Hello! I'm just getting started in the NeXT community.
I'm curious to know if there's anyone using a NeXT computer in 2022/2023 with productive and commercial purposes, rather than hobbyists.
For example, a software developer that keeps updated an application built exclusively for NeXT.
Thank you,
Bruno
Yes NeXTSTEP 3.3 Software on Intel is still used with Lam Research's Plasma Etch software in the design,manufacturing, production and distribution of Silicon Chips globally by Taiwan Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Qualcom , others and probably Apple (secret squirrel) . If it ain't broke don't fix it amazing since it is software from 1994 . A very good run !
https://www.lamresearch.com/products/our-products/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lam_Research Here is an Intel box running the Lam software I reverse engineered then integrated for a company as their systems crashed
https://youtu.be/-sQ8LumMgK4 , lol well they took my recipe and tried to replicate it , fairly sure by the cryptic calls from "experts" needing configuration advice out of the blue . All good I was stoked to hear they hooked it up to several different million dollar plasma cutter production systems and it worked . I'm consulting with a different company to update the legacy software to a modern hybrid solution. Legend in my own mind.
Honestly, I'm trying to set up a Previous emulator to do some real work. For example, I have the Mac version of Quantrix, but the old NeXT Quantrix and Improv are just better for some of the modeling work I do.
Also, macOS has just gotten a lot more bloated and lame over time and STILL doesnt have some basic features from NeXT. Why on earth is there still no processes panel like in the next workspace!?
I wish there was a way to unleash NeXT/OPENSTEP. Sadly GNUSTEP aint it, it's, bleh. When apple took over OPENSTEP, there were a lot of improvements, but mostly there were lots of peddling to the lowest common denominator, and it leaves me pining for NeXTSTEP more and more as time goes on.
It's just a better environment IMO.
A few things I'm hoping I can make some macros and use better touch tool to make things like 2 finger scrolling inside Previous possible, but a lot of the productivity apps still hold up.
Virtuoso is still the best illustrator app I've used.
Many of the display postscript tools are simply amazing on next. Pitstop is a full postscript editor. I mean FULL. Not like adobe crap today. It's amazing and the ports to windows/Macs are mere shadows of their former selves.
I'd add that for TeX, some of the tooling in NEXTSTEP is unbeatable, especially for dealing with PostScript diagrams.
Many of the display postscript tools are simply amazing on next. Pitstop is a full postscript editor. I mean FULL. Not like adobe crap today. It's amazing and the ports to windows/Macs are mere shadows of their former selves.
Tailor Postscript Editor as well , a lot of prepress publishing houses bought NeXT Boxes just for Tailor. It came in handy when you had a typo on a bill board size postscript file and edit it as easily as a word processor. The software fit on a few floppies :) I'm still baffled on my Mac Mini as to how the heck an I using 500 gb of space lol... bloatware is right.
Sun also did us a solid they bought Lighthouse for 22 million , their developers went to JAVA. Sun released the Lighthouse Office Apps free to community formerly $5K, I was baffled that Apple didn't simply port these over to OSX from the get go as copying the NeXT libraries over to Rhapsody and they worked so conversion to OSX would have been cake. Then at the first developer conference in 97 seeing Bill Gates large head projected on the screen in back of Steve Jobs and Evil Empire investing 150 million in Apple and commitment to port office , it worked out.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 09, 2023, 04:07:44 PMI was baffled that Apple didn't simply port these over to OSX from the get go as copying the NeXT libraries over to Rhapsody and they worked so conversion to OSX would have been cake.
Sun. That's why.
I think when Sun figured out they could compete with Microsoft at all kinds of levels with Java, they locked Lighthouse Design's source code away just to spite NeXT.
Though, they also apparently locked it away so deep that even they forgot all about it when they purchased StarOffice at a later date.
On the plus side, Steve's iCEO keynotes were all powered by Lighthouse Design's Concurrence.
I also suspect Apple's Pages app is related to NEXTSTEP's Pages app, too.
I believe Steve was using NeXTmail a long while after Mac OS X's releases too -- at least the mail where he told me NeXTSTEP sources would never be released (thanks, Adobe) had NeXTmail plastered all over the 'mailer' header :)
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 09, 2023, 04:00:24 PMMany of the display postscript tools are simply amazing on next. Pitstop is a full postscript editor. I mean FULL. Not like adobe crap today. It's amazing and the ports to windows/Macs are mere shadows of their former selves.
Tailor Postscript Editor as well , a lot of prepress publishing houses bought NeXT Boxes just for Tailor. It came in handy when you had a typo on a bill board size postscript file and edit it as easily as a word processor. The software fit on a few floppies :) I'm still baffled on my Mac Mini as to how the heck an I using 500 gb of space lol... bloatware is right.
Thanks Rob. I forgot it was called Tailor on NeXT. They ported Tailor over as Pitstop on Mac/windows. It's poop compared to the original Tailor, which is pure software magic, IMO.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 09, 2023, 03:35:53 PMYes NeXTSTEP 3.3 Software on Intel is still used with Lam Research's Plasma Etch software in the design,manufacturing, production and distribution of Silicon Chips globally by Taiwan Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Qualcom , others and probably Apple (secret squirrel) . If it ain't broke don't fix it amazing since it is software from 1994 . A very good run ! https://www.lamresearch.com/products/our-products/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lam_Research Here is an Intel box running the Lam software I reverse engineered then integrated for a company as their systems crashed https://youtu.be/-sQ8LumMgK4 , lol well they took my recipe and tried to replicate it , fairly sure by the cryptic calls from "experts" needing configuration advice out of the blue . All good I was stoked to hear they hooked it up to several different million dollar plasma cutter production systems and it worked . I'm consulting with a different company to update the legacy software to a modern hybrid solution. Legend in my own mind.
