Today, Fred Lunau is an eLearning Technologist and an experienced Technical Sales Manager in the eastern United States, but in 1990 —Fred was working as a Sales Engineer or “SE” for NeXT Computers, Inc. Steve Job’s ‘other’ computer company.
This ‘other’ computer was a computer that made history more than it was a part of it. Until now.
AppStorey brings you the untold story of how a computer originally designed for Education, ended up besting all competitors for building Mission Critical Custom Applications. NeXT did this by harnessing the power of Object Oriented Tools and Technologies, at a time when they were merely academic principles in engineering.
This was a bold and decisive move for NeXT and one that got the attention and praise of a lot of software designers. Few outside the software engineering community would have understood the impact that these tools had and it is a testament to Steve Jobs’ and team for both having the vision and having the fortitude to follow through with it.
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” —Steve Jobs.
These tools were creating mission critical custom applications faster than any computer or technology produced at the time.
Simply put, there was no competition for a computer with this kind of power in the development system and that is what Fred sells for a living. That is what Fred lives to sell.
A computer like no other, a computer where the standard demonstration is to create a large portion of the toughest App the client works on before you even visit the site.
Just show that. They’ll get the idea from there.
“Honestly? when we went into the client and got to show what the NeXT could do? There really wasn’t any competition for it.” —says Lunau about NeXT technology “There just wasn’t anything you could buy, or make, that had its particular blend of tools and design, it made better software faster than anything else there was.”
This NeXT development power did not go unnoticed by software inventors of every sort, including Tim Berners-Lee who used the tools available on this NeXT Cube computer to create the world wide web. Tim would not have been able to create such a rich, interconnected networking application and server system on any other computer at that time.
The NeXT Computer was a true network server but it was also the most useable client computer, a unique proposition at the time.
The NeXT advanced this unique blend of integrated server systems —a personal computer made with developer tools that were like no other. Developer tools that put a dent in the universe of computing, and changed the way we looked at computer technology forever.
“I got in to NeXT thanks to a friend, Rick Kern” — reports Fred Lunau for AppStorey “Rick was one of the early developers at NeXT working on their AppKit and developer tools”
The NeXT was really the very last personal computer designed before TCP/IP networking was standard for PCs. The NeXT was the very first personal computer designed with a server operating system, Berkeley’s Mach UNIX all built-in. This very same Mach UNIX microkernel boots today’s Mac OS X, iOS, Apple Watch and Apple TV. They all descend directly from NeXT.
In fact, today’s mobile world stands entirely on the two legs of software created using NeXT. Consider the fact that we rely upon the web to transfer information freely between networks and mobile devices, while we rely on the AppStore to protect digital rights of artists online. These two software inventions, the web and the AppStore both, were created on NeXT, during this frenzy of NeXT software proliferation, at a time before any other computer was even capable.
You didn’t know.
AppStorey brings you the authentic, untold story of how the web was won, and how the AppStore became king. Join us along a journey of inspiration and innovation that ultimately lead to revolution in computing history.
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