Among the many milestones in the tech world this last year, one occurred almost without notice. The Bay Area NeXT Group, an important user group formed 15 years ago around Steve Jobs' second great computer design, slipped into history in 2005, even as the technology that sparked it reached millions of users under a new name: OS X.
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I've had a lot of positive experiences with user groups. You'll always find someone who's interested in the stuff you're interested in and you can learn a great deal from them.
Even today I look back at my Amiga days with great fondness. I haven't found anyone whose ever had an Amiga who wasn't in love with it.
And the Commodore 64, my first machine, was just love at first sight.
To all you people out there who built the really great early machines: thank you for giving so many users a great experience.
Today I'm involved in a Mac user group. The old fogies like me see a lot of new users coming in who have become interested in the platform. I think Steve Jobs should acknowledge us more. We have kept the candle burning. The fact that there's a great new Amiga OS still out there is solely due to the passion of the many users who wouldn't go without a fight.
User groups are essential to a platform's survival.
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2005-11-05
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2005-07-06
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"choose death over giving up my NeXT.
*hugs NeXT Station* "
Alright, get a room. 
Seriously the NeXT machine was ahead of it's time. I found it an easy machine to start with and be productive without even reading the manual. Unix? What's that? Programming took some getting use to for those use to C/C++. Shame Steve mishandled it, but I guess with Apple buying NeXT? He got his revenge.
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It wasn't that it was mishandled, it was all timing. the market had two main platforms already, people didn't want to have to support a third as well. Remember, this was back in a time when Apple and the IBM/Microsoft conglomorate were still rather competative to one another, before Microsoft took over. One could argue that Apple was mishandled rather successfully I do believe, but NeXT's failure was in large part due to the unwillingness of developers to support a third major operating system. Sad too.
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Well that may have been a small part. Remember the NeXT hardware was aimed for the workstation and academic market. Apple really doesn't play in that market. While IBM does, so did several other companies, and price-wise they were better. It took NeXT quite some time to realize that hardware wasn't were it's at (BeOS made the same mistake). Time that could have been better spent elsewere.
This is all covered in "The NeXT book".
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2005-07-09
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Love how anytime an article talks about anything going awy they mention OS/2. IBM doesn't officially stop shipping it until tommorow people. Give it's last full shipping date. And then, IBM will still support it on contracts. and really, eComStation is OS/2 with updates. So OS/2 is still shipping.
But geeez, the article is about NeXT, so hey, let's bring up OS/2. The other OSes they mention aren't supported by their founding companies, let alone those comanies still truly existing. And no, Commodore as an MP3 seller isn't the Commodore of 64 fame.
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I don't see how its really all that interesting. I attended BANG several times and they never discussed NeXT anyway, it was all OS X and WebObjects stuff. The group stayed current with the direction of NeXTStep/OpenStep into OS X but didn't really stay focused on old black hardware, so IMHO it was only the name that really remained as a throwback to the origons. I've still got my TurboSlab in the garage and fire it up from time to time... great little machine.
I will say, however, that during the build up to OS X you got a huge ammount of insider information by way of BANG, including first looks before anyone else direct from the developers themselves. BANG was a great group.
