before that, perhaps with v2.0) helped lead me to appreciate the free software movement. I didn't have my software freedom then and now I do, using commodity hardware I can afford to enhance and replace if need be.
the future of Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
-bbh
It's amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Over 10 years later, tasks like e-mailing, starting a program, and even browsing a network look very similar to what he's demoing, and I'm talking about MS Windows (PC) use. I'd still like an easy-to-use inter-application dictionary. I'm sure the editors of slashdot could use one too.
Re:liberals produce s/w, conservatives h/w (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
The second threat to archival is digital rights management, content protection, keys or any other kind of 'protection' is basically going to kill long term archival.
I think pure MPEG video is still the best candidate.
The whole thing is pretty bittersweet (Score:5, Insightful)
This is sad, first of all, because it illustrates just how much Windows's domination has stalled everything in the interim. It's like we've been stuck in a time warp, with nothing changing except processor speeds, for 10 years. Now, since the DOJ suit, things seem to be unfreezing a little and progress can start up again--maybe. But how much further along would be be if the industry had actually had meaningul competition all these years, and if the NeXT vision had not failed so completely to make a dent in Microsoft's two monopolies?
The other sad thing is that Jobs is still basically just trying to get that vision reinstated. Even playing sappy music while showing family snapshots--everything is the same from demos then and now, only now it's part of iLife. But what if he doesn't have any more big visions beyond what he did at NeXT? We've been living so much in the dark ages that everything old looks new and exciting, but at some point we'll have everything NeXT had again--and then what? Is that the end of the evolutionary path we're on? (In terms of real computer development, not consumer electronics.)
Seeing him mention Lotus Improv led me to the Wikipedia entry on it, which led me to a (pretty awful) OS X version of Quantrix, which led me to understand that when Cells comes out, that is probably exactly what it will be like, with premade templates for commonly-used home functions like blood-pressure management and weight control, and an emphasis on beautiful charting and graphing, so Apple can deny that it is trying to mess with Excel. And again, we'll be back to something wonderful that we should have had a long time ago. I mean, reading PC Magazine and having them celebrate Pages as a new way of thinking about word processing . . . it really is just a reimplementation of another ancient NeXT program, Pages by Pages.
So anyway, the whole What Might Have Been feeling is just so strong for me when I see this stuff. You can see why Jobs ended up feeling bitter.
Re:old apple ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I 'Heart' WindowMaker (Score:1, Insightful)