IBM finally confirmed its interest, first reported here in April, in the graphical user interface and object-oriented programming tools developed by NeXT Inc for the NeXT Computer System, and says that it plans to offer them as the graphical user interface to its AIX implementations of Unix. IBM has had to sign software licensing agreements – already reported – with NeXT Inc, Adobe Systems Inc and Stepstone Inc to get all the elements. The company says it intends to use the software to provide a colour graphical user interface – NeXT is promising colour next year and application development toolkit for workstations running AIX. This could pose problems to NeXT if the user interface proves the most popular feature of the machine in the educational market at which it is aimed, because in February, IBM finally announced its own long-promised scholar’s workstation, the 6152, based on the RT but including an 80286 and the functional equivalent of a PS/2 Model 60 as well (CI No 860) and seems certain to offer the interface and tool-kit on the 6152. However Jobs is not likely to be too concerned, because the IBM offering costs about the same as his own – base price $6,395, and offers rather less. IBM’s agreement covers the entire NextStep system developed by NeXT – Window Server; Application Kit; Interface Builder; and Workspace Manager – including the Display Postscript system, from Adobe Systems Inc; and Stepstone’s Objective-C, and IBM will be supporting the same application programming interfaces as NextStep. Applications with the same Programming Interface will be compatible and also able to look the same on the screen. Full details of the NeXT Computer System are in page three.
