The final 'Garage' sale...

From: TeoZ <teoz_at_neo.rr.com>
Date: Thu May 29 10:27:00 2003

I know mac osx came from nextstep. I was just pointing out apple tried the
macos on top of unix thing before.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Chase" <vaxzilla_at_jarai.org>
To: "Classic Computers" <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: The final 'Garage' sale...


> On Thu, 29 May 2003, TeoZ wrote:
>
> > [...] I find very few people collect mac/pc software of the time
> > period even though I think it shows a big evolution in software
> > development just like computers of the 80' - 90's went from expensive
> > business only equipment to mass produced basic tools they are today. I
> > don't think I have seen a real copy of A/UX 2 or 3 around in years
> > which is basically what OSX is for the mac today but a decade older
> > (macos on top of Unix).
>
> Nah. OS X's lineage comes /directly/ from NeXT's NEXTSTEP, which is
> about 14 years old at this point. After NeXT got out of the hardware
> business, NEXTSTEP begat OPENSTEP. Then Apple bought NeXT and used
> their OS to create OS X. The underpinnings of OS X are blantantly
> taken from NeXT's work (and I'm the happiest guy in the computing
> world for it.)
>
> One trivial example...
>
> nextstep% file /bin/ls
> /bin/ls: Mach-O executable (for architecture m68k)
>
> os-x% file /bin/ls
> /bin/ls: Mach-O executable ppc
>
> They even share some of the same gags, like this one hidden in the magic
> number they chose for Mach-O binaries:
>
> nextstep% od -h /bin/ls | head -1
> 0000000 feed face 0000 0006 0000 0001 0000 0002
>
> os-x% od -h /bin/ls | head -1
> 0000000 feed face 0000 0012 0000 0000 0000 0002
>
> Even silly things under OS X like the spinning cursor wheel (which they
> revamped in 10.2) and the system beep sounds are leftover from NEXTSTEP.
> Then there's Cocoa, all the interface and project development tools,
> netinfo, and Mach, and...
>
> The MacOS environment provided by OS X is, for all practical purposes, a
> throw-away solution meant to wean people off MacOS. Obviously Apple had
> to provide this; had they not, they'd have panicked a lot of their
> customers. But it's something that looks and feels like it's awkwardly
> bolted onto the otherwise smooth and well integrated OS X.
>
> NeXT really were more than a decade ahead of everyone else with their
> systems. It's a shame it took so long for their vision to become both
> accessible and acceptable to the masses.
>
> -brian.
Received on Thu May 29 2003 - 10:27:00 BST