NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later developed web software. It was founded in 1985 by CEO Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been forcibly removed from Apple that year.[1][2] NeXT debuted with the NeXT Computer in 1988, and released the NeXTcube and smaller NeXTstation in 1990. The series had relatively limited sales, with only about 50,000 total units shipped. Nevertheless, the object-oriented programming and graphical user interface were highly influential trendsetters of computer innovation.
NeXT partnered with Sun Microsystems to create a programming environment called OpenStep, which decoupled the NeXTSTEP operating system's application layer to host it on third-party operating systems. In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry to concentrate on marketing OPENSTEP for Mach, its own OpenStep implementation for several other computer vendors. NeXT developed WebObjects, one of the first enterprise web frameworks, and although its market appeal was limited by its high price of US$50,000(equivalent to $100,000 in 2023), it is a prominent early example of dynamic web pages rather than static content.
Apple merged with NeXT in 1997 as part of a $427 million deal, including 1.5 million shares of Apple stock. The deal appointed Steve Jobs, then the chairman and CEO of NeXT, to an advisory role at Apple; and OPENSTEP for Mach was combined with the classic Mac OS, to create Rhapsody and Mac OS X.
Many successful applications have lineage from NeXT, including the first web browser and the video games Doom and Quake.[3]
History
Background
In 1985, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs led a division campaign called SuperMicro, which was responsible for developing the Macintosh and Lisa computers. They were commercial successes on university campuses because Jobs had personally visited a few notable universities to promote his products, and because of Apple University Consortium, a discounted academic marketing program.[4]:56,67,72 The Consortium had earned over $50 million on computer sales by February 1984.[5]
Jobs was intrigued by Berg's concept of a workstation and contemplated starting a higher-education computer company in late 1985, amid increasing turmoil at Apple. Jobs's division did not release the upgraded versions of the Macintosh computer and much of the Macintosh Office software.[9] As a result, its sales plummeted,[10]:193 and Apple was forced to write off millions of dollars in unsold inventory.[10]:227 In 1985, John Sculley ousted Jobs from his executive role at Apple and replaced him with Jean-Louis Gassée.[10]:291 Later that year, Jobs began a power struggle to regain control over his company. The board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs took a business trip to Western Europe and the Soviet Union on behalf of Apple.[11]
Original NeXT team
Steve Jobs, here pictured in 1984, founded NeXT in 1985.
In September 1985, after several months of being sidelined, Jobs resigned from Apple.[12] He told the board he was leaving to set up a new computer company, and that he would be taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him, but he also promised that his new company would not compete with Apple and might even consider licensing their designs to them under the Macintosh brand.[13]
Several former Apple employees followed him to NeXT, including Joanna Hoffman, Bud Tribble, George Crow, Rich Page, Susan Barnes, Susan Kare, and Dan'l Lewin.[14] After consulting with major educational buyers from around the country, including a follow-up meeting with Paul Berg, a tentative specification for the workstation was drawn up. It was designed to be powerful enough to run wet lab simulations and affordable enough for dormitory rooms.[15] Before the specifications were finished, however, Apple sued NeXT on September 23, 1985, for "nefarious schemes" to take advantage of the cofounders' insider information.[4]:75[15]:44[14] Jobs argued, "It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."[16]:207 The suit was eventually dismissed before trial.[4]:75
In 1986, Jobs recruited graphic designer Paul Rand to create a brand identity for $100,000(equivalent to $278,000 in 2023).[17] Jobs recalled, "I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, 'No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don't have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.'"[18] Rand created a 20-page brochure detailing the brand, including the precise angle used for the logo (28°) and a new company name spelling, NeXT.[17]
I want some kid at Stanford to be able to cure cancer in his dorm room.
