A long time ago this channel "Another Boring Topic" (which I quite like) posted an overview of NeXT history and called it part 1. Well now, 5 years later, he finally posted Part 2. So if you want 3 hours of quite thorough NeXT history, please watch (or listen).
Yep enjoying this. Watching in 10 minute chunks when my kids let me have some time to myself!
Going over these with scrutiny... there are definitely a few imperfections here and there in the material. Like most NeXT histories written by Apple enthusiasts, more than half the runtime is taken up by the fruit company. It's a damn shame that he just wrote off the NeXT's really good productivity software as though it didn't exist—the only software he ever really mentions is WWW and the id games.
In the first part, he also repeats the erroneous claim that
Wolfenstein was developed on NeXT hardware, even though John Romero's autobiography ("Doom Guy") makes it very clear that they only got the machines in while production on the last three episodes (Nocturnal Missions) was wrapping up... and everyone who's actually worked with Wolf 3-D tools will tell you up and down that the level editor, TED, is a DOS program! (It was used on basically every id game and id-licensed game prior to
Doom, with its last title being
Rise of the Triad.) I've corrected another essayist on this topic before—maybe he sourced that article before it was fixed.
Eventually I'd like to pen a Definitive NeXT History essay (or possibly wiki) that goes through events that happened inside the NeXT ecosystem and community year by year, without constantly switching over to an Apple storyline.
@Protocol 7 has definitely accumulated enough notes from trawling Usenet to make this seem tractable.
I'm really interested in the Government orders of Next computers and software. Was the hardware maxed out? What was the ratio of developer models to user models.
Yeah, actually after I posted this I watched it and I was also disappointed in how long he spent talking about Apple being lost with its model line up. I feel that was like 40 minutes and was totally not needed. I think the Avie Tevanien interview I posted in this channel is actually a better next history than this thing was.
Whilst I agree that the listing out of every 90s Macintosh model is maybe over emphasising the point of the mess apple was in, I believe the point of the video isn't just a history of NeXT, but the history of NeXT viewed through the lense of Apple's journey to OS X, which the title of the video does imply. Also the channel name does also I think make it clear that their videos are going to go into a lot of depth. It's a shame about a few inaccuracies but again the video's author also acknowledges several times that they won't have got everything right.
Quote from: ptek on Sep 21, 2025, 10:32 PMI'm really interested in the Government orders of Next computers and software. Was the hardware maxed out? What was the ratio of developer models to user models.
Totally! What were they doing on them? Presumably lots of custom software
Quote from: ptek on Sep 21, 2025, 10:32 PMI'm really interested in the Government orders of Next computers and software. Was the hardware maxed out? What was the ratio of developer models to user models.
One might say some of that work was a whole different Echelon of their business.
And there is a lot of inaccurate information in that history. The Watler Isaacson biography is highly inaccurate on apple history as well.
To be fair to the above video maker, if you're just going on the books, there is a lot to get wrong. No NeXT insiders have really spilled the beans about that history.
Whereas the the folklore.org project has done a very good job of it.
Will be interesting to see how this new book does:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/09/22/half-a-century-of-apple-lore-gets-explored-in-david-pogues-new-book