Unobtainable NeXT Software - drives me bonkers!
Well, not too bonkers but I must admit, it stinks. I have collected all but 1 issue of NeXTWORLD magazine and been enjoying reading them all. So many awesome software titles I have read about or seen ads for any pretty much all of them, you can't get anymore. If you can at least download the file, then you still can't install it since you need a license #, etc...
Too bad the NeXT community is not like the other older platforms like Amiga and Atari where many apps can be downloaded and used to this day. Would have been cool for some of these past long closed makers of apps to at least make a basic web site where once can still buy the app even if they don't want to offer any support at all. There are many apps I would be happy to spend my hard earned cash on but there appears no way to get these cool apps. :cry:
Oh well... We need to create a secret society of underground application dispersal between us members here. hehehehe. :P :twisted:
So, does this drive you all nuts also?
What older NeXT apps do you all want but can't get?
For me, I want Pages, PasteUp, Improv, WordPerfect, enTAR, SafetyNet, Soundworks, and many others.
tj
The only application I'm missing would be a copy of Mathematica that runs on Intel and/or SPARC. Preferably Mathematica 2.x (matching the version I'm using in Blue Box on my Rhapsody systems).
Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the applications I have.
One has to remember that this isn't a platform that died (specially from the developers point of view), it is a platform that evolved and moved on. I know of fewer developers of software that ran on System 6/7 on Macs who still provide their software licenses today than I do of NeXT developers.
Had the platform just stopped (Amiga or Atari or Be) people would have been a little more likely to preserve third party aspects.
OPENSTEP continued to be sold by Apple until 1999 (it was discontinued with the release of Mac OS X Server 1.0), and was supported by Apple until late 2001. People didn't see the merger of NeXT and Apple as an end to the platform at the time, they saw it as a way of moving forward.
Some companies (like Stone Design, Caffeine Software and the Omni Group) continued parallel releases of their software for both OPENSTEP and Rhapsody. Even AFS released Rhapsody versions of WriteUp and PasteUp.
For those of us who love to play with these older platforms, it might have been preferable for OPENSTEP to have just stopped rather than morph into Mac OS X... which is widely used today. While some people look back at 1996 as when it ended, that date is actually 5 years earlier than when Apple finally closed the books on NeXT's offerings.
The software I want more than anything is a version of Improv that works on an Intel CPU, whether through a m68k hardware emulator in an Intel version of OPENSTEP, or in a NeXT software emulator on OS X, or a native port to OS X.
Excel and Numbers are good, but Improv is awesome.
eagle:
There was a windoze version of Improv at some point (I know because I picked up a "user's guide" for Improv on windoze because I couldn't find a guide for the NeXT version).
James
Yeah, maybe I should just look for the Windows version.
As an interesting aside (at least to me), one time years ago when I had totally franged up my cube, when I launched Improve it came up as "Backbay," so the original DNA is still in there somewhwere.
James
It's a big drag when you finally track it down, only to need it two years later when you can't find your local copy, and the site is dead.
It's about time to pool mirrors and put up a torrent, I think.
Nebula, Big Green, Improv, Lighthouse Suite, cub-X, the Solaris stuff, and whatever Windows/Red Box/OE apps are around. All the drivers, all the Motorola-specific utilities, benchmark tools/results, and on and on..
I've been working up a collection, as I'm sure most around here have done. Online archives are awesome, but they, slowly too fade away.
A Mega-Collection torrent would be fun to have, and would open doors that have been effectively closed for so long for so many. I've yet to see a Nebula or BGCD disc.
No, I'm not advocating piracy, or advocating a dilution of any 'value' inherent in the genuine articles. I am for encouraging the persistence and availability of applications for this cool, historically-relevant (and will be for years) platform, and would be a happy contributor.
I ahve been pooling my NeXT software for years now but if I torrented it all, not only would I ahve to organize it but the bandwidth usage would kill me.
Quote from: "eagle"Yeah, maybe I should just look for the Windows version.
eagle, I had to let you know I found Improv for Windows 2.0/2.1 while looking for something else today on the net. It's an 8 meg rar file. Virus free. Anyway. I had to install it. lol. Not only did I install it on Windows XP SP3 & it runs great, but I booted up my Virtual x86 NeXT & then booted SoftPC 4.1 & installed it under Windows 3.1. lol It runs there also. So technically you could keep it all in your Virtual system or you could just install it on windows. I've always just used Quantrix.app on x86/hppa/sparc, but it was a fun experiment. I found it on one of the abandonware sites. So, I'll include it in the archive I'm creating. Take care.