Steve Jobs, on the purpose of the NeXT Computer[19]
In mid-1986, NeXT changed its business plan to develop both hardware and software, rather than just workstations. Rich Page, a NeXT cofounder who formerly directed Apple's Lisa team, led a team to develop the hardware, while Mach kernel engineer Avie Tevanian led the development of NeXT's operating system, NeXTSTEP. NeXT's first factory was established in Fremont, California in 1987, capable of manufacturing about 150,000 machines per year.[4]:72 NeXT's first workstation is the NeXT Computer, nicknamed "the cube"[20] due to its distinctive magnesium one-foot (30cm) cubic case. The case was designed by Hartmut Esslinger and his team at Frog Design.[21][22]
In 1987, Ross Perot became NeXT's first major outside investor. He invested $20 million for 16% of NeXT's stock after seeing a segment about NeXT on the 1986 PBS documentary Entrepreneurs.[14] In 1988, he joined the company's board of directors.[23][24]
NeXT and Adobe collaborated on Display PostScript (DPS), a 2D graphics engine that was released in 1987. NeXT engineers wrote an alternative windowing engine edition to take full advantage of NeXTSTEP. NeXT engineers used DPS for on-screen graphics such as title bar and scroller for the user-space windowing library.[25]
The original design team anticipated completing the computer in early 1987 and launching it for $3,000(equivalent to $8,000 in 2023) by mid-year.[26] On October 12, 1988, the NeXT Computer received standing ovations when it was revealed at a private gala event, "NeXT Introduction–the Introduction to the NeXT Generation of Computers for Education" at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The following day, selected educators and software engineers were invited to attend the first public technical overview of the NeXT computer at the event "The NeXT Day" held at the San Francisco Hilton. The event gave developers interested in NeXT software an insight into their architecture, object-oriented programming, and the NeXT Computer. The luncheon speaker was Steve Jobs.[27]
The first NeXT Computers were test launched in 1989, and then NeXT sold a limited number to universities with NeXTSTEP 0.9 beta pre-installed.[28] Initially, this targeted the United States higher-education institutions only, with a base price of $6,500(equivalent to $16,000 in 2023).[20] The computer was widely reviewed in magazines, primarily the hardware portion. When asked if he was upset that the computer's debut was delayed by several months, Jobs responded, "Late? This computer is five years ahead of its time!"[29]
The NeXT Computer has the 25MHz Motorola 68030central processing unit (CPU). The Motorola 88000RISC chip was originally considered, but it was not available in sufficient quantities.[30] The computer has between 8 and 64 MB of random-access memory (RAM), a 256MB magneto-optical (MO) drive, a 40MB (swap-only), 330MB, or 660MB hard disk drive, 10BASE2Ethernet, NuBus, and a 17-inch MegaPixel grayscale display with 1120×832 pixels. In 1989, a typical new PC, Macintosh, or Amiga computer included a few megabytes of RAM, a 640×480 16-color or 320x240 4,096-color display, a 10- to 20-megabyte hard drive, and few networking capabilities.[31][32] It is the first computer to ship with a general-purpose DSP chip (Motorola 56001) on the motherboard. This supports sophisticated music and sound processing, including the Music Kit software.[33]
The magneto-optical (MO) drive manufactured by Canon Inc. is the primary mass storage device. This drive technology was relatively new to the market, and the NeXT is the first computer to use it.[34] MO drives were cheaper but much slower than hard drives, with an average seek time of 96 ms; Jobs negotiated Canon's initial price of $150 per blank MO disk so that they could sell at retail for only $50. The drive's design made it impossible to move files between computers without a network, because each NeXT Computer has only one MO drive and the disk can not be removed without shutting down the system.[34] The drive's limited speed and capacity makes it insufficient as NeXTSTEP's primary medium.[34]
In 1989, NeXT started a deal for former Compaq reseller Businessland to sell the NeXT Computer in international markets. Selling through a retailer was a major change from NeXT's original business model of only selling directly to students and educational institutions.[35] Businessland founder David Norman predicted that sales of the NeXT Computer would surpass sales of Compaq computers after 12 months.[36]
That year, Canon invested $100 million in NeXT, for a 16.67% stake,[37] making NeXT worth almost $600 million. This had the condition of installing NeXTSTEP on its own workstations, greatly expanding NeXTSTEP's market. After NeXT exited the hardware business, Canon produced a PC line called object.station—including models 31, 41, 50, and 52—specifically designed to run NeXTSTEP on Intel.[38] Canon was NeXT's distributor in Japan.[39]
The NeXT Computer was released in 1990 for $9,999(equivalent to $23,000 in 2023). In June 1991, Perot resigned from the board of directors to concentrate on his company, Perot Systems, a Plano, Texas–based software system integrator.[40]
Second generation
A NeXTcube has a NeXT monitor.The mainboard of the NeXTcube (1990) has a Motorola 68040 at the lower edge. To the right are the interfaces, to the left the system bus. The enlarged view of the image has annotations for most of the components.
