Talk:NeXT

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[edit] Technology

I don't think the comparison to 8088/8086/286s is appropriate time-wise. By the time the NeXT was released, 386s were definitely in use, and I think even the 486 was not too far off. Also, when my college received our NeXT cubes, we already had some Mac II computers, with color. I think we even had Macc IIci and IIsi models.

[edit] Sentence Correction

This sentence needs to be re-worded: "Basically the drive itself, while faster than a floppy, was simply not fast enough to run a Unix based OS as its primary medium." It sounds like the OS is the primary medium of the MO drive, where it is in fact the MO drive that is the primary medium for the OS.

Changed to: "...was simply not fast enough to run as the primary medium for a Unix-based OS." ABoerma 13:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sneakernet Link

Sneakernet could probably be an article link.

[edit] WebObjects

We need to create a paragraph about WebObjects. It's an important NeXT product that still exists. -- tooki 17:07, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Major Copyedit

I have gone through and performed a pretty serious copyedit... I also added a large number of {{fact}}s. It's important to remember that this article is about NeXT, not Apple, so I removed a lot of statements about OS X that weren't directly related to NeXT's software contributions. Themillofkeytone 16:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This is a Good Article

After reviewing the article, I've determined it to meet the qualifications for GA status. It is well written, comprehensive, and of a good neutral tone. The last copyedit by User:Themillofkeytone seems to have done the trick.

The biggest step for improvement now would be filling all the {{fact}} templates with actual citations. If anyone wanted to help the article out, verifying and citing a few of those little facts would go a long way!

Keep up the good work, folks. Phidauex 15:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Irrelevant Apple Stuff

The last paragraph lists every new Apple machine that was released during the transition from PPC to Intel processors. These details are tangential overkill in an article about NeXT. No one who comes here to learn about the NeXT corporation needs to know the specific date the Apple MacBook was released. Just say when the transition began or ended and be done with it. emw 15:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed, removed the specifics about Apple. — Wackymacs 15:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NeXT's software was a BSD Variant

'NeXT's software was originally intended to be used as the foundation for Mac OS X[2], however they opted to base it on a BSD variant instead.'

This is not accurate. NeXTStep was a Mach 2.5-derived kernel with a BSD server which provided most of the UNIX services. During the Rhapsody era, Apple imported a lot of NetBSD code into the BSD component, to replace ageing 4.2BSD parts. With OS X, they imported more FreeBSD code. They also took a load of userland components from NetBSD and FreeBSD, although some (e.g. top) are still the NeXT versions.

If you read the XNU (OS X kernel) source code (or Amit Singh's excellent book on the subject) you will see a large number of source files with copyright notices dating back to 1996 and earlier. Most of these were present in NeXT's operating system and do not originate from any other BSD system.

The new IOKit, based on Embedded C++ replaces the old NeXT driver kit based on Objective-C (for performance reasons), but this is entirely new, and not found in any other OS.

At the kernel level, OS X is an updated OPENSTEP. At the API level (Cocoa) it is an updated OPENSTEP. The window server component was re-written in a large part to take advantage of the features of modern 3D cards, and to address some issues with DPS (e.g. the fact that it is not possible to determine how long a program written in a Turing-complete language will take to execute, making scheduling of drawing difficult).

--David Chisnall 13:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glass Staircase

So which office had the glass staircase? The first or the second? It is mentioned as being in both.Geneffects 22:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)