NeXT Advertisement
- Thread starter Easter
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RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
Maybe you could define vaporware for us.
In Dec. 1996 when Apple bought NeXT they had just released OPENSTEP 4.1 and WebObjects 3.0. Apple continued to offer OPENSTEP as an Enterprise solution and provided both an update (to version 4.2) and later Y2K patches to both OPENSTEP 4.2 and NEXTSTEP 3.3. Within a year of buying NeXT Apple had released WebObjects 3.5, and with the release of Mac OS X Server 1.0 (version 5.3 of what was originally the NeXT operating system) and WebObjects 4.0, Apple discontinued the selling of old NeXT products (even though licenses for those products can still be bought from Apple today). They didn't remove their NeXT product section of their web site (formerly at www.apple.com/enterprise/) until mid 2001 and the NeXT software support documents (known as NeXTanswers) are now part of Apple's knowledge base archive.
Apple has not released any of the NeXT software to the public in anything but a licensed form. In fact the current licenses restrict users from major development. Apple still sees older versions of NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP and WebObjects as directly competing with Mac OS X and the current version of WebObjects.
OPENSTEP is only now starting to show enough age that people are thinking of replacing it (mainly because of it's 8 GB disk limit). For many people WebObjects 3.x and 4.x are not only just as good today as when they were new, the fact that Apple dropped support for Objective C in favor of a totally Java solution means that many users of version 3.x and 4.x who didn't write apps in Java have no quick upgrade path to WebObjects 5.x.
I currently know quite a few people who are still using both NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP on a daily basis and I have thought about returning to OPENSTEP for the ability to use some apps that didn't make it to Mac OS X. I contributed a section to the last issue of the online NeXTeZine and have provided information for a section in the upcoming release (on installing OPENSTEP on IBM ThinkPads).
Vaporware is usually promised software that either doesn't exist or doesn't deliver. NeXT software not only existed and delivered, it is still delivering today.
ApeintheShell
Registered
Its Underware.
Chris Knight
Registered
Ha, RacerX I was about to PM you about getting Rhapsody DR2 installed in VPC, and finally got it going when I installed it under OS 9. For some reason, OSX just couldn't get it right: 9 installed it first time!
Cheryl said:
there actually is a german page with quite a lot of old apple/next ads.. most of them are even in english
http://www.cupertino.de/pages/ads/ads.html
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
Chris Knight said:
I had the same problem the last time I installed OPENSTEP in VPC. I ended up using a copy of VPC 4 that I still have on my system.
It is only going to get harder in the future. VPC is emulating newer hardware that older operating systems do have drivers for and Microsoft is doing what they can to tune VPC to be Windows only. As I recall, they dropped VPC with Linux.
I've just noticed that something about my new layout for macnews.net.tc reminded me of NeXT's window scrollbars. ;-) ... And then I came here and found this nice ad...
Of course NeXT's products weren't vapourware. However, their success was certainly doubtable at the time when Apple bought NeXT. Not that it wasn't any good, mind you! But it didn't look too good for them. The price Apple has paid for getting this technology was quite a discussion back then, I remember. I remember all those "Be would have been cheaper" comments quite well.
Of course NeXT's products weren't vapourware. However, their success was certainly doubtable at the time when Apple bought NeXT. Not that it wasn't any good, mind you! But it didn't look too good for them. The price Apple has paid for getting this technology was quite a discussion back then, I remember. I remember all those "Be would have been cheaper" comments quite well.
TommyWillB
Registered
This is not an add, and it predates 1994 by 4 years but I still find it facinating every time I look at it. (especially the $$$,$$$)Cheryl said:
This is from a 1990 copy of MacUser... This was in the days when we had both MacUser and MacWorld as seperate thriving magazines. This copy of MacUser is huge... 418 pages!
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
I love the fact that they used A/UX 2.0 over the standard System 6.0.5 for the operating system.
At $2,395.00 for the system software (which came on an 80 MB hard drive), I think we are all getting a great deal for Apple's current Unix-based OS at $129.00.
It gives you an idea what the Unix world was like pre-Linux. The price of Unix-based software was way beyond the average user. I may not use Linux (I like my IRIX, Solaris, Mac OS X and Rhapsody systems better) but I'm a whole hearted supporter of it!
At $2,395.00 for the system software (which came on an 80 MB hard drive), I think we are all getting a great deal for Apple's current Unix-based OS at $129.00.
It gives you an idea what the Unix world was like pre-Linux. The price of Unix-based software was way beyond the average user. I may not use Linux (I like my IRIX, Solaris, Mac OS X and Rhapsody systems better) but I'm a whole hearted supporter of it!
TommyWillB
Registered
Oops...arden said:BTW, it's not an ad, either.
TommyWillB
Registered
It is hard to see in the scan, bu there is a Kodak logo in the top-left corner...bookem said:I'm struggling to figure out what the microwave like device on that picture is.......?
So that must be the $24,895 "Digital Continuous Tone Printer"... the thing on the left is the "low-end" $16,995 600dpi postscript printer....