In 1990, NeXT released a second generation of workstations, a revised NeXT Computer called NeXTcube and the NeXTstation. The NeXTstation's nickname is "the slab" for its low-rise box form-factor. Jobs ensured that NeXT staffers did not nickname the NeXTstation "pizza box" to avoid inadvertent comparison with competitor Sun workstations, which already had that nickname.
The machines were initially planned to use the 2.88MB floppy drive, but its floppy disks were expensive and had failed to supplant the 1.44MB floppy. NeXT used the CD-ROM drive instead, which eventually became the industry standard for storage. Color graphics were available on the NeXTstation Color and NeXTdimensiongraphics processor hardware for the NeXTcube. The new computers, with the new Motorola 68040 processor, were cheaper and faster than their predecessors.[41][42]
In 1992, NeXT launched "Turbo" variants of the NeXTcube and NeXTstation, with a 33MHz 68040 processor and the maximum RAM capacity increased to 128MB. In 1992, NeXT sold 20,000 computers, counting upgraded motherboards on back order as system sales. This was a small number compared with competitors, but the company reported sales of $140 million for the year, which encouraged Canon to invest a further $30 million to keep the company afloat.[43]
In its existence, Next has sold a total of 50,000 copies of Nextstep, says Jobs. It's not much of an installed base, so he predicts the company will ship 50,000 Nextstep packages in 1993. But Next needs to increase its volume three-fold in order to build enough momentum to forestall Microsoft and Taligent in the object-oriented software business.
In total, 50,000 NeXT machines were sold,[45][44] including thousands to the then super-secret National Reconnaissance Office located in Chantilly, Virginia. NeXT's long-term plan was to migrate to one of the emerging high-performance Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architectures, with the NeXT RISC Workstation (NRW). Initially, the NRW was to be based on the Motorola 88110 processor, but it was later redesigned around dual PowerPC 601s, due to a lack of confidence in Motorola's commitment to the 88000-series architecture in the time leading up to the AIM alliance's transition to PowerPC.[46][47]
In late 1991, in preparation for NeXT's future withdrawal from the hardware industry, the company started porting the NeXTSTEP operating system to Intel 80486-based IBM PC compatible computers. In January 1992, it was demonstrated at NeXTWorld Expo. By mid-1993, the process was completed, and version 3.1 (NeXTSTEP 486) was released.[48]
In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry, and the company was renamed to NeXT Software, Inc. Consequently, 230 of the 530 staff employees were laid off.[55] NeXT negotiated to sell its hardware business, including the Fremont factory, to Canon, which later canceled the deal. Work on the PowerPC machines was stopped, along with all hardware production. Sun CEO Scott McNealy announced plans to invest $10 million in 1993 and use NeXT software in future Sun systems.[56] NeXT partnered with Sun to create a programming environment called OpenStep, which is NeXTSTEP's application layer decoupled for third party operating systems.[57] In 1994, Microsoft and NeXT collaborated on a port of OpenStep to Windows NT, which was never released.[58]
In January 1994, a developers' conference was held in Washington, D.C. Attendees of the 1994 NeXT East Coast Developer Conference had the opportunity to purchase a software bundle including NEXTSTEP 3.2.[59]
Stepstone, originally named Productivity Products International (PPI), was a software company founded in 1983 by Brad Cox and Tom Love, best known for releasing the original version of the Objective-C programming language. In April 1995, NeXT acquired the Objective-C trademark and rights from Stepstone.[60] Stepstone concurrently licensed back from NeXT the right to continue selling its Objective-C based products. Apple Computer later acquired the rights to Objective-C along with NeXT.
After exiting the hardware business, NeXT focused on other operating systems. New OpenStep products were released, including OpenStep Enterprise for Windows NT. NeXT launched WebObjects, a platform for building large-scale dynamic web applications. It did not achieve wide popularity, partly because of the initial high price of $50,000(equivalent to $100,000 in 2023), but it did generate profit for the company. WebObjects is the first and most prominent early example of a web application server that enabled dynamic page generation based on user interactions instead of static web content.[61] WebObjects was used by many large businesses including Dell, Disney, Deutsche Bank, the BBC,[62]Ford, Nissan,[61] and later Apple for the iTunes Store and online Apple Store.[63][64]
1997–2006: Acquisition by Apple
We went for one of our, you know, signature Steve Jobs walks around Palo Alto, and ... we happened to see someone who was in that meeting from the [Apple] management team who said, 'You guys won easily, no problem. You have nothing to worry about.'
