
Test Drive NeXT’s WebObjects in Revolutionary Dodge Virtual Showroom (1995) - atroche
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/comp.sys.next.announce/YcNajT-6hO4/8sPQ1n74BzgJ
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teddyuk
I have to use WebObjects at work, it might have been good in its time but it
is awful now.

The biggest problem is that we aren't allowed (political bs) use the open
source fork so can't use things like a shared session :(

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nsxwolf
Is it still maintained in any way? How old is it? This sounds crazy.

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sitharus
WebObjects hasn't been updated for 8 years or so now.

There's an open source fork maintained by some people who rely on it, it's
improved a lot since Apple's last release.

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sigzero
In case people want to check it out (I am not involved in the project or use):

[https://wiki.wocommunity.org/display/WEB/Home](https://wiki.wocommunity.org/display/WEB/Home)

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itomato
Steve demoed WebObjects and this Dodge virtual showroom at a Microsoft
Conference in 96:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNXogpwvAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNXogpwvAk)

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mwcampbell
> And you have to know nothing about HTML to use WebObjects.

How well did that work out in practice? Did WebObjects make heavy use of
server-side in-memory sessions (which would require sticky sessions in a
modern load-balanced setup)? Could it do things like registering event
handlers to let you submit data back to the server or even go to another part
of the app without having to know about URLs and HTML forms?

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cmg
IIRC, WebObjects had an application called WebObjects Builder that was
essentially a WYSIWYG HTML editor that was the web equivalent of Cocoa's
Interface Builder. You'd drag & drop UI elements and hook them up to data
objects, which would generate Java classes in the background.

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Scramblejams
I hate web dev, and I find myself wishing that there were a modern equivalent
of what you've described. Is there one that doesn't suck?

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mwcampbell
Vaadin [1] might be close, if you don't mind the JVM on the server side.

[1]: [https://vaadin.com/introduction](https://vaadin.com/introduction)

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Cyph0n
+1. This is the closest thing to what OP described that I know of.

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cmrdporcupine
I attended a NeXT WebObjects demo/training session in Toronto in late 1996, or
early 1997. It was quite impressive for its time, but the licensing cost was
absolutely ridiculous. They overpriced it such that by the time you were done
with an Oracle or whatever license, only a Very Large Corp would be interested
in using it, so they inevitably missed the wave of .com companies getting
themselves out there. Per server or per-core licensing of some kind I believe,
too.

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protomyth
They dropped the price ($50,000 to $499), but frankly it was the Apple
acquisition (or the NeXT takeover of Apple if you prefer) that really ended
it. All the enterprise related stuff withered on the vine.

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mustacheemperor
The price drop was after the merger, in fact. They started bundling it with
Server for free some time after that too, but I think the sun had mostly set
by then already if I'm not mistaken.

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cmrdporcupine
The price drop was quite significantly after the merger. I am not sure of the
timeline but it probably wasn't until 2000 or so. And by that time J2EE had
taken the market it would have had.

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protomyth
I guess it was $699 [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/05/15Apple-Drops-
WebObj...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/05/15Apple-Drops-WebObjects-
License-Price-From-50-000.html) and they timed it with the 5.0 Java
conversion.

My main problem was when Apple bought NeXT we really were left in the lurch
and support was just impossible to get. Plus, canceling NeXTSTEP / OpenStep
long before OS X was ready was not a fun thing. I often wonder if Apple had
bought Be what NeXT would have become. I'm pretty sure Apple would have gone
down in flames.

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cmrdporcupine
Hard to say. But likely NeXT would have gone down in flames continuing with
pursuit of the 'enterprise' path it was on. Probably Sun would have bought
their assets, for far less than what Apple paid.

Apple, well, they were in an awkward extended transition from 68k to PowerPC
and from MacOS classic to something new. I actually think they could have made
a go of some of the internal OS projects they had, with sufficient discipline,
instead of going and buying something new. I'm not convinced that buying
NeXTstep put them ahead on anything. It took 5 years to ship OS X, I have to
think that in that time I'm sure they could have finished Copeland and shipped
it, too? I personally don't fully actually believe the line that buying NeXT
saved them.

What saved them was Jobs & crew pared down the product line, laying off a
crapload of staff, switching to Dell-style just-in-time delivery, and rolling
out the coloured iMacs (which was a big success). Hard to say how much of that
was Jobs/Ives or whether Apple without Jobs could have done the same?

Jobs killed some good stuff from the old Apple. Newton, Copeland, OpenDoc, for
example.

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protomyth
I actually think NeXT would have continued. They did make money and Sun was
all Java'ed up given their stepping out of the whole OpenStep thing. Plus,
Pixar did extremely well, and I don't think Jobs minded running both.

Copeland in my mind had no chance of shipping. It just was just another step
in the Pink -> Taligent saga. I loved the Newton but it was flawed in
direction from the start (even loved NewtonScript and Soups). OpenDoc was not
very fun to program, but others probably know better (I was more a visitor in
those days, I'm not an Apple fan, I'm a NeXT fan who had to immigrate). I
would have bought a Newton-based desktop or laptop from them though.

Be would have brought back Jean-Louis Gassée which probably would have been a
bad thing.

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based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Tapestry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Tapestry)

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Diederich
I can confirm that this technology is still in critical use at a very large
company that you would be familiar with the name of.

And everybody there hates it, and has hated it for a long, long time, but it
works Well Enough, and it would be exceedingly difficult to remove it.

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fleshweasel
I'm pretty sure this is why the Apple online store needs to be taken down for
them to add new products.

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boulos
I think the best section in this announcement is about being object oriented
("based on object technology"):

> WebObjects is based on object technology allowing developers to gain all the
> benefits of objects; reusability, maintainability, and scalability.

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pmarreck
> "We see the Web as an explosive force in corporate America today"

This was actually not as obvious in 1995.

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Theodores
> Steven P. Jobs

Who?

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protomyth
Enterprise and Italian business suits[1] require a bit more formality than a
consumer company.

1) I learned from an article about Mr. Jobs at the time that I would never be
able to wear and Italian cut business suit. The weird things Business Week
once included in their articles.

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pjmlp
Many consulting companies oriented at Fortune 500 costumers, e.g. McKinsey,
have internal manuals describing those formalities to the littlest detail.

