Next

Whilst I was studying computer science, there was a guy in one of my classes who I don't remember much about other than he was a fan of Steve Jobs and what he was doing with Next. He showed me a Next workstation they had in the computer lab and some of what it could do. It was really amazing stuff for 1991, and I ate it up. However, there was that little problem of price again. Next machines were not cheap. I did start to follow what Next was doing. This was a time when operating system technology was a popular topic. There was all sorts of things in the works at various companies. IBM was working on "Workplace OS", which was beat up for never shipping, but it was really some technologies being developed. Windows NT was starting life, and Microsoft was working on what was supposed to be the be-all end-all of systems, codenamed "Cairo", which still hasn't gone anywhere. IBM and Apple began their Taligent effort, Linux was in its formative stages, BeOS popped up later, and I think there was even a small resurgence of AmigaOS as multi-media was all the rage.

The PC people were coming up to the 32-bit operating system decision point since Windows 3.1 was getting old, and there were regular articles talking about alternatives. One I remember was comparing systems to "help" you decide what platform to switch to. It compared Windows 3.1, Windows NT, Windows 95, MacOS and OS/2. The jist of it was that whatever shortcoming that Windows NT had, then Windows 95 could pick up the slack, and whatever shortcoming Windows 95 had, then good old Windows 3.1+DOS could step in. Mac OS and OS/2 were good, but just not enough to beat the Tres Windows Hombres. That was fine as long as you could somehow run all three versions at the same time in the same kernel space.

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