Added: 3 years ago
From: adiblasi
Views: 94,606
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:
see all

All Comments (259)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • You get a lot of stuff in ebay, dont you?

  • Thanks for the video! Really cool

  • Alfred i just bought a NeXT station computer, Do you own a NeXT station

  • Thanks is a great idea

    

  • ahh the mouse has 2 buttons

  • ha you said motaroler

  • This video went viral on Mozambique

  • @tiamarquez0 Oh that's very cool. I appreciate you sharing that with me -- always good to know. I hope you enjoyed the video. This is one of my vary rare 'serious' tech videos -- all the other tech videos are crap -- but you'll get a few smiles out of them. Happy New Year. - Alfred.

  • Great vid. I absolutely love the workstation class hardware of the early-mid 90s (SGI, Sun etc), real unique and cutting edge stuff. NeXT is definitely some of the more unusual, almost as obscure as the BeBox.

    IMO NeXT was Job's finest work.

  • The technology may have been ahead - but so was the price - around 10 to 14k, back then.

  • Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

    I remember reading about the cubes in the mid-late 90s and using a NeXTSTEP look-alike shell replacement for a while. As I recall, you could buy readily and cheaply in the early 00s but, they're collector's items worth several grand these days.

  • Made in USA, this is rare!

  • That was absolutely amazing. I first heard about the Next in 1998 from a friend of mine who also bought one on EBay and explained to me the whole association of Steve Jobs within machine. It was only on a whim after discovering of Steve Jobs passing that I decided to YouTube next and your thorough overall explanation of the machine and it's entire history came up. Thank You very much for taking the time to explain it all. :)

  • RIP Steve Jobs.

  • This is way ahead of it's time! Nobody was doing graphics like that in 1990. Plus, this is such an elegent GUI compared to the clutter that came after it. Thanks for the tour. :) JC

  • "No more benzine, please." why is that my favorite quote on this whole video? The fact that it's 2AM may have something to do with it.

  • Comment removed

  • My tribute to NeXT computers , I rename my home made PC ... NeXT , A Phenom x6 procesors, Radeon HD6850 in a NZXT Vulcan case .

    Steve Jobs: Good artists copy great artists steal

  • It's so cool to see some of the window layouts similar to the ones on Mac OS X, like the font-panel and the color-picker are good examples.

  • this is an amazing piece of history. i only wish i could afford to get my hands on one

  • If i open so many apps in my computer it will probably shutdown!

  • it can drink now! Yay!

  • Nice, I used one of these at university, to avoid the awful Sun workstations.

  • i never bought one it was to much of a wast compared to what was on the market

  • want:

    casemod + gnustep ..

  • Can it run Crysis?

    Ok seriously tho awesome vid really awesome that you uploaded this, that is one beautiful machine, learned something new today thanks to you man, I had no idea about this piece of beautiful hardware

  • Where is the follow up video?

  • Good grief, you're a vacuum cleaner salesman aren't you? Look at that pressed polo...whole box 'a starch on it LOL!

  • @CosmicDamian No. I own an ad agency.

  • @adiblasi then put an ad video on youtube:

    "I know you have waited for a commercial to watch this commercial.

    If you want more ads on youtube, then just talk to me!

    I will help your company grow and annoy people with more ads!"

    And say this with italian mafia guy accent.

  • @CosmicDamian lol

  • Better than XP. No, I'm not kidding.

  • Actually this hardware seems to be the very last computer hardware ever made in the U.S. ...

  • Hi, I have a NeXTstation, after watching the video I try to start it and it just hangs in the Mounting file systems start up screen, it used to work OK 2 years ago. I just wonder if some how I can change the HD and install the OS again, the problems are: what kind of formatting the floppy have to be? how do I put the files on a Floppy Can I use an old PC with a floppy drive?

