Productivity Environment:

Steve Jobs discusses the productivity environment of the next computer, emphasizing its advanced networking and group productivity features. The system aims to improve collaboration and is built to support mission-critical applications.

User Interface:

The Next Step operating system includes familiar elements like menus and windows but adds the “dock,” a space for frequently used applications. This dock is always visible, allowing quick access to essential tools.

Performance and Graphics:

Jobs points out the system’s ability to move complete windows, including color images, without lag. This is a benefit for those working in areas like publishing where fast, efficient handling of images is crucial.

Multitasking:

The system runs on Unix, supporting multitasking. Users can easily hide applications when not in use. Hidden applications go behind their corresponding icons in the dock.

Email Features:

The NextMail application offers smooth scrolling and supports rich content like fonts, graphics, and even color photographs. Users can also voice-annotate emails. The mail system is designed for ease of use, even for executives.

Drag and Drop Functionality:

Jobs demonstrates the system’s drag-and-drop capabilities. Files, images, and other types of data can be dragged into an email, serving as attachments. This allows for easy sharing of information between applications.

Advanced Word Processing:

The Next Computer features an advanced version of WordPerfect with a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface. This allows for high levels of customization and layout control in documents.

Services Menu:

A unique feature is the ‘services menu,’ which appears in every application. Applications can register themselves to this menu, enabling users to access services like a built-in dictionary across all applications.

Interoperability:

Jobs demonstrates how different types of files, including spreadsheets and documents, can be seamlessly embedded in email messages. These files can be launched in their parent applications directly from the email.

Conclusion:

Overall, the next computer aims to offer a seamless, integrated, and user-friendly environment for both individual productivity and group collaboration. Its diverse features, from high-performance graphics to advanced email functionalities, make it a robust platform for various professional needs.

Networking Complexity:

Steve Jobs talks about how NextStep was designed to provide powerful workstation networking but in a simpler form. Workstation networking offered better features compared to PCs and Macintoshes but was complex to use. NextStep aimed to make it as easy as a Macintosh but with the capabilities of a workstation.

Demonstration:

Jobs moves on to demonstrate the networking feature. He refers to a message from Gary, a colleague, about an article in the Wall Street Journal. Jobs is asked to locate this article in Gary’s home directory on the marketing server.

Digital Librarian:

The Digital Librarian is an application bundled with NextStep that enables keyword indexing for any text. Jobs mentions that Wall Street Journal articles have been indexed in the Digital Librarian.

Home Directory and Navigation:

Each NextStep user has a home directory for storing their files. Jobs explains how to find Gary’s home directory over the network by clicking on a globe icon, which displays all available network resources.

Intuitive User Experience:

The interface shows the “path” Jobs has taken through the network, much like a browsing history. This makes it easy to retrace steps or navigate back to previous locations. Jobs likens it to programming a radio station, suggesting the navigation is not only easy but also fast.

Conclusion:

Steve Jobs emphasizes that NextStep’s networking capabilities are not just powerful but also user-friendly, solving the dilemma of having to choose between complexity and ease of use.

Customized Navigation:

Steve Jobs demonstrates how to customize NextStep’s interface by adding a shortcut to Gary’s home directory on “the shelf.” This feature allows for quick navigation back to specific locations, streamlining the user experience.

Digital Librarian in Action:

The Digital Librarian app is utilized to search through 1,300 Wall Street Journal articles. Jobs showcases how he can quickly narrow down articles with specific keywords such as ‘Bush,’ ‘Japan,’ and ‘GM,’ demonstrating the application’s powerful search capabilities.

Seamless Multi-tasking:

Jobs illustrates how multiple applications, like the Digital Librarian and Webster’s dictionary, can run simultaneously and work together seamlessly. This negates the need for the user to act as a “system integrator,” simplifying the process and making it more efficient.

Business Relevance:

Jobs points out that such seamless and integrated functionalities are not commonly available on corporate desktops but are much needed. He states that NextStep is designed to bring this level of power and simplicity to the desktop environment.

Upcoming Developments:

He concludes by announcing that NextStep will soon be available for the Intel 486 family of processors, maintaining the same features demonstrated. This indicates NextStep’s adaptability and its intention to widen its user base.

In summary, Steve Jobs underlines the seamless, intuitive, and powerful capabilities of NextStep, emphasizing its value in fulfilling the unmet needs of corporate America’s desktop environment.

Cross-Platform Collaboration:

Steve Jobs discusses the collaborative features built into the NextStep operating system. In a demonstration, he illustrates how a newsletter can be collectively worked on by individuals using different computing platforms: Sun, PC, Mac, and Next computers. Each team member stores different elements of the newsletter in their home directories across these various systems.

Networking Abilities:

Jobs explains that NextStep is designed to work seamlessly with various networks, including those running on Novell and Apple Share. This is in addition to its native compatibility with “workstation-class networking” like TCP/IP and NFS. The operating system was specifically updated to work well with existing Novell and Apple Share networks following customer requests.

