It’s easy to forget where and when macOS had its earliest origins. Its tumultuous path had its earliest start with Steve Jobs at NeXT. “NeXTStep was developed primarily by Avie Tevanian. The coder previously worked on the Mach microkernel, a supercharged version of UNIX, at Carnegie Mellon University. Jobs convinced Tevanian to join NeXT instead of taking what, in the short term, would have been a far more lucrative job at Microsoft.” This is a nifty, concise history of how it all started.
Check It Out: The Origins of macOS: Steve Jobs and NeXTSTEP
One can still play with a version of NextStep. It’s called OpenStep. I once compiled it and ran it on my Pismo. It was… different, but so weird to see some things, like the Finder and Mail.app working in that environment.
I think it’s still available via projects like MacPorts, if one has the patience to get it running. I think many Linux distros also have it as an installable package. I heartily recommend it for anyone who wants to experience what Jobs had in mind for the future of computing in the 90s. 🙂
Now I’m embarrassed… I should have read the referenced article before posting… I see they mentioned it too. :blushing:
One feature of OpenStep I forgot to mention, and that I don’t think the article mentions is that in OpenStep (and I think NextStep), you could tear off menus and keep them on the screen. Very useful for some tools you were using a lot at the moment. (For instance, you could keep the “Edit” menu on screen for quick copying and pasting, or the Font menu for quick experimentation.)