On December 20, 1996, Apple Computer announced its intention to acquire NeXT.[66] Apple paid $427 million in cash, shares, stock options, and debt.[67]:277[68] Steve Jobs preferred to only receive cash, but Gil Amelio insisted he take 1.5 million Apple shares to give the deal credibility.[69] The main purpose of the acquisition was to use NeXTSTEP as a foundation to replace the dated classic Mac OS.[70] Steve Jobs also returned to Apple as a consultant.[71]
The deal was finalized on February 7, 1997.[72][73] In 2000, Jobs took the CEO position as a permanent assignment,[74] holding the position until his resignation on August 24, 2011, shortly before his death on October 5, 2011.[75]
Several NeXT executives replaced their Apple counterparts when Jobs restructured the company's board of directors. Over the next five years the NeXTSTEP operating system was ported to the PowerPC architecture of Macintosh. At the same time, an Intel port and OpenStep Enterprise toolkit for Windows were produced. That operating system was codenamedRhapsody,[76] and the crossplatform toolkit is Yellow Box. For backward compatibility, Apple added the Blue Box to Rhapsody, running existing Mac applications in a self-contained cooperative multitasking environment.[77]
A server version of Rhapsody was released as Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999, and the first consumer version, Mac OS X 10.0, in 2001. The OpenStep developer toolkit was renamed Cocoa. Blue Box was renamed Classic Environment and changed to run applications full-screen without requiring a separate window. Apple included an updated version of the original Macintosh toolbox, called Carbon, running existing Mac applications natively without the constraints of Blue Box.[78][79] Some of NeXTSTEP's interface features are used in Mac OS X, including the Dock, the Services menu, the Finder's "Column" view, and the Cocoa text system.
NeXTSTEP's processor-independent capabilities were retained in Mac OS X, leading to PowerPC, x86, and ARM versions. Only PowerPC versions were publicly available before 2006 and were discontinued by 2009, and ARM versions were not released until 2020. Apple transitioned its Mac computers to Intel processors by August 2006, and to ARM processors as of September 2022.[80][81]
Jobs created a unique corporate culture at NeXT in terms of facilities, salaries, and benefits. Jobs had experimented with some structural changes at Apple, but at NeXT he abandoned conventional corporate structures, instead making a "community" with "members" instead of employees. There were only two different salaries at NeXT until the early 1990s. Team members who joined before 1986 were paid $75,000(equivalent to $208,000 in 2023) and those who joined afterward were paid $50,000(equivalent to $139,000 in 2023). This caused a few awkward situations where managers were paid less than their employees. Later, employees were given performance reviews and raises every six months. To foster openness, all employees had full access to the payrolls, although few employees ever used the privilege. NeXT's health insurance plan offered benefits to not only married couples but unmarried and same-sex couples, although the latter privilege was later withdrawn due to insurance complications.[4]:80 The payroll schedule was also very different from other Silicon Valley companies at the time, because instead of employees being paid twice per month at the end of the pay period, they were paid once per month in advance.[4]:289
Jobs found office space in Palo Alto, California, at 3475 Deer Creek Road, occupying a glass-and-concrete building that featured a staircase designed by the architect I. M. Pei. The first floor had hardwood flooring and large worktables where the workstations would be assembled. To avoid inventory errors, NeXT used the just-in-time (JIT) inventory strategy. The company contracted out for all major components, such as mainboards and cases, and had the finished components shipped to the first floor for assembly. On the second floor was office space with an open floor plan. The only enclosed rooms were Jobs's office and a few conference rooms.[67]:323
NeXT's expansion prompted renting an office at 800 and 900 Chesapeake Drive, in Redwood City, also designed by Pei. The architectural centerpiece was a "floating" staircase with no visible supports. The open floor plan was retained, with furnishings that were luxurious, such as $5,000 chairs, $10,000 sofas, and Ansel Adams prints.[4]:80
NeXT's Palo Alto office was subsequently occupied by Internet Shopping Network (a subsidiary of Home Shopping Network) in 1994, and later by SAP AG. Its Redwood City office was later occupied by ApniCure and OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc.[82]
The first issue of NeXTWORLD magazine was printed in 1991. It was edited by Michael Miley and, later, Dan Ruby and was published in San Francisco by Integrated Media. It was the only mainstream periodical to discuss NeXT computers and software. The publication was discontinued in 1994 after only four volumes.[83] A developer conference, NeXTWORLD Expo, was held in 1991 and 1992 at the San Francisco Civic Center and in 1993 and 1994 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with Jobs as the keynote speaker.[84]
