http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mercedes-Benz-200-Series-240D-limo-1981-Mercedes-Benz-240-stick-DIESEL-LIMO-300D-RARE_W0QQitemZ130082072855QQihZ003QQcategoryZ6329QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Feb 21 00:36:45 2007 Received: from mu-out-0910.google.com ([209.85.134.185]) by server8.arterytc8.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) id 1HJfTR-0001FN-0R for mercedes@okiebenz.com; Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:36:45 +0000 Received: by mu-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id w1so900547mue for <mercedes@okiebenz.com>; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:35:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.175.2 with SMTP id x2mr13965436bue.1172018159432; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:35:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.152.18 with HTTP; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:35:59 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:35:59 -0500 From: "Ed Booher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mercedes Discussion List" <mercedes@okiebenz.com> In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-Antivirus-Scanner: Clean mail though you should still use an Antivirus Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT - PCs and Macs (was) Accents X-BeenThere: mercedes@okiebenz.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9.cp2 Precedence: list Reply-To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> List-Id: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes_okiebenz.com.okiebenz.com> List-Unsubscribe: <http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com>, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Archive: <http://okiebenz.com/pipermail/mercedes_okiebenz.com> List-Post: <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com> List-Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List-Subscribe: <http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com>, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:36:45 -0000
On 2/20/07, Gary Hurst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > does it do anything a mac doesn't do? > > On 2/20/07, Ed Booher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You still have a NeXT machine? Which model? May I visit and be > > permitted to drool on it? > > > > Ed > > Gary, It *was* what the Mac *is* ... OS X started life as NeXTStep, the OS for the NeXT computers, which in an odd way were superpowered Macs. (Both used the same chipsets in a similar way to how today's Macs use the Intel chipsets similar to a Dell) so if you knew the Motorola 68K in and out on a Mac, it was the same chip in a NeXT. The short short short version (and even this will be a little winded) Steve Jobs was ousted at Apple, the shareholders wanted him out and had brought in Pepsi Guy John Sculley as CEO instead of giving the position to Jobs. Jobs resigned from Apple and after seeing a technical demo of a workstation started NeXT. He wanted to keep Apple from breathing down his neck and promised them they would have first rights to license the tech to use in a Mac, which is one of the reasons the NeXT used the 68K proc, the other is that Jobs already had a history with Motorola and so already had inside people to call to get orders of parts. Jobs then wooed very key Apple people way and hired them at NeXT and they started working on a Mach based UNIX type kernel. UNIX, which was born in 1973 (as modern UNIX, ie rewritten in C the language written for UNIX) as such was a very command line centric system. The X11 system which added a GUI was a kludge, mostly, and admins still primarily used the CLI from the Term window in the GUI if they were running X. NeXT threw all the trappings of X away. Changed from a primarily monolithic kernel where everything the computer needed to talk to hardware was in one file, the main kernel, and broke ground on the first types of virtual computing. Mach was supposed to build threads and spin up drivers as needed. (We won't go into the downfalls of Mach here) Apple sued NeXT stating Jobs had stolen industry secrets (due to building a computer completely around a 68K with some of the same Mac subsystems) and stealing away the personnel. As such, and as part of the settlement, NeXT could *only* be sold as a high end UNIX Workstation and could never enter into the more "consumer" market that the Mac competed in, and as such was extremely expensive. Even though in many respects they could have sold for a few hundred more than a similar Mac, that would have put them in "consumer" territory and as such was a no no. The OS changed the way the Computing world worked. It opened eyes and caused certain others to stay awake at night in fright. It had the power of UNIX, a primarily mainframe OS (this was before Linux truly came on the scene, though I think Linus was playing with the first lines of code around this same time) with the ease of use of Windows .... let's face it, it wasn't very "Mac-like" Tim Berners Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, wrote the first spec for HTML and the first browser program to interpret it on a NeXTCube. For UNIX geeks the world over, it was a Lamborghini. Sitting at my Sun Sparcstation, working with Solaris, I dreamed of NeXT at night. The claim to fame for NeXT was the first true IDE, which stands for Integrated Developer Environment. There were some IDE's at the time, but they still needed other apps and other plug ins and etc. App Builder was fully featured, and was using Objective C, known today as Cocoa. It portability was legendary. When NeXT stopped shipping hardware and attempting to transition to a software company, OpenStep was released and allowed NeXT applications to be recompiled for Windows machines, as well as Solaris and others. What is now known as Universal Binaries were called Fat Binaries then. They did pretty much the same thing. Allowed the executibles for each architecture to be bundled as a single file and run on any system OpenStep could run on. Then Gil Amelio, Sculley's replacement at Apple, started to truly worry the shareholders. There were 32 different models, no focus, Apple was bleeding money and they didn't know how to wrap the tournaquet. Copland, the OS that was to replace System 7.1 was way over budget and way over release. So they started shopping for an OS that already existed to replace System 7.1 and Copland with. The two top contenders, BeOS and NeXT. Jean-Louis Gassee, CEO of BeOS, thought it was a wrap. Apple had already axed Jobs, NeXT was close to dying and BeOS was admittedly a pretty amazing bit of code. So he didn't even bother to bring his D game, much less A game. Didn't bring a full tech demo, didn't have an array of apps to show, just showed up and said, you know what I've got, when do we sign. Jobs, always the Master Showman above all else brought his A game, his teams A game, his stylists A game, pretty much everyones A game. Showed a wonderful demo of the OS and how it could benefit Apple, and the rest as they say, is history. We now have OS X, I now use a Mac exclusively at home, and I still want a NeXTCube. Hope this helps, Ed -- Knowledge is power... Power Corrupts. Study hard... Be Evil.