  • The GUI of the OS looks much cleaner then it did in Windows 3.1 or 95 considering the age of the machine and that its only monochrome. The OS also looks very close to what we have today I don't know how to explain it, it looks very familiar. I hope one day I'll get a chance to play around with the Next cube =)

  • @kalasnikov47 Hi - I am glad you enjoyed the video, and hopefully it gave you a little taste of that system! Merry Christmas - Alfred.

  • @kalasnikov47 It's no accident - the NeXT OS was the basis of Mac OS X, which is what inspired Microsoft to greatly improve their user interface after Apple's big comeback.

  • @kalasnikov47 u can run it on vmware! ;) works like a charme. happy playing

  • moterloler lol

    u sound like microsoft sam

  • And why is he so impressed by the pre-emptive multitasking? Again the Amiga had that in 1984.

  • @matthewjsharpe Why am I impressed, because the damn LISA had it in 1983, and it took Apple's acquisition of NeXT before the Apple OS had it properly implemented. Yes, Amiga -- way ahead of it's time. Now, do you still HAVE yours? I have to assume YES -- dude, you MUST film it and post it as a video response herein.

  • @adiblasi Yes, Apple were really lost for most of the 90's weren't they! Unfortunately no - I sold my last Amiga - the aforementioned 68030/68882 powered A1200 - in 1999 for something like $300 and moved on. It was a sad day, but unfortunately Commodore had been ruined by a criminal CEO, and I just saw no point in keeping it - being unable to predict the retro collectables market in computing! Ah if only I had known! AmigaDOS 3.2 was good, but still lacked any security and virtual memory.

  • @matthewjsharpe Crap! Yes, I wish you still had it too. Well, consider pointing the camera on your face and talking about it for 10 minutes with photos and clips you find on the web -- that would be great, and post it as a video response!!

  • @adiblasi You defused that matthewjsharpe really well. People who pitch flame-wars are the bane of You Tube.

  • @vapourmile Actually, he was cool. I wrote to see if he had the Amiga, as I wanted to stimulate a video response. The Amiga was really ahead of its time!  I hope you enjoyed this video. More to come, so stay tuned.

  • Did this thing have the Maths co-processor? Or was that on board on the 68040? I used to have a 68030/50Mhz with the 68882 maths co-processor in my Amiga, and it certainly did (full colour) Mandelbrot much, much faster than this!

  • What's th screen resolution? It looks quite sharp, for an early 90's machine.

  • @Gregz0r1 If I recall correctly the Megapixel display ran at 1152x864.

  • Interesting, thanks for sharing! What were those things worth back then when they were for sale?

  • Haha "Motoroler" :) Go NYC!

  • @bkmoore773

    NeXT is useless.

  • @thothuc

    NeXt is useless? you have to know that the WorldWideWed was built on a next machine

  • @angelusp777

    too bad NeXT is pretty much dead. it is now the bust bin of history. we have Windows, MacOS and Linux. there are some Unix variants still kicking. Amiga is dead even though it was used for music

  • @thothuc OS X IS NeXT. It shares it's programming API's and design philosophy with the original NeXT OS.

  • @kaplanfx

    yeah but the Mac OS X is based on Mach Unix kernel.

  • @thothuc NeXTSTEP was also based on the Mach microkernel. The original OS X API's were based straight off of NeXT's API's. IOS shares the Mach Microkernel arch with OS X, and it contains a specialized set of API's for touch, but they are similar to the OS X API's and all three use the Objective-C language. All three are VERY similar from an architecture and programming standpoint.

  • Wow, I didn't realize the cube was so big. Hey, thanks for the upload. Always looking for vintage computers.

  • it can play wow

  • i want nextstep os

  • @fighterpiolt1992

    You can get OpenStep wich basically is NeXT Step for PC's

  • wow... that was one nice machine, can't wait for any follow up videos you make about it... vintage computing rocks!

  • The black box looks awesome.

    Why were computers of that era all beige? All the way to the mid/late 90s it was all beige. Why?

