NeXT Research and Development "Alive and Well"

next.68k.org

31 points·aheilbut··10 comments

In 1993 it was, anyway

If you google several of the names from the article, you'll find that many of those engineers are still working on NeXT R&D, although under different product names (OS X and iOS). I wonder if any of them ever imagined that average janes and joes would be running NeXT workstations on their cell phones?

The coolest instance of this is that Paul Hegarty taught the Fall 2010 CS193p class.

Instead of taking a brute-force approach to software development, the R&D team concentrates on putting enabling technologies in place that can be leveraged by others.

and

If you want a sneak peak at NEXTSTEP's future, says Hullot, you have only to look a little closer at the present version.

This remains true to this day.

NeXTStep had this concept of a "Shelf" that I have not seen replicated since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)

It sure would be nice to have such an option in the Finder.

IIRC, "PathFinder" for OS X has that feature.

@access_denied: I hate to break it to you, but your account is dead. It has been dead for 535 days.

I wonder if any NeXT projects, after so many years, still exist in some pre-release form within Apple R&D.

I wonder if YellowBox is still around. I used it last night to compile a little Mac app for Windows XP, and it still makes me chuckle when it works.

> Official word is, that the YellowBox for Windows is gone now, though, and AppleComputer revoked any license to develop third-party applications for it.

http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?YellowBox

(as of 2010 -- if you believe the last edited)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com