
Ads and articles from UnixWorld Magazine (1992-1996) - jjuliano
http://www.sunhelp.org/unixworld/
======
peterevans
The first picture I clicked into
(<http://www.sunhelp.org/unixworld/coherent.jpg>) is an ad for Coherent Unix,
which was a commercial Unix clone sold in the '80s and '90s, by Mark Williams
Company in Northbrook, IL.

I look them up to see what they're up to and, of course, they are no longer in
operation. Interestingly enough, it was owned by a man named Robert Swartz,
who just happened to be the father of one Aaron Swartz. What coincidence.

(Wikipedia page here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company>)

~~~
grobertson
Wow, I never knew that, small world. I have very fond memories of Coherent. I
split the license cost (a whopping $99 bucks) with a buddy, both of us making
near-minimum wage as bench techs for a used computer shop in Atlanta (which,
much to my shock is still in business today). A few months later I scraped
together enough money to pick up a used Sun 3/60 running Sun OS (and shortly
after that, moved to an early version of Slackware), but Coherent will always
be my _first_ Unix.

------
mrbill
Hi, Bill here, owner of sunhelp.org. My own site is the last thing I expected
to see on HN this morning. :)

~~~
mrbill
(... and I just put up a nicer index page for this content)

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wgx
The article ('Steve-Jobs-UW041993.pdf') on Next's move to software-only is
really interesting.

~~~
kunai
It is. Personally, I think the analysts were wrong and Next should have
continued with the Cube and the Station. They just should have cut down on
profit margins slightly to accumulate more sales, and then return the margins
to normal after the device became popular.

The iMac is so popular now, and it's a closed system as well. Granted, the
world is quite different now than it was in 1995, but they could have pulled
it off.

I'm using GNUstep on my Linux box, and the software behind Next was 20,
perhaps 30 years ahead of its time. If you compare it to OS X, you'll see that
barely anything has changed besides a few graphical updates and a few nifty
utilities such as Notification Center and Spotlight.

It was a great system. But keeping the hardware and software integrated might
have allowed the company to keep its true vision intact. They only needed to
cut back on the style a bit.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
A sentiment that several Apple employees have voiced is:

 _NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M_

That says it all, I think. Apple today is more like a successful NeXT than it
is like Apple of the 90s.

~~~
kunai
I don't think I share your sentiment. Apple has always been a consumer-
oriented company, whereas NeXT was oriented towards business, educational, and
professional use.

Apple is still a consumer electronics company, not a professional one.
Whatever pro products they used to sell are now obsolete and they don't seem
keen on updating them. The only thing that Apple computers share with NeXT
machines is the operating system.

~~~
mimiflynn
The MacBook Pro line is still quite popular with professionals, especially
developers. With the retina display on the 15inch, it appears to be the best
option for a professional laptop available.

Is this different from the kinds of 'pro products' you are referring to?

~~~
kunai
Well, really, a professional desktop is what they're missing, and features in
OS X that may have been asking for, such as the latest version of OpenGL, ZFS
or a suitable replacement, and better virtual desktop/window management that
was crippled with 10.7.

It seems as if all "improvements" to OS X are for consumers and "power users,"
such as Notification Center, Mission Control, porting of iOS apps over to the
desktop, etc. There's been no major breakthrough since FileVault 2 was
announced, and usability has drastically dropped since 10.6 in favor of kitsch
like the stitched iOS apps.

------
pjmlp
Apple should have kept A/UX back in the day, instead of dumping it.

I only managed to see one system live at an exhibition back in 1994.

Has anyone used it back then?

~~~
fool
I bought one of Apple's first webservers, which used A/UX. It wasn't a really
great Unix compared to some others available at the time.

------
zdw
The SGI Indy one is worth looking at if only for the O'Reilly media ad on the
second page. Some things change, some stay the same.

~~~
twoodfin
The SGI Indy was the first Unix system I lusted after. They ran a magazine ad
showing off the _back_ , with the tagline "Any Port in a Storm".

Not too many computing experiences were more pleasurable than the first time I
walked into an MIT computer lab as an incoming freshman and found myself face-
to-face with an Indy: Video camera, Jurassic Park file browser and all.

------
undrcvr
OMG, I still have my coherent 3,5"s somewhere... loved it on my superbeefy
386sx