Legacy
Though not very profitable, the company had a wide-ranging impact on the computer industry. Object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces became more common after the 1988 release of the NeXTcube and NeXTSTEP. The technologically successful platform was often held as the trendsetter when other companies started to emulate the success of NeXT's object-oriented system.[85]
Widely seen as a response to NeXT, Microsoft announced the Cairo project in 1991; the Cairo specification included similar object-oriented user-interface features for a proposed consumer version of Windows NT. Although Cairo was ultimately abandoned, some elements were integrated into other projects.[58]
By 1993, Taligent was considered by the press to be a competitor in objects and operating systems, even without any product release, and with NeXT as a main point of comparison. For the first few years, Taligent's theoretical innovation was often compared to NeXT's older but mature and commercially established platform,[a] but Taligent's launch in 1995 was called "too little, too late", especially when compared with NeXT.[89]
Several developers used the NeXT platform to write pioneering programs. For example, in 1990, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer to develop the first web browser and web server.[90][91] The video game series Doom,[92] and Quake were developed by id Software using NeXT computers.[93][94] Other commercial programs were released for NeXT computers, including Altsys Virtuoso—a vector-drawing program with page-layout features, which was ported to Mac OS and Windows as Aldus FreeHand v4—and the Lotus Improvspreadsheet program.[b]
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprietary workstation computers such as the NeXTcube. It was later ported to several other computer architectures.
OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification developed by NeXT. It provides a framework for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be platform-independent, allowing developers to write code that could run on multiple operating systems, including NeXTSTEP, Windows NT, and various Unix-based systems. It has influenced the development of other GUI frameworks, such as Cocoa for macOS, and GNUstep.
NeXT Computer is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of US$6,500, aimed at the higher-education market. It was designed around the Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 floating-point coprocessor, with a clock speed of 25 MHz. Its NeXTSTEP operating system is based on the Mach microkernel and BSD-derived Unix, with a proprietary GUI using a Display PostScript-based back end. According to the Science Museum Group, "The enclosure consists of a 1-foot die-cast magnesium cube-shaped black case, which led to the machine being informally referred to as 'The Cube'."
Taligent Inc. was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and was dissolved into IBM in 1998.
The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture. It was intended to solve legacy problems, future-proof the industry, and compete with Microsoft's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly. The alliance yielded the launch of Taligent, Kaleida Labs, the PowerPC CPU family, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) hardware platform standard, and Apple's Power Macintosh computer line.
The history of macOS, Apple's current Mac operating system formerly named Mac OS X until 2011 and then OS X until 2016, began with the company's project to replace its "classic" Mac OS. That system, up to and including its final release Mac OS 9, was a direct descendant of the operating system Apple had used in its Mac computers since their introduction in 1984. However, the current macOS is a UNIX operating system built on technology that had been developed at NeXT from the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997.
A/UX is a Unix-based operating system from Apple Computer for Macintosh computers, integrated with System 7's graphical interface and application compatibility. It is Apple's first official Unix-based operating system, launched in 1988 and discontinued in 1995 with version 3.1.1. A/UX requires select 68k-based Macintosh models with an FPU and a paged memory management unit (PMMU), including the Macintosh II, SE/30, Quadra, and Centris series.
Avadis "Avie" Tevanian is an American software engineer. At Carnegie Mellon University, he was a principal designer and engineer of the Mach operating system. He used that work at NeXT Inc. as the foundation of the NeXTSTEP operating system. He was senior vice president of software engineering at Apple from 1997 to 2003, and then chief software technology officer from 2003 to 2006. There, he redesigned NeXTSTEP to become macOS. Apple's macOS and iOS both incorporate the Mach Kernel, and iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS are all derived from iOS. He was a longtime friend of Steve Jobs.
Be Inc. was an American computer company that created and developed the BeOS and BeIA operating systems, and the BeBox personal computer. It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served as the company's CEO, and was based in Menlo Park, California.
