Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!Portia!mouser
From: mouser@Portia.Stanford.EDU (Michael Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: IBM's NeXT User Interface
Summary: Long and possible boring for those not interested in UNIX
Keywords: UNIX, NeXT, AIX, AT&T, Sun, IBM
Message-ID: <3705@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 21 Sep 88 21:15:15 GMT
References: <417@nikhefk.UUCP>
Reply-To: mouser@portia.stanford.edu (Michael Wang)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 70

In article <417@nikhefk.UUCP> paulm@nikhefk.UUCP (Paul Molenaar) write:
> A recent usenet posting stated that IBM payed $10 million for the use
> of the user interface developed by NeXt.
>  
> It aroused a lot of curiosity at my end. For what machines does IBM
> need this user interface? It has the Presentation Manager for OS/2? Right?
> What's so special about this interface? Any1 any information on this
> subject?
[ stuff deleted ]

In article <417@nikhefk.UUCP> paulm@nikhefk.UUCP (Paul Molenaar) write:
> A recent usenet posting stated that IBM payed $10 million for the use
> of the user interface developed by NeXt.
>  
> It aroused a lot of curiosity at my end. For what machines does IBM
> need this user interface? It has the Presentation Manager for OS/2? Right?
> What's so special about this interface? Any1 any information on this
> subject?
[ stuff deleted ]

For those of you who are not keeping up with the news in the UNIX world, here 
is some background on why IBM purchased the rights to use NeXT's user 
interface.

Currently in the UNIX world there are many different versions of UNIX 
including BSD 4.2 and 4.3, System V Release 2 and Release 3, Xenix, Ultrix, 
AIX, HP/UX, A/UX, Sun OS, and on and on.  While most of the UNIX's are either 
based on BSD 4.2/4.3 or System V, there are enough differences between them 
that porting applications between them is not as easy as some people would 
lead you to believe.

In the interest of creating one unified UNIX that incorporates all the good 
features of the current UNIXs, AT&T bought a majority stake in Sun 
Microsystems to help them merge the different UNIX together and create one 
and only one industry standard.  Sun has had previous experience in this 
since their Sun OS is a merge of BSD 4.3 and System V Release 3.  So far so 
good.

However, after the AT&T and Sun announcemnt, other major computer 
manufacturers in the UNIX market were upset at AT&T, thinking that AT&T was 
going for a monopoly in the UNIX market and that Sun would have a unfair 
advantage since any new version of UNIX developed by AT&T and Sun would be 
optimized for Sun's new SPARC processor.  This group of manufacturers, which 
includes IBM, HP and Digital, decided to form their own group, called the 
Open Software Foundation (OSF), to create their own merge of UNIX into one 
standard.  In return for IBM participation in OSF, the group decided to base their new UNIX on a future version of IBM's AIX (IBM's 
UNIX OS).

Now to finish the story, IBM bought the rights to use NeXT's user interface 
so that they could use it in their development with the OSF group and in 
their own versions of AIX.  In effect, if the OSF UNIX standard succeeds and 
AT&T and Sun's fail, then the NeXT user interface would become the industry 
standard among UNIX computers - very good incentive for Steve Jobs to sell 
the interface to IBM.

Editor's Notes: I haven't seen the NeXT user interface but a couple people 
who have seen it tell me that it is in fact BETTER than the Macintosh user 
interface.  Steve Jobs had the advantage of starting from scratch and 
improving things that would to difficult to change now on the Macintosh.
Only a couple more weeks to the NeXT announcement (October 12), when we'll 
all get to seen what the machine can do.

-Michael Wang

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