Menu
Home Explore People Places Arts History Plants & Animals Science Life & Culture Technology
On this page
NeXTSTEP
Operating system from NeXT Computer

NeXTSTEP was an object-oriented, operating system developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Based on the Mach kernel and BSD, it powered NeXT’s proprietary workstation computers and later supported various computer architectures. Though initially unsuccessful, NeXTSTEP was notable for hosting developments like the Electronic AppWrapper—the precursor to the modern app store—and the first web browser, created by Tim Berners-Lee. After Apple Computer acquired NeXT in 1996, NeXTSTEP technologies helped form Mac OS X, the foundation for all subsequent Apple platforms, including iPhone OS 1.

Related Image Collections Add Image
Profiles
1 Image
We don't have any YouTube videos related to NeXTSTEP yet.
We don't have any PDF documents related to NeXTSTEP yet.
We don't have any Books related to NeXTSTEP yet.
We don't have any archived web articles related to NeXTSTEP yet.

Overview

NeXTSTEP (also stylized as NeXTstep, NeXTStep, and NEXTSTEP45) is a combination of several parts:

NeXTSTEP is a preeminent implementation of the last three items. The toolkits are the canonical development system for all of the software on the system.

It introduced the idea of the Dock (carried through OpenStep and into macOS) and the Shelf. NeXTSTEP originated or innovated a large number of other GUI concepts which became common in other operating systems: 3D chiseled widgets, large full-color icons, system-wide drag and drop of a wide range of objects beyond file icons, system-wide piped services, real-time scrolling and window dragging, properties dialog boxes called "inspectors", and window modification notices (such as the saved status of a file). The system is among the first general-purpose user interfaces to handle publishing color standards, transparency, sophisticated sound and music processing (through a Motorola 56000 DSP), advanced graphics primitives, internationalization, and modern typography, in a consistent manner across all applications.

Additional kits were added to the product line. These include Portable Distributed Objects (PDO), which allow easy remote invocation, and Enterprise Objects Framework, an object-relational database system. The kits made the system particularly interesting to custom application programmers, and NeXTSTEP had a long history in the financial programming community.6

History

NeXTSTEP was built upon Mach and BSD, initially 4.3BSD-Tahoe. A preview release of NeXTSTEP (version 0.8) was shown with the launch of the NeXT Computer on October 12, 1988. The first full release, NeXTSTEP 1.0, shipped on September 18, 1989.7 It was updated to 4.3BSD-Reno in NeXTSTEP 3.0. The last version, 3.3, was released in early 1995, for the Motorola 68000 family based NeXT computers, Intel x86, Sun SPARC, and HP PA-RISC-based systems.

NeXT separated the underlying operating system from the application frameworks, producing OpenStep. OpenStep and its applications can run on multiple underlying operating systems, including OPENSTEP, Windows NT, and Solaris. In 1997, it was updated to 4.4BSD while assimilated into Apple's development of Rhapsody for x86 and PowerPC. NeXTSTEP's direct descendant is Apple's macOS, which then yielded iPhone OS 1, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Legacy

The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, and the first app store8 were all invented on the NeXTSTEP platform.

1990 CERN: A Joint proposal for a hypertext system is presented to the management. Mike Sendall buys a NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim Berners-Lee. Tim's prototype implementation on NeXTSTEP is made in the space of a few months, thanks to the qualities of the NeXTSTEP software development system. This prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current Web browsers used in "surfing the Internet" are mere passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute. During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes "World-Wide Web". I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French...

— Robert Cailliau, 2 November 19959

The first movie in the Toy Story series, Toy Story, was made on NeXT computers running NeXTSTEP.

Some features and keyboard shortcuts now common to web browsers originated in NeXTSTEP conventions. The basic layout options of HTML 1.0 and 2.0 are attributable to those features of NeXT's Text class.10

Lighthouse Design Ltd. developed Diagram!, a drawing tool, originally called BLT (for Box-and-Line Tool) in which objects (boxes) are connected together using "smart links" (lines) to construct diagrams such a flow charts. This basic design can be enhanced by the simple addition of new links and new documents, located anywhere in the local area network, that foreshadowed Tim Berners-Lee's initial prototype that was written on NeXTSTEP in October–December 1990.

