Episode fourteen of the series tells the story of a system that was ahead of its time and completely transformed the world of professional IT — NeXTSTEP. Its icon, the black NeXTcube, designed under Steve Jobs’ direction, captivated scientists, WWW pioneers and object-oriented programmers. The system’s technical foundations remain at the core of Apple platforms to this day.
1. The Birth of NeXT and the Idea of a System “for Creatives”
After being ousted from Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs founded NeXT and announced a mission: to build a platform that would revolutionize science, education, and design.
In 1988 the company unveiled the NeXT Computer (the “black cube” — Motorola 68030, 8 MB RAM, 256 MB MO drive, Ethernet output, MegaPixel Display graphics).
Alongside the hardware came NeXTSTEP 1.0, a system built on:
- the Mach microkernel and BSD UNIX code,
- a groundbreaking GUI designed entirely from scratch (side menu, Dock, half-screen window snap — features now known from macOS!),
- built-in networking, audio support, PostScript Display, and mathematical libraries.
NeXTSTEP / Gürkan Sengün (talk) – GPL
2. NeXTSTEP Architecture – UNIX on Graphic Steroids
NeXTSTEP delivered:
- the Mach microkernel (full multitasking, security, memory protection),
- a BSD UNIX layer — shell, commands, developer utilities,
- a graphical environment rendered fully in PostScript (unmatched print and display quality),
- an object-oriented interface — every window, menu and control was a programmable object (Objective-C),
- seamless application integration and Drag & Drop (with a now-iconic side Dock).
NeXTSTEP became the first widely used system among object-oriented developers — offering hundreds of tools, libraries, and ready-made components.
3. Key Features and Legends
Ultra-fast installation and boot process (with GUI tools even for the root account)
Application building through component drag-and-drop (Interface Builder)
The first web browser and web server in the world — created by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN on NeXTSTEP
Big popularity in scientific, academic, and design-oriented companies (Adobe, Pixar, id Software)
Ports to multiple architectures — NeXTSTEP eventually ran on x86, SPARC, and HP PA-RISC (from version 3.3)
4. NeXTSTEP → OPENSTEP → Mac OS X
After NeXT abandoned its own hardware line in 1993, the company continued developing its environment as OPENSTEP (1994–97) — an open SDK platform for UNIX systems and Windows.
In 1997 Apple acquired NeXT: the entire NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP architecture became the foundation of Mac OS X (2001).
From NeXT originate:
- macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS
- Cocoa frameworks, Objective-C, the Foundation APIs
- the Dock, Terminal, Time Machine, Spotlight, modern UI concepts, and more.
5. Legacy and Impact
NeXTSTEP was a decade ahead of Windows NT and most UNIX desktops:
- The first widely adopted UNIX GUI that didn’t look “like X Window with a thousand toolkits”
- The foundation of Apple’s app ecosystem, open-source successors (GNUstep), and early GUI-capable toolchains for Python, Perl, and TeX
- The birthplace of breakthrough software: the World Wide Web, Doom, Mathematica, and the very first version of iTunes
