Imagesource: https://previous.unixdude.net/

From the perspective of 8-bit news, March is always the classic March hole. The post-Christmas-I-want-to-do-something-with-8bit-now-motivation™ is gone, and somehow nobody wants to release anything first.

But then things turned out differently:

What do we talk about? The best project name in a long time (Chapeau Daniel), and one of the coolest emulators, where one can actually argue, whether it belongs to retro technology or not.

The project: A NeXT Emulator currently in version 2.6 - and the thing is called Previous. 👏

Responsible for wordplay and software is an individual named Daniel from Raleigh, NC better known as unixdude. And Daniel has done a great job. The thing supports everything from NeXTstep 0.8 to OPENSTEP 4.2, audio and video implementation are complete, network access works and up to 7 SCSI disk drives can be simulated.

Whether the NeXT machines count as retro technology or not, is a question that makes no sense to argue about. Fact is, NeXT still influences software decisions in pretty much all devices that carry the bitten apple as a logo. That alone and the fun of running NeXTstep on your Mac make Previous a piece of software worth installing. You have to bring the ROM dump yourself.

So hurry down to the basement and get up the NeXTcube and the Microscope ... 🏃‍♂️