In the 1990s, the pioneering PC games Doom, Doom II, Quake, and their respective level editors were developed by id Software on NeXT machines. Other games based on the Doom engine such as Heretic and its sequel Hexen by Raven Software, and Strife by Rogue Entertainment were developed on NeXT hardware using id's tools.11

Altsys made the NeXTSTEP application Virtuoso, version 2 of which was ported to Mac OS and Windows to become Macromedia FreeHand version 4. The modern "Notebook" interface for Mathematica, and the advanced spreadsheet Lotus Improv, were developed using NeXTSTEP. The software that controlled MCI's Friends and Family calling plan program was developed using NeXTSTEP.1213

About the time of the release of NeXTSTEP 3.2, NeXT partnered with Sun Microsystems to develop OpenStep. It is the product of an effort to separate the underlying operating system from the higher-level object libraries to create a cross-platform object-oriented API standard derived from NeXTSTEP. OpenStep was released for Sun's Solaris, Windows NT, and NeXT's Mach kernel-based operating system. NeXT's implementation is called "OPENSTEP for Mach" and its first release (4.0) superseded NeXTSTEP 3.3 on NeXT, Sun, and Intel IA-32 systems.

Following an announcement on December 20, 1996,14 Apple Computer acquired NeXT on February 4, 1997, for $429 million. Based upon the "OPENSTEP for Mach" operating system, and developing the OpenStep API to become Cocoa, Apple created the basis of Mac OS X,15 and eventually of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

GNUstep is a free software implementation of the OpenStep standard.16

Release history

VersionDateDistribution mediumArchitectureBasisNotes
0.8October 12, 1988MO discm68k4.3BSD-TahoeNeXTStep Digital Webster, Complete Works of William Shakespeare, netboot, NFS
0.8a1988MO discm68k
0.91988MO discm68kNeXT 0.9/1.0 Release Description
1.01989MO discm68k
1.0a1989MO discm68kPhoto of NeXTSTEP 1.0a MO disc
2.0September 18, 1990MO disc, CD-ROMm68kSupport for the NeXTstation, NeXTcube (68040). Support for floppy disk, CD-ROM, Fax modems, and color graphics. Workspace Manager now has the Shelf, copies performed in background, black hole is replaced by recycler icon. Terminal.app. Dynamic loading of drivers.1718
2.1March 25, 1991MO disc, CD-ROMm68kSupport for the NeXTdimension board. TeX, internationalization improvements. New machines with 2.1 include Lotus Improv.19
2.1aMO disc, CD-ROMm68k
2.2CD-ROMm68kSupport for the NeXTstation Turbo
3.0September 8, 199220CD-ROMm68k4.3BSD-RenoProject Builder, 3D support with Interactive RenderMan, Pantone colors, PostScript Level 2, Object Linking and Embedding, Distributed Objects, Database Kit, Phone Kit, Indexing Kit, precompiled headers, HFS, AppleTalk, and Novell NetWare.
3.1May 25, 1993CD-ROMm68k, i386First release for the i386 architecture, introducing fat binaries.
3.2October 1993CD-ROMm68k, i386
3.3February 1995CD-ROMm68k, i386, SPARC, PA-RISCSupport for the PA-RISC and SPARC architectures added, introducing Quad-fat Binaries. Last and most popular version released under the name NEXTSTEP. Referred to as NEXTSTEP/m68k, NEXTSTEP/Intel, NEXTSTEP/SPARC. NEXTSTEP/PA-RISC

Delivered on 2 CDs: NeXTSTEP CISC and NeXTSTEP RISC. The Developer CD includes libraries for all architectures, so that programs can be cross-compiled on any architecture for all architectures.

4.0 beta1996CD-ROMm68k, i386, SPARC, PA-RISCVery different user interface.2122 Notable as being a precursor of many ideas later introduced in the macOS Dock.

Allegedly dropped due to complaints of having to re-teach users but not for technical reasons (the new UI worked well in the beta).

4.0July 1996CD-ROMm68k, i386, SPARCSupport for the PA-RISC architecture dropped. Support for m68k, i486, and SPARC architectures. Initial Release of OpenStep for Windows.
4.1January 1997CD-ROMm68k, i386, SPARCSupport for m68k, i486, and SPARC architectures, and OpenStep for Windows, under OPENSTEP Enterprise (NT only).
4.2 Pre-release 2September 1997CD-ROMm68k, i386, SPARCPre-release 2 circulated to limited number of developers before OpenStep and Apple acquisition.
RhapsodyAugust 31, 1997 – October 27, 2000CD-ROMi386, PowerPC4.4BSDReleased after the Apple acquisition, these are arguably closer to NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP than to Mac OS X. For example, they can still be used as remote display via NXHost.23

Versions up to 4.1 are general releases. OPENSTEP 4.2 pre-release 2 is a bug-fix release published by Apple and supported for five years after its September 1997 release.

