main page   Information briefs • macos x server • macos x (client) • darwin • netboot   Installation reports • PHP 3 • PHP 4 (Zend) • MySQL • Python (coming soon)   Special Reports • Apple Media Event 10/99 new iMacs and MacOS 9 • 1999 wwdc keynote • Quick and Dirty MacOS X Server Installaion Guide   Articles   News Archive • 1999 • 1998 • RhapNet (coming soon)   Advertising info   Contact Us   About Us   Links   The Tweak List			Tweak List: NeXT Computer, Inc. Following Steve Jobs' ouster by then-Apple CEO John Sculley, Jobs helped to place his mark on two very special companies: Pixar and NeXT. Pixar is of course the amazing graphics studio dedicated to making computer animation feasible and wonderful. With the release of "Toy Story" by Disney, Pixar went from being a blip to being a player in the computer animation field, and Jobs' name was again resurrected. While NeXT is not the decorated venture that Pixar has become, NeXT has indeed established itself in the circles of computing and enterprise. After leaving Apple, Jobs wanted to make a computer as important as the Macintosh, but with a completely different focus. NeXT Computer aimed at big business and large networks. In an effort to establish NeXT as both important and not Apple, Jobs decided to create a computer and an operating system which incorporated some bleeding edge technologies: object-oriented programming, computer networks, and multiprocessing. From this came a number of products, including the Black Box (as NeXT computers were called) NeXTSTEP (a powerful object-oriented framework of APIs) OPENSTEP (an operating system based on a number of proven UNIX-based technologies) WebObjects (an Enterprise-level product which allows for creation of a wide variety of network-based applications) BUT of all the fruits of NeXT, the one which is most impressive is one that had nothing to do with the company, but with the company's products. Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher/consultant at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, had had an idea to implement an old idea which roughly corresponds to what we know as "hypertext." Working on a NeXT computer, Berners-Lee created the first web browser/editor using Project Builder, NeXTSTEP, and Objective-C. A quote from Berner-Lee's W3C page describing the project: "I wrote the program using a NeXT computer. This had the advantage that there were some great tools available -it was a great computing environment in general. In fact, I could do in a couple of months what would take more like a year on other platforms, because on the NeXT, a lot of it was done for me already. There was an application builder to make all the menus as quickly as you could dream them up. there were all the software parts to make a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get - in other words direct manipulation of text on screen as on the printed - or browsed page) word processor. I just had to add hypertext, (by subclassing the Text object)" In 1996, Apple Computer started a search for a "modern" operating system to replace the failed Copland project. After a long search, Apple decided that NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP was the operating system they needed. And for $400(?) million, Apple acquired NeXT Computer and brought Steve Jobs back to Apple. He is currently serving as Interim CEO of Apple Computer. NeXT products live on at Apple. In fact, Apple's most profitable product is WebObjects, which is still in very active development at Apple. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP has become the framework for Apple's Rhapsody project, which has since been renamed MacOS X Server. Much of the leadership at NeXT has taken over many of the key leadership roles at Apple, and have effectively made Apple a player in the personal computer industry, including the Enterprise software market.

 

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