Both NeXT and Improv brought innovative solutions to their respective computing questions of the day. NeXT made UNIX palatable to those scared of the terminal, debuted Display Postscript on a mega-pixel display, and made development for the system a snap. Improv rethought multi-dimensional data modeling, offered English-like formulas, and made it easy to rearrange data views on a whim.
The bones of both remain to this day. NeXT’s operating system, NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP, morphed into macOS, and by extension iOS. Lotus abandoned Improv fairly quickly, but a quick survey of today’s spreadsheets shows a universal embrace of pivot tables.
↫ Christopher Drum
I had never heard of Lotus Improv, so I learned a lot reading this outstanding article by Drum.
Good Morning All.
While I have no attachment to “retro” in general (and “retro-computing” specially), NEXT and its WindowMaker clone will always have a special place in my heart, It was the peak of an easy to use and to understand UI and I always feel sad that we left this path.
There is an excellent WindowMaker theme for GTK4 and it surpasses any other theme in clarity in my opinion.
Fun fact: one of the main reasons to stick with XFCE4 is the vertical panel, which I learned first to appreciate on WindowMaker. It just makes sense!
Only yesterday, I frowned on users again: Small laptop screen, 16:10. Windows Top panel, bottom panel, web application in the browser with browser top panel and status bar. There was no freaking vertical space left to show the application! And nobody saw anything wrong with that.