  • @Molo9000 because nobody started "thinking differently" yet also i'm assuming cheap material

  • Yeah I believe these workstations sold for between $9,000 to $13,000.

  • Comment removed

  • Wow! It's slower than my iPod touch!!!

  • Fantastic!

  • Unix !

  • It is a bit upsetting to see how innovation of 5 people around 20 years ago still steering the acclaimed most advanced OS nowadays, and upon realizing this, think about how IT industry could become if the companies like Microsoft and IBM or Sun could convince their investor to put slight more focus on invocation factors and work more closed with the brightest minds from academic.

  • @lichuan80 My aim isn't to defend Apple in saying this, but saying that the technology is inferior because it's based on technology from 20 years ago is like calling the human race inferior. I agree, there needs to be more work, especially more researc for exokernels, but google code has been helping a lt of ese projects along. sorry for teh typos but my vbrowser started tweaking out

  • @lichuan80 and the innovation 20 years ago was based on an operating system that was already 20 years old 20 years ago :-) UNIX is what, about 41 years old now? Admittedly, todays UNIX is different than the first iteration from 1969, but still - it's Unix. I love BSD in all of it's incarnations (PCBSD is what I'm fiddling with at the moment). I just love computers man, all operating systems, all processors - I have fun with it, especially the vintage stuff.

  • Comment removed

  • your videos is awesome, i love this channel :D

  • Everyone says how innovative apple is but they really haven't moved OS X on that much from NextStep considering it's been 18 years which in tech terms is a century. Apple stole the GUI from Xerox and OS X from next (even if it was Steve Jobs) NextStep was magnificent considering they had minuscule specs to run the os on. If modern software designers had the same innovation and attention to detail on modern specs the computers would be insane.

  • Nice video, Al!

    I've never used an actual NeXT box, but it's nice to see how smooth it looks in your video. Reminded me a bit of the Amigas back in the day, they also were very smooth given their relatively modest CPU.

    Back in those days I've also used 486 computers with early versions of linux and FreeBSD, but it wasn't anywhere near as smooth as this NeXT, despite the CPU probably being more powerful than this 040 at 25 MHz.

    This hardware and kernel/OS just look nicely tuned to eachother.

  • So it can run on a SPARC?

    Fantastic.

  • Comment removed

  • wicked review-LOVE NeXT SO MUCH!!!!!!!- BTW you type really really fast!

  • Great great video! Thanks!

  • Your video's are some of the best, man. Keep it up!

  • does it have any type of optical drive or floppy?

  • I remember having a NeXT cube, and i LOVED IT!!! and yes, i do believe they had CD drives, and definately had floppy drives. lol the screen saver amazed me

  • that thing on the desk made the internet dudes i think, i still can't believe neXt isn't around today even designed the net from Tim Berners-Lee..... jesus doesn't Times changed alot

  • next kind of is around today it is at the heart of MAC OS X

  • FCK! The only thing missing is U!

  • Quote from Space Quest IV that's relevant to my point (if you think about it):

    "The change machine looks more like a time machine then the time machine looks like a time machine!"

  • It's kind of funny how this is closer to the iMac then the Macintosh SE. OS X's common ancestor didn't even run on macs!

  • I'd say the NeXT Cube is more like the PowerMac G4 Cube released in 2000 :)

  • Anyone know if there are emulators out there for OS's like the NeXT (or anything thats old-ish, really)?

  • openstep/nextstep have intel versions so u could use sun's virtual box i think

  • Use vitualbox and run openstep on it

  • that thing is older then me lol

  • I used one of these back in 1991 or so, in university. It was MILES ahead of its time. Ours was a colour version, which did 24-bit colour with no speed penalty. Native PostScript! Objective C API, BSD networking, fast laser printer, too bad Steve overpriced it but he was a stickler for quality.