Interoperability Between Applications:

One of the standout features Jobs highlights is the interoperability between various applications on the NextStep platform. Users can simply drag and drop elements such as headlines or body text from one application to another, irrespective of the original software that created it. This feature works “automatically,” without the developers of the different applications having to specifically program them to work together.

Seamless UI for Networking:

In the demonstration, Jobs uses the NextStep’s user interface to easily navigate through different networks, like Novell’s NetWare and Apple Share, as effortlessly as he would in the native NextStep environment. The UI even allows bookmarking directories from different networks onto a “shelf” for easy future access.

Unparalleled Integration:

Jobs concludes by stating that NextStep offers unprecedented integration capabilities. It enables seamless collaboration across different systems—Sun, PC, Mac, and Next—and their respective networks. He claims that they are not aware of any other computer system that can offer this level of seamless integration across multiple networking worlds.

Object Linking:

Steve Jobs discusses a new feature in the 3.0 release of Next Step, which is object linking between applications and networks. The feature allows data in one document to be continually updated based on changes made to another source document. For example, Jobs showcases an employee handbook that needs an organizational chart embedded. He links the chart from another application into the handbook, setting it to update continuously. Any modifications made to the original chart are automatically reflected in the linked chart within the handbook. This feature provides dynamic interoperability between documents and ensures real-time data consistency.

Link Inspector:

In order to control how the linked object behaves, Jobs brings up a tool called the Link Inspector. This tool provides options to manually update from the source, open the source, or break links. For the purpose of the demo, Jobs sets it to update continually. This flexibility in how linked objects update is beneficial for different user requirements.

Seamless Updates:

Jobs demonstrates that the real-time updates occur seamlessly regardless of where the source document resides, even if it’s on a different machine across the country. This real-time updating makes the system particularly powerful for collaborative work where different team members may be working on different aspects of a project.

Fax Integration:

Additionally, Jobs briefly touches upon another feature in Next Step, which is the built-in faxing capability. He mentions that users can send a fax from any document within the Next environment. Instead of choosing to print a document, users can select the fax option, highlighting the system’s ease-of-use and integration of functionalities.

The overall theme is the push for seamless integration and real-time updating, aimed at making the Next Step environment an effective tool for both individual and collaborative tasks.

Fax Capabilities:

Steve Jobs discusses the advanced fax capabilities of Next Step, the object-oriented development environment created by Next. He highlights that with a single button click, users can convert a document to the international standard for Group 3 FAX, and then send it via a fax modem. Importantly, a single $500 fax modem can serve an entire building, facilitating fax sharing among approximately 50 people. Users can also view received faxes digitally, thereby reducing paper waste.

Object-Oriented Development:

Jobs elaborates on Next Step’s object-oriented development capabilities, emphasizing that its true power comes from the underlying architecture, not just the user interface. He describes how developers can easily build custom applications using Interface Builder, a component of Next Step. By dragging and dropping objects from palettes into the workspace, users can create custom menus and control buttons, among other features, without having to write any C code.

Database Kit and Custom Apps:

He demonstrates how to build a custom database application, highlighting the “Database Kit” that comes bundled with Next Step 3.0. This kit simplifies the process of interacting with back-end databases like Oracle and Sybase. Jobs shows how he can create a database viewer and connect it with various database tables through a simple drag-and-drop interface, allowing seamless data representation.

Flexibility and Compatibility:

Jobs notes that the Database Kit includes adapters for various databases, including Oracle, Sybase, and Teradata, making it versatile and highly compatible. This feature allows developers to create applications that can work across different database platforms without having to rewrite code.

Speed and Efficiency:

Throughout his demonstration, Jobs emphasizes the speed and ease with which these complex tasks can be completed. He showcases how a database application can be built in a matter of minutes, underlining Next Step’s capability to streamline workflows and boost efficiency.

The overarching message is that Next Step offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use environment for object-oriented software development, enabling a wide range of applications from fax communication to complex database interactions.

Legacy Applications on Next Step:

Steve Jobs discusses the compatibility of legacy software with Next Step. He mentions that businesses often have applications built on older systems like DOS that can be cumbersome to phase out. Next Step, using a product called SoftPC by Insignia, allows these legacy DOS applications to run in a window, supporting multitasking capabilities. This makes the environment versatile and useful for companies transitioning from older tech stacks.

Graphical Capabilities:

Jobs showcases the graphical power built into Next Step, emphasizing ease of development for graphically rich applications. With simple demonstrations, he shows how a 2D image can be easily manipulated to have varying degrees of transparency and even layering. The platform supports both 2D and 3D graphics, including real-time rendering.

Real-Time 3D Graphics:

Jobs dives deeper into 3D graphics, specifically mentioning the integration of Pixar’s RenderMan for photorealistic rendering. The software can create lifelike images from 3D models and even allow real-time interaction. Jobs believes that 3D graphics will become increasingly important for businesses to visualize complex data effectively.

Streamlining Development:

Jobs concludes by underscoring how Next Step simplifies the creation of robust, mission-critical applications. He stresses that a lot of the groundwork is already laid out for developers. This enables companies to deploy customized applications much quicker than before, making the software extremely efficient and user-friendly.