moonrockreptiles- The NeXT Mac OS: Part 3

The NeXT Mac OS: Part 3

Written By: Mike S.

If you've been following my series of columns you should have an idea of what the NEXTSTEP environment looks like. While looks certainly make an OS more appealing to use they don't, in themselves, make an OS usable. Fortunately, the NEXTSTEP engineers didn't spend all of their time painting pretty icons. They managed to make, what I consider, the most usable Unix OS to date.

I've given Linux a try and while it's got some nice GUIs they've got nowhere near the graphical depth of NEXTSTEP. When I say graphical depth, I mean the amount of control and configuration available from within the graphical environment. With Linux you'll spend a lot of time at a command line even with an X system in place. NEXTSTEP is quite the opposite. The only time I've had to go to the CLI was when I needed to unzip a GUI based compression/decompression program. After that was installed the process worked much like Stuffit Expander where you double click a compressed file to decompress it. NEXTSTEP has built in support for untaring files via the Inspector.

I'm getting ahead of myself. In this segment I've compiled some screenshots comparing, side-by-side, a feature of Mac OS and it's equivalent NEXTSTEP counterpart. It's composed of four sections: Menus, Configuration, Help and Navigation. I hope to give you an idea of how the Mac OS and NEXTSTEP compare in general use.

Let's Begin


	The NeXT Mac OS: Part 3 Written By: Mike S. If you've been following my series of columns you should have an idea of what the NEXTSTEP environment looks like. While looks certainly make an OS more appealing to use they don't, in themselves, make an OS usable. Fortunately, the NEXTSTEP engineers didn't spend all of their time painting pretty icons. They managed to make, what I consider, the most usable Unix OS to date. I've given Linux a try and while it's got some nice GUIs they've got nowhere near the graphical depth of NEXTSTEP. When I say graphical depth, I mean the amount of control and configuration available from within the graphical environment. With Linux you'll spend a lot of time at a command line even with an X system in place. NEXTSTEP is quite the opposite. The only time I've had to go to the CLI was when I needed to unzip a GUI based compression/decompression program. After that was installed the process worked much like Stuffit Expander where you double click a compressed file to decompress it. NEXTSTEP has built in support for untaring files via the Inspector. I'm getting ahead of myself. In this segment I've compiled some screenshots comparing, side-by-side, a feature of Mac OS and it's equivalent NEXTSTEP counterpart. It's composed of four sections: Menus, Configuration, Help and Navigation. I hope to give you an idea of how the Mac OS and NEXTSTEP compare in general use. Let's Begin
	Site Designed/Edited/Published by Jason Buck and Stephan Jones- Apple, Mac, Macintosh, and Mac OS X are trademarks of Apple. Any other trademarks used are property of their respective owners. Website design and layout © 2010 Jason Buck and Stephan Jones. Content © its respective author(s), published with consent from said author(s). All rights reserved. Neither all or part may be reproduced or distributed without prior consent. Contact Us.