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What's NeXT? Software, Psychedelics and the Origins of OS X & iOS - Andrew C Stone @twittelator | 7 | ||||||||||||
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But it was the friends we made, and the community we helped build that made the NeXT what it was - a dark box to keep the bright light of Steve's original inspirations glowing like embers until the time was right. And Bambi was a big part of that community. She served in Developer Relations (and later as Avi Tevanian's assistant at Apple), but she acted as a special liason with the third party developers. She was basically the Den Mother of us NeXT developers, reaching out to take care of us when the boat started rocking. The Sunnyvale lady whose huge role in Steve's story is not documented in any book or movie (yet). You see, this is the forgotten decade for several reasons. It was literally a dark time. Steve first tried to sell Academia on the cube - why it was perfect with the compleat works of Shakespeare |  | ||||||||||||
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 | and the first online Webster's Dictionary. Most importantly, InterfaceBuilder allowed non-programmers to make applications. But at $12,000 for a cube and mandatory printer, these were just too expensive. A few prestigious schools bought some - and bought our software - but the cube didn't take off. Then, NeXT went after the burgeoning publishing market with a cheaper machine and, late to the game, 32 bit color. Japan, Germany and France admired the technology, and bought a little. Alas, publishing also turned out to be a marketing failure. Who's left? Fortune 500 and the Military/Industrial | ||||||||||||
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complex. On to Wallstreet and the National Security Agency. Well, these clients certainly had the cash missing in other markets, but geez, this is feeling desperate, especially for someone familiar with the Buddhist precept of Right Livelihood. Steve had gone to India to seek enlightenment only to sell his soul to Babylon? Geeesh. There were incredible software successes with the Appkit, the DatabaseKit, Enterprise Object Framework, and WebObjects - the core technologies behind iTunes and App Stores today. But despite | |||||||||||||
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