NeXTSTEP Release 3: A Demonstration with Steve Jobs

Steve shitting on DOS doesn't get old

Computers in the 90s were so magical… it’s all ubiquitous now so it’s lost its magic, but man I feel lucky to have lived through those times as a kid.

NeXTstep was SO ahead of its time. You see, this demonstration is from the early 90s (NeXT was still a hardware company, as he mentions the NeXT machines), and still the system already had everything other Ones were struggling to have: advanced networking, modern multitasking, memory protection, a solid graphics foundation and very good performance. Microsoft was just starting to ship Windows NT, and Apple still had the old Mac OS with its many quirks and instabilities. The early versions of Mac OS X were basically OpenStep with a more visually appealing UI.

If you were an engineer under Steve Jobs, you knew he was going to use your stuff, so it better be good. This video is proof of that. Sadly today there are product managers who don't know how to use the products they manage.

As somebody who makes videos daily, I can say that Steve's ability to speak and present on camera was unmatched.

Both my parents worked at WordPerfect, so seeing Jobs mention it makes me proud.

NeXTSTEP truly was ahead of its time. The hardware was beautiful--even to this day. I had a NeXT workstation with the highest specs. I was a NeXTSTEP developer for one of the top financial institutions. I had a lot of experience developing enterprise software with C, C++, and Sybase. However, developing software in Objective-C was so much easier than for Windows or Sun Solaris. My Windows and Sun Solaris workstations just sat in my cubicle. As many of you know, NeXTSTEP was acquired by Apple and became MacOS.

I was a freshman undeclared humanities major when I took a shortcut through the engineering school on the way back to my dorm after a night partying with friends and got lost and ended up in one of the engineering school buildings when I took a wrong turn and stepped into what I would later learn was the UNIX lab which was this cavernous hall with more than fifty NeXTstation Turbo Color workstations running the latest version of NeXTSTEP.  I thought I had just time-traveled to the future.  I changed majors to computer engineering the next semester lol

I like how different this is compared to apple Keynotes. This is more akin to a Youtube OS review channel. Steve literally seems like just a normal guy using the OS instead of a hypeman. Gotta say i like both approaches.

Note how he uses the word "app" extensively. Back then, nobody did this (yet). The PC world used programs, software or applications. Not "apps". Love it. We all talk about apps these days.

Never did I think I'd Hear Steve Jobs saying "Better than a Mac".

It is amazing how much of modern Mac Os is still NextStep.

This was 3 decades ago, but seems so actual except for the presentation of the UI! I could use that for my work... And Steve Jobs was an incredible presenter, one of the best ever.

He makes it look like the future even now.

Next was like the ultimate Apple secretive skunkworks team, with total control given to Steve. It would not have flourished and been given time to be developed at Apple- but Steve in the wilderness, burning away his fortune (alongside Pixar), was the perfect environment for incentive to innovate and test out the future. He had such intrinsic desire to show the industry he could still out-innovate all others, even Apple. And in the end Apple bought it (and its brain trust), and it has been the the foundation of the Mac OS all the way until recent re-writes have diverged somewhat- and the Mac OS was the eventual original foundation of iOS, etc…. It could all be traced back to the free-reign- and eventual pressure to ship and compete…. Much of that origin is evident in this video here…

NeXTSTEP was a really advanced operating system for its time, that was incredbile

What I really admire and what impresses me is the breadth and detail of Jobs' product knowledge - besides business acumen. Ask any regular tech company C-level dude, and he/she gives you a pass on any specifics of a product beyond that it is, of course, "awesome" and "will revolutionize the world at least." This is the standard Jobs set in here and considered normal. As a product lead, this is your baseline. Imagine that. Working with such a boss who knows every detail is of a product both demanding and rewarding.

12:44 "Without the user having to play system integrator." What an articulate statement.

This was groundbreaking for the time.

Watching this Mac users will see a lot of familiar features. All of Apple's operating systems today are based off of NeXSTEP. The NeXT software is what really revived Apple.