Interesting. I would never guess that, I guess NeXT is still alive in the industry.
This company that you're consulting with - would it be to port the software out of NeXT?
"I believe Steve was using NeXTmail a long while after Mac OS X's releases too -- at least the mail where he told me NeXTSTEP sources would never be released (thanks, Adobe) had NeXTmail plastered all over the 'mailer' header :)" from V
Oh by the way one hurdle out of the way on the march to the NeXT Source code release
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/12/10/2155203/source-code-for-adobes-postscript-publicly-released thought it may be an earlier release ?
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 09, 2023, 07:48:49 PMOh by the way one hurdle out of the way on the march to the NeXT Source code release https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/12/10/2155203/source-code-for-adobes-postscript-publicly-released (https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/12/10/2155203/source-code-for-adobes-postscript-publicly-released) thought it may be an earlier release ?
This unfortunately is a very early release years before Display Postscript – in addition, the code is not complete, significant parts are missing and it cannot be compiled as is.
But at least one source code release from Apple will be published next week (January 19th) by the CHM, the Lisa OS source code:
https://computerhistory.org/art-of-code/ (
https://computerhistory.org/art-of-code/) – this was already promised in 2018.
Source code for Apple ][ DOS as well as Mac QuickDraw and MacPaint was published some years ago:
Maybe there's also hope for a future source release of the classic MacOS...
Quote from: zombie on January 09, 2023, 03:42:56 PMHonestly, I'm trying to set up a Previous emulator to do some real work. For example, I have the Mac version of Quantrix, but the old NeXT Quantrix and Improv are just better for some of the modeling work I do.
Also, macOS has just gotten a lot more bloated and lame over time and STILL doesnt have some basic features from NeXT. Why on earth is there still no processes panel like in the next workspace!?
I wish there was a way to unleash NeXT/OPENSTEP. Sadly GNUSTEP aint it, it's, bleh. When apple took over OPENSTEP, there were a lot of improvements, but mostly there were lots of peddling to the lowest common denominator, and it leaves me pining for NeXTSTEP more and more as time goes on.
It's just a better environment IMO.
A few things I'm hoping I can make some macros and use better touch tool to make things like 2 finger scrolling inside Previous possible, but a lot of the productivity apps still hold up.
Virtuoso is still the best illustrator app I've used.
Many of the display postscript tools are simply amazing on next. Pitstop is a full postscript editor. I mean FULL. Not like adobe crap today. It's amazing and the ports to windows/Macs are mere shadows of their former selves.
That's pretty interesting: working with a 1990s operating system for the sake of the
higher quality of the system and the apps available for that architecture.
Right now I have NeXTSTEP 3.3 working smoothly on Previous and I'm trying to use Lighthouse apps like Quantrix and their whole suite. Working with NeXT gets me inspired to do big things and to me that's a big deal.
Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on January 09, 2023, 04:07:44 PMSun also did us a solid they bought Lighthouse for 22 million , their developers went to JAVA. Sun released the Lighthouse Office Apps free to community formerly $5K, I was baffled that Apple didn't simply port these over to OSX from the get go as copying the NeXT libraries over to Rhapsody and they worked so conversion to OSX would have been cake. Then at the first developer conference in 97 seeing Bill Gates large head projected on the screen in back of Steve Jobs and Evil Empire investing 150 million in Apple and commitment to port office , it worked out.
I remember that in the early 2000s, I wrote a guy in Sun, who was a senior developer for Lighthouse Design, he became a senior manager at Sun.
anyway, we exchange emails, and he was trying to locate the source code, and we were asking the legal team to opensource the entire suite for Lighthouse Design. After many months of exchanging emails, and waiting, I got the approval from legal, this guy could not find any copies of the source code.
really sad :(
Quote from: NeXTnewbe on January 12, 2023, 10:13:46 AManyway, we exchange emails, and he was trying to locate the source code, and we were asking the legal team to opensource the entire suite for Lighthouse Design. After many months of exchanging emails, and waiting, I got the approval from legal, this guy could not find any copies of the source code.
That's really sad. Especially after Jonathan Schwartz said the Lighthouse Design apps would never see the light of day again, as it sounds Sun were willing to let it live outside of Sun.
I wonder if it's worth reaching out to him... would also be nice to see if Workshop OpenStep can be rescued some day, too.
Quote from: NeXTnewbe on January 12, 2023, 10:13:46 AMI remember that in the early 2000s, I wrote a guy in Sun, who was a senior developer for Lighthouse Design, he became a senior manager at Sun.
anyway, we exchange emails, and he was trying to locate the source code, and we were asking the legal team to opensource the entire suite for Lighthouse Design. After many months of exchanging emails, and waiting, I got the approval from legal, this guy could not find any copies of the source code.
really sad :(
Do you think there's a way to reach them out and see if anyone has the source code? I'm sure there might be a copy somewhere. Plus it would be helping reviving the NeXT platform (a challenge I'm looking forward to starting, help is welcome).
I've been using Lighthouse apps for two days and I've been impressed. At first, I found them hard to use in my virtualized environment but I'm getting used to it and realizing actually how useful they are. I haven't used such high quality apps for a while.
Quote from: brunocampos on January 12, 2023, 12:17:37 PMDo you think there's a way to reach them out and see if anyone has the source code? I'm sure there might be a copy somewhere. Plus it would be helping reviving the NeXT platform (a challenge I'm looking forward to starting, help is welcome).
This thread
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4690.msg27430#msg27430 all about NeXT Source Code :)