10 Jun
2014
10 Jun
'14
3:36 a.m.
On 2014-06-09 21:36, Sean Caron wrote:
That all said, I don't see why A/UX would have
been any less suitable a
foundation for Apple's next-generation operating system than NeXTstep?
A/UX was dead and buried by the time Apple bought NeXT.
Also, you're pondering the wrong questions. Apple weren't looking for a
UNIX; they were looking for an OS that would become the next-gen Mac OS.
The underpinnings, as much as they mean to gearheads like the populace
of lists like these, were inconsequential. Appl eneeded an OS, *any* OS,
that could carry the Mac forward into the new millenium.
They got more than they bargained for, bringing SJ back into the fold as
well, although of course it has also been suggested that maybe it wasn't
Apple taking over NeXT, at all...
You did have the OpenStep APIs and toolkits; that was
always believed to be
the best part of NeXT... Apple didn't really have an equivalent to that in
OpenDoc or the historical Mac Toolbox. But I've never been a fan of ObjC
anyway;)
I think you answered your own question, there.
Look at the Mac OS -oops: OSX- as it stands, today. Everyone whining
about how great and polished and efficient System 7 was should take a
short break from OSX every now and then and try to work with System 7
for a while. You'll be pulling your hair out in no short order, because
of all the little conveniences we take for granted that wouldn't have
been possible to bolt onto classic Mac OS, at least not without turning
into an even bigger kludgy pig than it already was by the time 7.6 shipped.
Apple aren't in the business of making technical marvels that are
marvellous from a technical standpoint. Every now and again, they do do
that, but that is merely a side effect. Apple are in the business of
making things atht are marvellous from the viewpoint of users. How that
is accomplished, is entirely not the user's problem. Who cares if NeXT
is a resource hog: as long as resources are plentiful, it'll do some
damn handy things for the user.
I'm no Apple insider but I could totally see an
alternate universe where
Macs are running an operating system with a Classic-like GUI and a
monolithic UNIX kernel underneath. I bet in practice, it would have run
faster than Rhapsody, and that great, easy-to-understand UI gestalt Apple
was known for could have remained unsullied:)
In that universe, I'm afraid Apple would no longer exist today and we'd
still be jumping through hoops trying to get our Symbian feature phones
to work with our Windows machines and just grinning and bearing it when
our Outlook contact lists would be cleared again after our weekly
botched synch.
J.