A developer can then mix and match these objects, passing messages from one to the other in order to accomplish a particular task.
At a high-level, object-oriented programming uses a set of "objects" which are defined in code to have certain characteristics and capabilities. Steve Jobs was a huge proponent of object-oriented programming and he largely built NeXT around giving developers tools to program in this style. It's an object-oriented programming language developed as a superset of the original C language so that both object-oriented Objective-C code and procedural C code can be combined in the same program.
The Objective-C programming language was used to develop software for the NeXTSTEP operating system, and it carried on to OS X and iOS. For instance, the popular FFmpeg audio/video encoder, originally developed for Linux, also powers some video encoding apps for OS X, such as Handbrake. In addition, because OS X is fully POSIX-compliant-a defined set of standards that all UNIX operating systems adhere to-porting freely available tools or open source software to OS X is (relatively) straightforward. Daemons sit back and wait for a signal to spring into action they handle most of the background tasks like connecting to networked printers on your Mac or playing music while you play Words With Friends on your iPhone. With pre-emptive multitasking, UNIX-based operating systems can also use daemons, small programs that continually run in the background.
Pre-emptive multitasking means that your computer could keep chugging along doing other tasks even while one application might be tied up using some of the system's resources. Protected memory means that most app crashes on OS X would no longer take your whole machine down with them. Some errant Photoshop plug-in could crash your entire Mac, or the Mac OS might come screeching to a halt while you dug through menus looking for some arcane command. Graybeards may remember the days of the classic Mac OS. UNIX at its core was meant to be a powerful operating system for the massive computers of the day, but it could also be easily programmed and controlled by developers using a simple video terminal. Its development throughout the early '70s led to the development of the C programming language by Thompson's colleague Dennis Ritchie. UNIX was originally conceived in 1969 by Bell Labs' Ken Thompson for the PDP-7 minicomputer. Beneath all the slickly styled windows, icons, scrolling lists, and buttons sits a rock-solid, certified UNIX operating system. We consulted several developers with knowledge of both NeXTSTEP and OS X they universally agreed that one crucial feature of NeXTSTEP that made OS X and iOS what they are today is its underlying UNIX roots. This week, we remember some of those technologies which continue to power key features of Apple's devices. As part of the deal, Jobs came back to Apple, eventually taking over as CEO and making the company into the consumer electronics giant it is today. Sixteen years later, several technologies developed or championed by NeXT still survive in OS X and in its mobile cousin, iOS. The story of how OS X came to be is thrilling in its own right, but suffice it to say that Apple ended up buying Steve Jobs' second computer company, NeXT, and using its NeXTSTEP operating system as the basis of a new generation of Macs.Īpple announced the acquisition of NeXT on December 20, 1996, noting it wanted NeXT's object-oriented software development technology and its operating system know-how. In the 1990s, Apple struggled to bring the original Mac OS-originally written in 1984 for the resource-constrained Macintosh 128K machine-up to modern operating system standards.