NEXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP is the object-oriented, multitasking operating system that NeXT Computer, Inc. designed to run on NeXT computers.

History

NeXTSTEP 1.0 was released in 1989 after testing that began in 1986. The latest version, 3.3, was released in early 1995. At this point, NeXT entered into a joint-venture with Sun Microsystems to develop OpenStep, a cross-platform standard and implementation for SPARC, Intel, HP and NeXT m68k architectures, based on NeXTSTEP.

The system was originally started in the mid-1980s as two projects, an effort to create Display PostScript, and an effort to create a programming object toolkit for the educational market. When it became apparent that the computers and operating systems of the day were not up to the task of running any of these, the projects were combined, along with a hardware project, eventually creating the NeXT computers.

Features

NeXTSTEP was the combination of the following elements:

1. Unix operating system based on the kernel Mach kernel, plus source code from the BSD operating system created at the University of California, UC Berkeley.
2. Display PostScript and a graphic engine.
3. Objective-C as programming language and runtime.
4. An object-oriented application layer, including several kits.
5. Development tools for object-oriented layers.

The key to fame was the last three elements. The toolkits offered power unmatched by tools of the day and were used to create all of the machine's software. Distinct features of the Objective-C language made writing applications with NeXTSTEP much easier than in rival systems, and the system was recognized as a model for software development a decade later.

The user interface was refined and consistent, introducing the idea of the Dock, also used in OpenStep (not to be confused with the name of the OpenStep standard) and the Mac OS X operating system. The entire graphics subsystem used the concept of unifying output devices, through Display PostScript. With this, it was possible to present documents both on the screen and on printers in PostScript format in the same way and with the same programming interface. In addition to this, other resources with less impact were added, such as visual notifications of changes in the edited document, 3D effects in graphic components such as buttons, and others.

Additional Kits or tools were added to the product line to make the system more attractive. This included Portable Distributed Objects (PDO), or Portable Distributed Objects, which allowed remote method invocation, in a simple way, and Enterprise Objects Framework, a database system quite powerful object-relational. These technologies made the system particularly interesting for the development of custom and corporate applications, which caused it to have a good scale of adoption in the financial programming community.

After Apple Computer's purchase of NeXT in early 1997, Apple decided to create its own implementation of the OpenStep standard, which resulted in Mac OS X. The legacy of OpenStep on MacOS X is apparent in the Cocoa environment, where Objects from the Objective-C library are prefixed with "NS". There is also a GNU implementation of the OpenStep standard called GNUstep.

The first WorldWideWeb browser was created using the NeXTSTEP platform.