See also

References

  1. "Electronic AppWrapper". Kevra.org. Retrieved November 22, 2013. http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/SWCatalogs/page274/page274.html ↩

  2. "Apple-NeXT Merger Birthday!". rome.ro. December 20, 2006. Retrieved October 5, 2019. https://rome.ro/news/2016/2/14/apple-next-merger-birthday ↩

  3. "GameTales: Cray 6400". rome.ro. January 31, 2010. Retrieved October 5, 2019. https://rome.ro/news/2015/12/13/gametales-cray-ymp ↩

  4. Ford, Kevin (2008). "What's with all the NeXT names?". www.kevra.org. Retrieved September 7, 2009. http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/DifferentNeXTSpellings/DifferentNeXTSpellings.html ↩

  5. Engel, Tomi (January 11, 2000). "OpenStep Confusion". Object Farm. Retrieved September 21, 2022. https://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/OpenstepConfusion.html ↩

  6. Ford, Kevin (2008). "What's with all the NeXT names?". www.kevra.org. Retrieved September 7, 2009. http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/DifferentNeXTSpellings/DifferentNeXTSpellings.html ↩

  7. Singh, Amit (December 2003). "What is Mac OS X?". osxbook.com. Archived from the original on May 14, 2012. Retrieved April 18, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20120514135706/http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/history.html ↩

  8. "Jesse Tayler talks App Store and NeXTSTEP with AppStorey". AppStorey. April 11, 2016. Retrieved January 9, 2019. https://appstorey.com/2016/04/11/jesse-tayler-talks-appstore-and-nextstep-with-appstorey/ ↩

  9. "Roads and Crossroads of Internet History Chapter 4: Birth of the Web". http://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=4 ↩

  10. "Tim Berners-Lee: WorldWideWeb, the first Web client". http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html ↩

  11. "Apple-NeXT Merger Birthday!". Archived from the original on March 5, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070305165006/http://rome.ro/2006/12/apple-next-merger-birthday.html ↩

  12. "Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC". Roughly Drafted. January 24, 2007. MCI used NeXT software to power its revolutionary Friends and Family networking referral campaign, which other rivals couldn't match for years. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/141B0B5A-C8DE-49D2-BFDF-DB75E44A3285.html ↩

  13. "Water Utility Consultants | Water Utility Consulting by StepWise". Stepwise.com. September 12, 2012. Archived from the original on April 7, 2006. Retrieved July 17, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20060407085233/http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Business/NextOrderOfBusiness.html ↩

  14. "Apple Computer, Inc. Agrees to Acquire NeXT Software Inc" (Press release). Apple Computer, Inc. December 20, 1996. Archived from the original on March 1, 1997. Retrieved April 12, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/19970301172356/http://live.apple.com/next/961220.pr.rel.next.html ↩

  15. Linzmayer, Owen W. (1999). Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc. No Starch Press. ISBN 9781886411289. 9781886411289 ↩

  16. "GNUStep: Introduction". GNUStep.org. Retrieved May 2, 2013. http://gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html ↩

  17. "Logiciels NeXT" [NeXT software] (in French). http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Logiciels.html ↩

  18. "NeXTSTEP 2.0 Release Notes (User)" (PDF). http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/content/computing/NeXT/NeXTSTEP%202.0%20Release%20Notes.pdf ↩

  19. "Logiciels NeXT" [NeXT software] (in French). http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Logiciels.html ↩

  20. "NeXT Ships NeXTSTEP Release 3.0, Third Generation of the Complete Object-Oriented Environment". Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110718162529/http://www.skytel.co.cr/bsd/research/1992/0908.htm ↩

  21. "NextStep 4 Beta demo video, part 1". YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyxByfhT1F0 ↩

  22. "NextStep 4 Beta demo video, part 2". YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrC1rPY1PkI ↩

  23. "Andrew's Simple Guide to running NeXTSTEP/OpenStep Apps on Mac OS X Server". https://www.stone.com/Run_NeXTSTEP_Now/Andrew_s_Guide_to_Running_NeXSTEP_on_MACOSXS.html ↩