Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| NeXTSTEP OPENSTEP for Mach | |
|---|---|
 | |
 NeXTSTEP graphical user interface | |
| Developer | NeXT |
| Written in | C, Objective-C |
| OS family | Unix-like |
| Working state | Discontinued |
| Source model | Closed source with some open-source components |
| Initial release | September 18, 1989 |
| Final release | 3.3 / 1995 |
| Final preview | 4.2 Pre-release 2 / September 1997 |
| Marketing target | Enterprise, academia |
| Package manager | Installer.app |
| Supported platforms | Motorola 68030/68040, IA-32, SPARC, PA-RISC |
| Kernel type | Hybrid (Mach, BSD) |
| Userland | BSD |
| Default user interface | Graphical |
| License | Proprietary EULA |
| Succeeded by | Darwin Rhapsody |
| Part of a series on |
| macOS |
|---|
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT, the technology company founded by Steve Jobs. Based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD, it was introduced in 1989 for the company's computers before being ported to several other computer architectures. Following NeXT's transition away from hardware, version 4 was released as OPENSTEP for Mach, named after the company's OpenStep application programming interface (API).
Although relatively unsuccessful at the time, NeXTSTEP is notable for its influence on software development and computing history. Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser and web server on a NeXTSTEP workstation, while id Software used the operating system during development of Doom and Quake.[1][2]
In 1996, Apple Computer acquired NeXT and used OPENSTEP for Mach as the foundation for Mac OS X (later macOS). Its technologies continue to form the basis of Darwin, the core operating system underlying macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
NeXTSTEP (also stylized as NeXTstep, NeXTStep, and NEXTSTEP)[3][4] is a combination of several parts:
NeXTSTEP is an implementation of the latter three components. Its toolkits serve as the primary development system for software on the platform.
It introduced the idea of the Dock (carried through OpenStep and into macOS) and the Shelf. NeXTSTEP originated or innovated many 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, consistently 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 domain.[3]
NeXTSTEP was built on the Mach kernel and the Unix-derived BSD, initially 4.3BSD-Tahoe. A preview release (version 0.8) was shipped with the NeXT Computer on October 12, 1988, and the first commercial release, NeXTSTEP 1.0, was made available on September 18, 1989.[5] Later releases incorporated newer BSD code, including 4.3BSD-Reno in NeXTSTEP 3.0.
NeXTSTEP was initially released for NeXT's Motorola 68000-based workstations. As the company transitioned away from hardware, NeXTSTEP 3.3, released in early 1995, was ported to x86, SPARC, and PA-RISC.
As part of this transition, NeXT partnered with Sun Microsystems to develop the OpenStep specification, separating the application frameworks from the underlying operating system so they could be implemented on multiple platforms.
With the introduction of the OpenStep specification, NeXT rebranded NeXTSTEP as OPENSTEP for Mach, its implementation of the specification that retained the existing Mach-based operating system and compatibility with NeXTSTEP applications. Versions 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 were released between 1996 and 1997.
Following Apple's acquisition of NeXT in 1996, OPENSTEP for Mach became the basis for Rhapsody, which evolved into Mac OS X (later macOS). Its technologies continue to underpin Darwin, the foundation of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, and the first app store[6] 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 1995[7]
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.[8]
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.[citation needed]
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.[9]
Although relatively unsuccessful at the time, it attracted interest from computer scientists and researchers. It hosted the original development of the Electronic AppWrapper,[10] invented by Jesse Tayler[11] in the early 1990s, which was the first commercial software distribution catalog to collectively manage encryption and provide digital rights for application software and digital media (a forerunner of the modern "app store" concept).[citation needed]
Altsys made the NeXTSTEP application Virtuoso. Version 2 was later ported to the classic Mac OS and Windows, becoming 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.[12][13]
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]
| Version | Date | Distribution medium | Architecture | Basis | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.8 | October 12, 1988 | MO disc | m68k | 4.3BSD-Tahoe | First public preview, released with the NeXT Computer. |
| 0.8a | 1988 | MO disc | m68k | Bugfix release. | |
| 0.9 | May 1, 1989 | MO disc | m68k | Introduced the Preferences application, interface improvements, and bundled FrameMaker, Mathematica, and additional software.[17] | |
| 1.0 | September 11, 1989 | MO disc | m68k | Added application termination from Workspace Manager, updated Preferences application, and interface refinements. | |
| 1.0a | December 21, 1989 | MO disc | m68k | Bugfix release. | |
| 2.0 | September 18, 1990 | MO disc, CD-ROM |
m68k | Added support for the NeXTstation, NeXTcube and associated new hardware (floppy disk, CD-ROM, Fax modem, and color graphics), along with a redesigned Workspace Manager and dynamic driver loading.[18][19] | |
| 2.1 | March 25, 1991 | MO disc, CD-ROM |
m68k | Added support for NeXTdimension, TeX, improved internationalization, and bundled Lotus Improv with new systems.[18] | |
| 2.1a | MO disc, CD-ROM |
m68k | Bugfix release. | ||
| 2.2 | March 25, 1992 | CD-ROM | m68k | Added support for the NeXTstation Turbo. | |