MkLinux is an open-source software computer operating system begun by the Open Software Foundation Research Institute and Apple Computer in February 1996, to port Linux to the PowerPC platform, and Macintosh computers. The name refers to the Linux kernel being adapted to run as a server hosted on the Mach microkernel, version 3.0.
Star Trek is the code name that was given to a secret prototype project, running a port of Macintosh System 7 and its applications on Intel-compatible x86 personal computers. The project, starting in February 1992, was conceived in collaboration between Apple Computer, who provided the majority of engineers, and Novell, who at the time was one of the leaders of cross-platform file-servers. The plan was that Novell would market the resulting OS as a challenge to Microsoft Windows, but the project was discontinued in 1993 and never released, although components were reused in other projects. The project was named after the Star Trek science fiction franchise with the slogan "To boldly go where no Mac has gone before".
NeXTstation is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1990 until 1993. It runs the NeXTSTEP operating system.
WriteNow is a word processor application for the original Apple Macintosh and later computers in the NeXT product line. The application is one of two word processors that were first developed with the goal that they be available at the time of the Mac product launch in 1984, and was the primary word processor for computers manufactured by NeXT. WriteNow was purchased from T/Maker by WordStar in 1993, but shortly after that, WordStar merged with SoftKey, which ultimately led to its discontinuation. It had a combination of powerful features, excellent performance, and small system requirements.
Rhapsody is an operating system that was developed by Apple Computer after its purchase of NeXT in the late 1990s. It is the fifth major release of the Mach-based operating system that was developed at NeXT in the late 1980s, previously called OPENSTEP and NEXTSTEP. Rhapsody was targeted to developers for a transition period between the Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. Rhapsody represented a new and exploratory strategy for Apple, more than an operating system, and runs on x86-based PCs and on Power Macintosh.
The architecture of macOS describes the layers of the operating system that is the culmination of Apple Inc.'s decade-long research and development process to replace the classic Mac OS.
Richard Page is an alumnus of Apple Inc. He was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer in the 1980s, and later joined Steve Jobs at NeXT.
Mac, short for Macintosh, is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple. The name Macintosh is a reference to a type of apple called McIntosh. The product lineup includes the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, and the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro desktops. Macs are sold with the macOS operating system; the latest release is macOS 15 Sequoia.
Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series.
Andrew "Andy" C. Stone is an American computer programmer best known for his iOS app Twittelator, which to date has sold over a million units for the iPhone and the iPad. The founder, director, and principal programmer for Stone Design Corporation, Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his 25 plus year career as a programmer, he has published over 35 software titles for Hypercard, the NeXT workstation, Mac OS X, and for iOS iPhones and iPads. He retired from software development in 2015.
Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
↑ Fuerst, Irene (March 15, 1985). "Apple's new Mac push; can Apple Computer succeed in wooing big companies with its Macintosh Office?". Datamation. p.42.
1 2 Thompson, Tom; Baran, Nick (November 1988). "The NeXT Computer". Byte. Vol.13, no.12. pp.158–175. Archived from the original on April 5, 2008. Retrieved May 14, 2008.
↑ "NeXTSTEP: NeXT announces new release of NeXTSTEP & NeXTSTEP Developer. (NeXTSTEP 3.2 and NeXTSTEP Developer 3.2)". EDGE: Work-Group Computing Report. October 25, 1993. p.40.
↑ McCarthy, Shawn P. (March 6, 1995). "Next's OS finally is maturing. (NextStep Unix operating system)". Government Computer News. p.46.
↑ Beard, Mat (June 1994). "Elonex NextStation". Personal Computer World.
↑ Bidmead, Chris (February 1995). "NeXT, please". Personal Computer World.
↑ Tevanian, Avie (April 17, 2017). "Oral History of Avadis Tevanian, part 2"(PDF) (Interview). Interviewed by John Markoff; Hansen Hsu; David C. Brock. Mountain View, CA: Computer History Museum. Archived(PDF) from the original on February 12, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
↑ Tribble, Bud (February 1994). "Bud Tribble Explains It All". NeXTWORLD (Interview). Interviewed by NeXTWORLD. p.23-24. Archived from the original on January 3, 2020. Retrieved February 10, 2019.
↑ Semich, J. William (March 15, 1994). "Taligent (Apple, IBM and HP's joint object-oriented operating system)". Datamation. p.34.
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