In the beginning, NeXT made computers--trademark black hardware
that sported a very slick graphical desktop. The NeXT computer was
fun to use. It was easy to network and, relative to the competition,
a dream to develop for. Its operating system, which came
fully loaded with user applications and a development environment,
was called NEXTSTEP.
NEXTSTEP's high resolution UI is unequaled even
today. |
GIF
, 180 k
Jpeg,
112 k |
From the
beginning, NeXTmail has handled file attachments, images,
& rich text. |
GIF,
15 k |
NeXT introduced its "cube" in 1988. Over the next few years, the
company added to its own hardware line and also ported NEXTSTEP to
Intel, HP, and Sun boxes. Then to reach a broader market, the
company stopped making its own hardware in 1992 and focused on
selling NEXTSTEP for PCs and workstations.
A developer's mecca
The NEXTSTEP UI was a big hit with users. But what many customers
prized even more was the development environment. Frameworks of
prebuilt objects provided developers with functionality that
worked "out of the box"--so much of their work was done before they
even began.
While prebuilt objects dramatically slashed development time, a
suite of graphical development tools made it easy to integrate the
application with the customer's existing data. This was key
for IT organizations who couldn't afford to scrap or modify costly
database and mainframe programs. In addition, developers could reuse
objects across other new applications, saving time in later
development. And they could relocate and update objects on the
fly--to scale across servers as the company grew, and to make
time-critical changes fast, without going offline. With
NEXTSTEP, corporations could finally afford to develop and scale
custom applications fast enough to keep up with competition and
change.
NEXTSTEP becomes OPENSTEP
NEXTSTEP initially ran on a version of the UNIX operating system
called Mach. When it became clear that Mach was not the world's OS
of choice, NeXT opened the way for its object-oriented development
environment to exist on any platform.
In 1994, NeXT published the OpenStep specification--an API
(Application Programmer's Interface) for an object layer,
based on NEXTSTEP frameworks, that could be implemented independent
of underlying hardware, the operating system, and the user
interface. This meant anyone could implement NeXT object frameworks
and tools--to build what were now called OPENSTEP* applications--on
any OS.
* OpenStep was originally spelled with some
lowercase letters. Later NeXT changed the spelling to all caps for
its OPENSTEP product line.
OPENSTEP integrates popular platforms and the Internet
Today, NeXT, Sun, and Apple offer products for building and
deploying OPENSTEP applications across Windows, Mach, the Internet
(using WebObjects),
Solaris, and soon Rhapsody. OPENSTEP applications have the look and
feel of their native user environment. But underneath, they share
the same objects. They integrate with the same corporate data. You
can develop them once on one platform and redeploy easily across
others. You can maintain several of them from one source. And they
work seamlessly with applications around them--on Windows with other
Windows applications, on Rhapsody with other Macintosh applications,
on Solaris with Solaris and Java applications, and so on.
OPENSTEP on Windows has the Windows look and
feel. |
Jpeg,
123k
PCX,
454k
TIFF,
158k |
OPENSTEP on Mach looks like, and is sometimes still
called, NEXTSTEP. |
Jpeg,
151k
PCX,
615k
TIFF,
237k |
To find out more about OPENSTEP, check out the product
brochure for OPENSTEP Enterprise.
OpenStep Specification overviewThe OpenStep API includes
frameworks of prebuilt objects, and a dynamic object runtime that
makes applications easy to scale and customize. It includes:
Application framework with GUI
controls and support for event management
Display PostScript
Foundation framework that provides
standard low-level services such as internationalization
Distributed objects framework,
providing support for communication between local and remote objects
Dynamic object runtime, where
objects communicate dynamically at run time rather than being
hardwired beforehand
For the full text of the specification, click here.
Related Press Releases
|