| 3.0 | September 8, 1992[20] | CD-ROM | m68k | 4.3BSD-Reno | Introduced Distributed Objects, Project Builder and additional development kits; improved networking and file system compatibility. |
| 3.1 | May 25, 1993 | CD-ROM | m68k, i386 | Added support for i386 architecture, introduced Multiple Architecture Binaries. | |
| 3.2 | October 18, 1993 | CD-ROM | m68k, i386 | Improved i386 support with SoftPC for emulating MS-DOS and Windows applications.[21] | |
| 3.3 | December 7, 1994 (m68k, i386)[22] | CD-ROM | m68k, i386 | Final release under the NeXTSTEP name. Added support for PA‑RISC and SPARC architectures. | |
| April 4, 1995 (SPARC, PA‑RISC)[23] | PA‑RISC, SPARC | ||||
| 4.0 PR1 | September 7, 1995 | CD-ROM | m68k, i386, PA‑RISC, SPARC | Preview of NeXTSTEP 4.0 featuring a redesigned user interface,[24][25] introducing concepts later incorporated into the macOS Dock. Development discontinued in favor of OPENSTEP 4.0, which reverted to the NeXTSTEP 3.3 interface. | |
| 4.0 | June 25, 1996[26] | CD-ROM | m68k, i386, SPARC | First release under the OPENSTEP name. Implements the OpenStep specification. Dropped support for the PA-RISC architecture. | |
| 4.1 | October 23, 1996 | CD-ROM | m68k, i386, SPARC | Bugfix release. | |
| 4.2 | January 24, 1997 | CD-ROM | m68k, i386, SPARC | Final OPENSTEP release, primarily consisting of bug fixes. | |
| Rhapsody | October 13, 1997 | CD-ROM | i386, PPC | 4.4BSD | Released following Apple's acquisition of NeXT, serving as the transitional operating system between OPENSTEP and Mac OS X.[27] |
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.
MCI used NeXT software to power its revolutionary Friends and Family networking referral campaign, which other rivals couldn't match for years.
new version of its NeXTstep object-oriented operating system for Intel Corp hardware will support Insignia Solutions Ltd's SoftPC with Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 5.0 pre-installed.… users will be able to use legacy Microsoft Corp MS-DOS and Windows applications these will run as separate tasks in their own right and sit in a separate window. Customers will be able to cut and paste between the two environments.
| Corporate directors |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Team members | ||
| Hardware products | ||
| Software products | ||
Operating systems by Apple | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple II, III, Lisa | |||||||
| Mac |
| ||||||
| iOS derivatives |
| ||||||
| Others | |||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT, the technology company founded by Steve Jobs. Based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD, it was introduced in 1989 for the company's computers before being ported to several other computer architectures. Following NeXT's transition away from hardware, version 4 was released as OPENSTEP for Mach, named after the company's OpenStep application programming interface (API). Although relatively unsuccessful at the time, NeXTSTEP is notable for its influence on software development and computing history. Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser and web server on a NeXTSTEP workstation, while id Software used the operating system during development of Doom and Quake. In 1996, Apple Computer acquired NeXT and used OPENSTEP for Mach as the foundation for Mac OS X (later macOS). Its technologies continue to form the basis of Darwin, the core operating system underlying macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California. It was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been ousted from Apple earlier that year. The company initially developed workstation computers for higher education and business markets before shifting its focus to software. NeXT introduced the NeXT Computer in 1988, followed by the NeXTcube and NeXTstation in 1990. Although its computers achieved limited commercial success, the company's NeXTSTEP operating system and its object-oriented software development environment and graphical user interface proved highly influential. NeXT later partnered with Sun Microsystems to create the OpenStep specification, 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, to other computer vendors. The company also developed WebObjects, one of the first enterprise web frameworks, and a prominent early example of dynamic web pages rather than static content. In 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $427 million. The deal returned Jobs to Apple as an advisor, and he would eventually be appointed as the company's CEO. Apple used NeXT's software technologies as the foundation for Rhapsody, Mac OS X (later macOS), and the operating systems that followed. The company’s workstations and software served as the development platform for the first web server (CERN httpd), the first web browser (WorldWideWeb), and the video games Doom and Quake.
GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project. GNUstep features a cross-platform, object-oriented IDE. Apart from the default Objective-C interface, GNUstep also has bindings for Java, Ruby, GNU Guile and Scheme. The GNUstep developers track some additions to Apple's Cocoa to remain compatible. The roots of the GNUstep application interface are the same as the roots of Cocoa: NeXTSTEP and OpenStep. GNUstep thus predates Cocoa, which emerged when Apple acquired NeXT's technology and incorporated it into the development of the original Mac OS X, while GNUstep was initially an effort by GNU developers to replicate the technically ambitious NeXTSTEP's programmer-friendly features.
The NeXTcube is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured, and sold by NeXT from 1990 to 1993. It preceded the NeXT Computer thin pizza box workstation and is housed in a cube-shaped magnesium enclosure, designed by frog design. The workstation runs the NeXTSTEP operating system and was launched with a $9,995 (equivalent to about $25,000 in 2025) list price.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