  • Extremely advanced for its time and clearly you can see the roots of os X. Apple has "borrowed" a lot from Steve's NeXT and yes Apple is Steve Jobs since everything seems to have come from his mind.

    I really like the case for the cube. I would like to have one to mod up by putting the guts of a mac pro in it.

  • Steve is neither a Programmer, Engineer nor a Designer. He is just the ultimate end user and i think this is the reason behind his success, because the resulting designs aren't targeted at engineers which is what engineers tend to do.

    Plus he seems to have a real talent to pick out the right people who have a vision - thats the only explanation i can think of for how great the development tools, libraries and philosophies are.

  • @alizta wrong.

  • Wonderful demonstration - After reading the view of the NextCube in Byte magazine, I always thought it would be a cool machine to have - though the price (15K pounds) for a monochrome screen put me off :)

  • Check out my Museum Section. I have a NeXT Cube, and Slab, both in working order. Still wanting to get a Turbo Color Slab, ah the first UNIX machine I ever used.

  • I Still use windowmaker quite a bit. WindowMaker is a GUI recreation of NeXTStep, give it a try some time in Linux. :-)

  • might sound like a little thing but several examples show mainstream gui's took the wrong path on the menu issue.

    Much more elegant to only show the menu from the current focussed app. only. Hence the clean look.. it's great.

    such a shame most apps the world over have a stupid menu permanently visible.

    When something isn't focussed, you only want it visible to refer to info inside it, not to directly interact with.

  • you are a cool dude and i wish i knew someone like you in my area. I'd work for you in a heartbeat.

  • I really enjoyed that. Excellent work.

  • It will be interesting to see what becomes of HaikuOS (open source BeOS).

    OSX on an Alu PB 1.33 seems sluggish compared to that Cube!

    Read that Pages for NeXTSTEP was great, and as much about layout as word-processing. Someone said Pages for NeXT was in some ways better than the new one from Apple, but haven't tried it.

  • What the fuck are u doing with a SMatBoard

  • I have seen one at CERN

  • yeah i'd really like to see a review of rhapsody. its a rare find. :) please review rhapsody beta :D

  • i want one now!

  • put OS x on it

  • if u did that the apple logo wud probably hav 2 spin round at start up for at least an hour!!!!!

  • You can really see OS X's legacy within this OS, brilliant stuff!

  • Two button mouse? Why Steve, what a great idea!!!!!

  • The NeXT Cube was a sexy bit of hardware and way ahead of its time! Many thanks for the video.

  • R.I.P Power PC mac os X 10.6 doesnt support PowerPC only intel macs :'(

  • PowerPC: 7.5.5 to 10.5.8

  • Did he say Motoroller?

  • motarola

  • was this on a stealthcast?

  • yes

  • How did you learn to type so fast? I learned on my own and just use 2 fingers to type. Obviously not very productive, but I can't shake the habit.

  • Well you're not going to be able to type fast with 2 fingers, i can tell you that much.

  • Im amazed with the resolution, the size of the monitor, OMG chess in 3d, This was back in 1990. Impressive!

  • Not for an Amiga user it isn't.

  • Well, since the first iPod, dg0118.

    Electronic parts are produced in Taiwan.

    iPod cases & final assembly + packaging

    are all done in China.

    China offers the lowest manufacturing costs

    comparing to anywhere else in the world.

    But electronics are not done in China because

    Apple's concerned, VERY MUCH concerned

    about the QC which is way low standard over

    there.

  • cool, made in USA.

    Does anybody know since when apple produce their products in china?

  • I think it was after they switched to intel, and now the quality is horrible. Not just the build quality, but now apple's computers are just poorly designed when it comes to cooling, durability, etc.

  • PowerPC Forever!

  • Yep! I love my PPC mac, hate my MacBook.

  • Hey Al! if you ever need any parts for that cube google black hole.inc and trubo software they sell NeXt cubes displays and everything chech it out!

