 Xgrid 's original concept can be traced back to Zilla.app , found in the OPENSTEP operating system , created by NeXT in the late 1980s . Zilla was the first distributed computing program released on an end @-@ user operating system and which used the idle screen @-@ saver motif , a design feature since found in widely used projects such as Seti @ Home and Distributed.net. Zilla won the national ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award ( Science Category ) in 1991 for ease of use and good design . Apple acquired Zilla , along with the rest of NeXT , in 1997 and later used Zilla as inspiration for Xgrid . The first beta version of Xgrid was released in January 2004 . 
