[WillAdams]

The sad thing is, the logo was a tiny part of the experience, which these days folks only see the successors of iOS (and derived) devices, and Mac OS X (or whatever they're calling it these days).

At least we've moved on from the early releases where the Carbon Finder.app was a significant impact on memory, and the Java calculator app took multiple bounces to load Java and run.

I just wish that Apple would do something more meaningful than Sidecar so as to provide a stylus experience for Mac OS.

[xp84]

Wait, the calculator was a Java app? What versions was that the case for? That’s really funny.

[fredoralive]

Apple got aboard the Java hype train with early versions of Mac OS X, they added a bridge so that you could write Cocoa apps with it, so the calculator is presumably a case of them dogfooding it. It didn't catch on. The bridge stuff was dropped after a while, and then built in Java was dropped just before the Mac App Store was launched.

[incanus77]

Yep. It felt pretty even back then, where you could choose either. Get it? Java and Cocoa...

[Lammy]

Relevant: http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.19/19.12/Co...

[criddell]

Have you ever used GNUstep?

[linguae]

I’m not the parent, but I’ve been following GNUstep’s development on-and-off for 20 years (I was in high school then and thus am too young to experience NeXTstep in its heyday). I truly wish the Linux community had embraced GNUstep instead of the Qt vs GTK path we ended up on. Even if the Apple/NeXT merger never happened, we could’ve ended up being a refuge for abandoned NeXT users and have adopted NeXT’s solid application ecosystem; imagine updated versions of Lighthouse Design’s applications running on Linux. Of course, the Apple/NeXT merger happened and changed the course of history; Linux could’ve benefited from sharing a GUI API with Mac OS X.

One of the most interesting developments that came out of the GNUstep world was Étoilé, which was developed in the late 2000s and looked like a promising rethinking of what a desktop powered by GNUstep technology could do. One impressive feature was its Smalltalk implementation, which brought NeXT technology “home” to its Smalltalk inspiration (NeXTstep can be thought of as a polished Smalltalk machine, with Objective-C and Unix in place of the Smalltalk language and runtime). Sadly Étoilé doesn’t appear to have been worked on in about a decade.

I know in recent years there’s been a major effort to get GNUstep’s API on par with the latest version of Apple’s Cocoa, increasing compatibility. Maybe GNUstep will finally become more popular one day, but I’m glad the project hasn’t died after all these years.

[projektfu]

Yeah, Étoilé didn't get enough traction and they moved on. It was looking very attractive for a while. David is now working on CHERI.

[em-bee]

that is the problem, unfortunately it will take a few dedicated people who do not worry about traction get a project like this to a useful state. i had long hoped for GNUstep to become a great desktop environment but at this point i am more likely to go with haiku, once they have a decent multiuser experience (which they are already working on)

[linguae]

Yeah, the other challenge with GNUstep’s adoption is building a desktop and an app ecosystem for it. There are some GNUstep apps, but the ecosystem is not at the level of KDE/Qt and GNOME/GTK. In addition, even if GNUstep becomes fully compatible with the latest version of Cocoa, there are many macOS APIs that are not part of Cocoa. Another complication is the Mac ecosystem’s gradual move toward Swift.

Haiku may not have a dynamic API like Cocoa/GNUstep, but it already has a well-designed desktop and it is capable of running BeOS binaries on x86 (but not x86-64), IIRC. From a desktop perspective, Haiku looks very promising; it’s finally almost ready for prime time.

[WillAdams]

Back in the day I booted the live CD, and I bought a magazine ages ago because the cover disk promised a similar environment.

I actually talked a co-worker at a previous job into using it (he was doing Mac OS X development at work, didn't have a Mac at home, and was able to use GNUstep for this after a fashion).

I do have a Linux box which I can use for it as well, and experimenting with it there is something I want to do now that my MacBook stopped supporting my Wacom One. My next tech purchase will be a Raspberry Pi 5, and I hope to experiment with GNUstep on it.