  • this video PROVES it that MS stole the whole "task bar" idea becoz look how in this video the computer shows programs have been minimized........ the way windows 7 shows running programs at the bottom of the screen is almost identical to how the NeXT OS does it! u cant say Apple copied NeXT coz Apple PAID to use the NeXT OS...

  • this sure does blow away windows 2.0!

  • Are you kidding it even blows away Win 3.1 and 95.

  • yaaa i know! even the Mac OS was behind back then..

  • that cube runs faster then my quad core machine :p

  • and adiblasi's hands move faster then the cube.

  • oh my! went to the shop back than at leidseplein (a'dam) asking 'for one of them doing three d'! - 'no do, get a windows' - no way!! i ended up with an apple. fuck! i have 2 cubes but still, i want a next! can't imagine where i would be today if i would have scored one. just amazing, a piece of art - ahead of time in so many ways. thank u 4 recording & posting

  • most sounds are from mac osx!

  • dont you mean most mac sounds are from NeXt !

  • tru

  • Wait a minute, NeXt had a word processor called Pages??? Wow, NeXt step definitely lives on.

  • Pages wasn't a NeXT product. Pages, Inc. developed Pages and later, Web Pages on NeXTSTEP. When they went out of business, the name was available. so Apple's iWork group used it.

    -jcr

  • moteroler

  • Motorola 68x Rulez

  • Who Thumbed-down this guy?

    in my opinion, both the x86 and the 680x0 both have their advantages.

    Mac and PC: i like 'em both equally. I'm not taking sides :D

  • Im siding with Macs being the best, even though im stuck with a Windows Cripsta OS

  • i like Macs and PCs equally. funny how people complain about vista, and yet now that i've tried it i'm satisfied. Of course, my new computer is having some minor PSU issues, but i really can't blame that on windows when it's a hardware problem.

  • Its not horrific like people say, but ive used both Vista and OSX and i prefer OSX. But there both good os's

  • Well, i am looking for a G3 iBook (and a G3 iMac in matching colors). After all, Low End Mac says they make great 'On-The-Road' machines, plus it supports Wi-Fi and i can do any intensive tasks i need to do on my main windows machine.

  • WRONG: its not cripsta; it's Crapista

    :)

  • lol

  • I'm on NeXTStep.. RIGHT... NOW...

  • NeXTSTEP is a great OS

  • openstep dosn't have fancy puffs of smoke when you drag an item off the dock? well, that was in OS X anyway...great job though, it's sad to hear that lots of NeXT computers were burned/destroied, huh?

  • if you change your shutter speed to a multiple of 30 you should get rid of the flicker... you may also need to set your display refresh rate to be 60Hz.

  • u shoul hook it to lan and see wht i dose

  • A FF-Class video, and a FF-Class (for it's time, and for collectors) computer.

  • good job al! keep it up

  • Nice job. You really seem to enjoy making these videos. I've always been curious about NeXT machines and wanted to know more about them, and I found this to be a very informative and historical summary and demonstration of this system.

    Thanks! Keep up the good work.

  • nope, lisa came out 1983, NeXT didn't even exist back then (I think the Cube came in 1989)

  • whoops, probably just confused it with the Mac...

  • Al,

    all you needed to do to color an object was drag the color from the color well (the thing with the color preview)

    it's the same in OS X

  • Damn I wish I had a NeXT cube to go along with my iMac G3. That would be so cool.

  • You can see that Steve took part in that OSs! ^^ Nice review Alfred. C U

  • A lot of old id Software games were made on NeXT including Commander Keen, Wolfenstien, and Doom.

  • Power Cube LOL...

  • What camera did you use for this?

  • No, this came out in the early '90s. the Lis-er is from '84.

  • poopskin, Lisa is from 1983. Macintosh is 84.

  • I want one of those.

  • On the back is that a SmartBoard?

    we've got them on school.

  • ME 2

  • Hi - no, just a regular white board.