this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 71 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

NextStep - eventually became Mac OS X (that’s why all sorts of system calls start with NS)

BeOS. Playing 4 video streams at the same time in 1995 was mind blowing.

OS/2 was WINE before WINE

SixDegrees was a social network before Friendster

Prodigy was an online service (and ISP later) owned by Sears, which had a significant mail-order business. It could have been Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I used to work at Sears, and I could never figure out how a company that found its initial success in a catalog business didn’t immediately see the opportunities the internet presented. Now Sears is all but gone, and Bezos gets to go to space with Shatner :(

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Eddie fucking Lampert.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

They very likely saw, but very likely could not make the transition without causing revolt in its ranks and in its own middle management. Or even its own board directors.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Man, I remember seeing that BeOS demonstration that had a spinning cube with a different video playing on each face, and being absolutely dumbfounded. Thanks for reminding me of that.

[–] flambonkscious 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah that looked so promising

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

that’s why all sorts of system calls start with NS

What do you mean with this?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Programmers that make MacOS apps see a lot of things with "NS" in the name. For example, if you want to play sound in your code, you can use something called NSSound. If you want to interact with the clipboard (or "pasteboard" as MacOS calls it), you use something called NSPasteboard

"NS" is short for "NeXTStep". Apple kept the old prefix even though it's called MacOS now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the explanation!