Hello NeXT Community!
NeXT revolutionized the computer industry by developing a cutting-edge operating system and an object-oriented environment.
Apple's success with macOS and iOS can be attributed to its acquisition of NeXT, as the foundational elements of both operating systems are rooted in NeXTSTEP.
Nowadays, I couldn't identify a company that could be considered the spiritual successor to NeXT. Few companies seem to be venturing into the development of new operating systems or hardware with a market strategy akin to that of NeXT.
Do you think there will ever be a spiritual successor of NeXT?
As far as I can tell no one is actually trying to develop a new operating system. They are all unix variants.
It's a shame because we now have such fundamentally new hardware capabilities, that rethinking software fundamentally makes a lot of sense.
I hope I'm wrong, but I haven't heard of anyone trying to advance anything new in operating systems in over 30 years. Even NeXT was more just making Unix on more personal computers, and advancing an object layer above that. And in many ways, the SmallTalk object layer which inspired it, was more robust. The revelation of NeXT was bringing that all down from large mini computers down to personal computers, which was a big deal.
But the fundamental concepts are now really old. There was a lot of fundamentally great out of the box advancements from the 50-60s in computer science, and it seems ever since then, it's just been refinement of those big ideas.
Sad things are you can fundamentally do things differently now then before. Like before you had multiple memory address spaces for RAM, then out to disk. With modern tech, SSDs, you really dont need that. You could have one global private and even one global public memory space. You could really challenge and change computing at fundamental levels. But I just haven't really seen anyone pushing to advance things because I guess people are satisfied with things as they are.
3.3 forever!
In my eyes the next fundamental rethinking of how to operate new hardware was done for iPod iPhone and iPad.
Since then I did not encounter any similar revolution in OS and GUI.
Assuming it would be a commercial product, the real challenge would be getting big-name applications on it.
Without those, adoption won't happen. Look at BeOS and Windows Mobile for example.
Quote from: protocol7 on February 24, 2024, 04:19:14 AMAssuming it would be a commercial product, the real challenge would be getting big-name applications on it.
Without those, adoption won't happen. Look at BeOS and Windows Mobile for example.
There is is a large collection of open source software now available (SQL databases, Web servers, GCC, Clang). I guess it is just the time porting such software to the OS as the software is now a lot larger than 20 years ago. Most people need browser access and majority of people need access to YouTube, Meta, Yahoo which is quite heavy on JavaScript and tracking compared to the sites in 2010.
I wish NS3.3 was available for the Raspberry Pi3B+ (Bias here, only Pi I own)
You could look at RiSCOS on the Pi
Quote from: zombie on February 23, 2024, 01:59:39 PMAs far as I can tell no one is actually trying to develop a new operating system. They are all unix variants.
It's a shame because we now have such fundamentally new hardware capabilities, that rethinking software fundamentally makes a lot of sense.
I hope I'm wrong, but I haven't heard of anyone trying to advance anything new in operating systems in over 30 years. Even NeXT was more just making Unix on more personal computers, and advancing an object layer above that. And in many ways, the SmallTalk object layer which inspired it, was more robust. The revelation of NeXT was bringing that all down from large mini computers down to personal computers, which was a big deal.
But the fundamental concepts are now really old. There was a lot of fundamentally great out of the box advancements from the 50-60s in computer science, and it seems ever since then, it's just been refinement of those big ideas.
Sad things are you can fundamentally do things differently now then before. Like before you had multiple memory address spaces for RAM, then out to disk. With modern tech, SSDs, you really dont need that. You could have one global private and even one global public memory space. You could really challenge and change computing at fundamental levels. But I just haven't really seen anyone pushing to advance things because I guess people are satisfied with things as they are.
This is a really interesting point of view. An "unfeasible project" in the views of most people, but NeXT itself had challenging years and plenty of investment rounds until they found the right way to succeed financially.
At some point, a group of researchers and/or entrepreneur will start this challenge - developing a new operating system.
I was reading on the register an article (
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/successor_to_unix_plan_9/) about plan 9.
I'm thinking of giving that a go in Virtualbox.