Re:NeXTSTEP on the HP 712 Part 1: Installation
by mschaef on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @11:06PM
(#22124766)
> back in the day, Jobs hated networking because it was "just an umbilical cord back to the mothership"
I didn't realize this... but it completely fits both the person and the time.
For those that might be unaware, back in the 70's through maybe even the early 90's, there was a belief that personal computing represented a form of personal liberation from centralized control/power.
The idea was that a computer you could own and manage yourself represented freedom from the establishment (which took the for, of centralized minicomputers, mainframes, and the like). Of course, 30 years later, we now know how that all turned out, with the idea of the network being a connection back to a central mothership sounding pretty darn accurate.
I learned the 56K on the NeXT (and it saved my butt when I had to emulate a slow small MCU (together with an FPGA) to build a real-time emulator so our customer (Canon) could complete development in parallel with the US mothership getting their act together for shipping verified silicon). But I didn't spend much time with the i860. I should have. And, over course, their main CPU (68040) was better than the 68020s running on my desktop workstation.
That Magnetic Optic thing, though, it turned a pretty slick design, and a very slick SDK, and an "ok" implementation of Display Postscript into something that just felt like a sluggish brick. And, of course, back in the day, Jobs hated networking because it was "just an umbilical cord back to the mothership".