NeXTStep + w7

First in the line of 'failed projects' series I'm doing!

I will admit it, I am a geek, and I don't have many friends, I prefer the company of my family, my car and my gadgets as they scarcely let me down as friends always do.

I have a bit of a lust for crappy white elephant OSs. My dad in the early 90s owned a NeXT cube, with NeXTStep on it as an OS. I was fascinated by this seemingly different operating system, compared to my brothers Amigas, my school friend Alex's dad's Macintosh and the Acorns at school. NeXTStep seemed so exotic with its anti aliased logos and menus and endless customisation options.

If you're lucky I might do a BeOS one! and some more! Sadly it's not running for real and is just a wallpaper but it gives a good indication of how it looks! And also how big our displays are these days, 1024x768 was absolutely huge back in the day. Now i'm running a 1080p resolution and I had to upscale it and stretch it!

If you're interested, NeXT was a computer company Steve Jobs set up in the late 1980s after ex-Pepsico CEO John Sculley ousted Jobs from the board of directors at Apple Computer. Undeterred Stevo went on and created a grassroots OS (NeXT Step) and a complete from scratch hardware architecture. He also bought and created Pixar. That as we all know went *slightly* better than NeXT.

All the hallmarks of Steve Jobs design influence were all over the NeXT Cube, it was milled magnesium alloy and the case acted as one big convecting heatsink. A big deal in 1989.

NeXT cubes were used to make Toy Story and lots of other cool projects, including defence computational fluid dynamics.

Sadly it was the victim of its own sucesss as it proved to be amazing at only one thing and the market in the mid 90s overtook it. So NeXT folded, and Steve Jobs was asked to return to Apple Computer (i still refuse to call it apple inc) and took the reins of a very beleagured company in 1997,

Sorry if that was a bit of a history lesson. I just love the history of technology!