The first web client and server -- built with NEXTSTEP.

The WWW project was originally developed to provide a distributed hypermedia system which could easily access -- from any desktop computer -- information spread across the world.

The web includes standard formats for text, graphics, sound, and video which can be indexed easily and searched by all networked machines.

Using NeXT's object-oriented technology, the first Web server and client machines were built by CERN -- the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in November 1990. Since then the Web has truly encompassed the globe and access has proliferated across all computer platforms in both the corporate and home markets.

Source: NeXT Software, Inc., 1996

 

The Web as a NextStep of PC Revolution.   

From the IT history viewpoint, "in this case Tim's NeXT machine which he showed me (Ben Segal) while he was setting it up in his office" was a crossroad of the two IT revolutions, or by the other words a symbolic handshake of the two IT revolutions' heroes:

Steven P. Jobs - a hero of the PC revolution,

Tim Berners-Lee - a hero of the WWW revolution.

It's a long way to...
Siberia,
It's a long way to ...
Next


The below following text is the quotation
from "Steve Paul Jobs" biography.
By Lee Angelelli, Undergraduate Student,
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Fall 1994.
(Assignment as part of the requirements for the course
"Professionalism in Computing", CS 3604),
very lightly edited by J.A.N. Lee

... Over the past seven years of Apple's creation, Jobs had created a strong productive company with a growth curve like a straight line North with no serious competitors. From 1978 to 1983, its compound growth rate was over 150% a year. Then IBM muscled into the personal computer business. Two years after introducing its PC, IBM passed Apple in dollar sales of the machines. IBM's dominance had made its operating system an industry standard which was not compatible with Apple's products.

Jobs knew in order to compete with IBM, he would have to make the Apple compatible with IBM computers and needed to introduce new computers that could be marketed in the business world which IBM controlled. [Morrison, 1984, p. 86]

To help him market these new computers Jobs recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Cola for a position as president at Apple.

Jobs enticed Scully to Apple with a challenge:
"If you stay at Pepsi, five years from now all you'll have accomplished is selling a lot more sugar water to kids. If you come to Apple you can change the world."
[Gelman and Rogers, 1985, p. 46], [Conant and Marbach, 1984, p. 56]

...As the Macintosh took off in sales and became a big hit, John Sculley felt Jobs was hurting the company, and persuaded the board to strip him of power.

John Sculley tried to change the discipline of the company by controlling costs, reducing overhead, rationalizing product lines to an organization that some in the industry called Camp Runamok. [Morrison, 1984, p. 90]

Sculley came to the conclusion that "we could run a lot better with Steve out of operations," he says.
[Gelman and Rogers, 1985, p. 46]

Jobs tended to value technological "elegance" over customer needs which is a costly luxury at a time of slowing sales. And Jobs's intense involvement with the Macintosh project had a demoralizing effect on Apple's other divisions.
[Gelman and Rogers, 1985, p. 47]


Jobs was exiled to an office
in an auxiliary building
that he nicknamed
"Siberia"


Jobs says he did not get any assignments and gradually found that important company documents no longer landed on his desk. He told every member of the executive staff that he wanted to be helpful in any way he could, and he made sure each had his home phone number. Few ever called back. "It was very clear there was nothing for me to do," he says, "I need a purpose to make me go." [Gelman and Rogers, 1985, p. 47]

He soon came to believe that he would find no purpose within Apple. In July, Sculley had told security analysts in a meeting that Jobs would have no role in the operations of the company "now or in the future.

When Jobs heard of the message he said,
"You've probably had somebody punch you in the stomach and it knocks the wind out you and you cannot breathe. The harder you try to breathe, the more you cannot breathe. And you know that the only thing you can do is just relax so you can start breathing again."
[Gelman and Rogers, 1985, p. 48]


... After leaving Apple, Jobs' new revolutionary ideas were not in hardware but in software of the computer industry. In 1989 Jobs tried to do it all over again with a new company called NextStep.

He planned to build the next generation of personal computers  that would put Apple to shame.

It did not happen.

After eight long years of struggle and after running through some $250 million, NextStep closed down its hardware division in 1993.

Jobs realized that he was not going to revolutionize the hardware. He turned his attention to the software side of the computer industry...


Comments to: "...NextStep closed down its hardware division in 1993. Jobs realized that he was not going to revolutionize the hardware."

Before this sad event has happened lots of the NeXT machines successfully infiltrated into an elite area of the IT professional community and has created the new level of computer culture. One of these machines was the "Tim's NeXT machine " , that was used as a detonator of the WorldWideWeb explosion (G.R.G. -- 1996).

During summer 1998 some of the Web surfing people, who usually visited the NeXT Software, Inc.  Web site: http://www.next.com , began to receive the following message: "The site has moved to http://www.apple.com/enterprise/."

Steve Jobs, is spouting off grandiose claims in support of his company's new product (Internet Mac).... Is this 1986?

Apple Touts iMac's Speed ...,        by Matt Hines, Newsbytes   08/14/98

So, "Is this 1986"   or 1998  any way Jobs is Apple's CEO again and  the Story is going on the next circle ...