NeXT: A Look Back at Steve Jobs’ Forgotten Project

NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later developed web software. It was founded in 1985 by CEO Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been forcibly removed from Apple that year. NeXT debuted with the NeXT Computer in 1988, and released the NeXTcube and smaller NeXTstation in 1990. The series had relatively limited sales, with only about 50,000 total units shipped. Nevertheless, the object-oriented programming and graphical user interface were highly influential trendsetters of computer innovation.

NeXT partnered with Sun Microsystems to create a programming environment called OpenStep, which decoupled the NeXTSTEP operating system’s application layer to host it on third-party operating systems. In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry to concentrate on marketing OPENSTEP for Mach, its own OpenStep implementation for several other computer vendors. NeXT developed WebObjects, one of the first enterprise web frameworks, and although its market appeal was limited by its high price of US$50,000 (equivalent to $100,000 in 2023), it is a prominent early example of dynamic web pages rather than static content.

Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 for $427 million, including 1.5 million shares of Apple stock. The deal appointed Steve Jobs, then the chairman and CEO of NeXT, to an advisory role at Apple; and OpenStep was combined with the classic Mac OS, to create Rhapsody and Mac OS X.

“Many successful applications have lineage from NeXT, including the first web browser and the video games Doom and Quake.”

History

Background

In 1985, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs led a division campaign called Super-Micro, which was responsible for developing the Macintosh and Lisa computers. They were commercial successes on university campuses because Jobs had personally visited a few notable universities to promote his products, and because of Apple University Consortium, a discounted academic marketing program. The Consortium had earned over $50 million on computer sales by February 1984.

Jobs met Paul Berg, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, at a luncheon in Silicon Valley held to honour President of France François Mitterrand. Berg was frustrated by the time and expense of researching recombinant DNA via wet laboratories, and suggested that Jobs should use his influence to create a “3M computer” that is designed for higher education.

Jobs was intrigued by Berg’s concept of a workstation and contemplated starting a higher-education computer company in late 1985, amid increasing turmoil at Apple. Jobs’s division did not release the upgraded versions of the Macintosh computer and much of the Macintosh Office software. As a result, its sales plummeted, and Apple was forced to write off millions of dollars in unsold inventory. In 1985, John Sculley ousted Jobs from his executive role at Apple and replaced him with Jean-Louis Gassée. Later that year, Jobs began a power struggle to regain control over his company. The board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs took a business trip to Western Europe and the Soviet Union on behalf of Apple.

NeXT, Inc.

Logo designed by Paul Rand

Redwood City headquarters at 900 Chesapeake Drive, July 2022

Original NeXT team

In September 1985, after several months of being side-lined, Jobs resigned from Apple. He told the board he was leaving to set up a new computer company, and that he would be taking several Apple employees from the Super-Micro division with him, but he also promised that his new company would not compete with Apple and might even consider licensing their designs to them under the Macintosh brand.

Several former Apple employees followed him to NeXT, including Joanna Hoffman, Bud Tribble, George Crow, Rich Page, Susan Barnes, Susan Kare, and Dan’l Lewin. After consulting with major educational buyers from around the country, including a follow-up meeting with Paul Berg, a tentative specification for the workstation was drawn up. It was designed to be powerful enough to run wet lab simulations and affordable enough for dormitory rooms. Before the specifications were finished, however, Apple sued NeXT on September 23, 1985, for “nefarious schemes” to take advantage of the cofounders’ insider information.

Jobs argued, “It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans.” The suit was eventually dismissed before trial.

In 1986, Jobs recruited graphic designer Paul Rand to create a brand identity for $100,000 (equivalent to $278,000 in 2023). Jobs recalled, “I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.'” Rand created a 20-page brochure detailing the brand, including the precise angle used for the logo (28°) and a new company name spelling, NeXT.

1987–1993: NeXT Computer

First generation

In mid-1986, NeXT changed its business plan to develop both hardware and software, rather than just workstations. Rich Page, a NeXT cofounder who formerly directed Apple’s Lisa team, led a team to develop the hardware, while Mach kernel engineer Avie Tevanian led the development of NeXT’s operating system, NeXTSTEP. NeXT’s first factory was established in Fremont, California in 1987, capable of manufacturing about 150,000 machines per year. NeXT’s first workstation is the NeXT Computer, nicknamed “the cube” due to its distinctive magnesium one-foot (30 cm) cubic case. The case was designed by Hartmut Esslinger and his team at Frog Design.

In 1987, Ross Perot became NeXT’s first major outside investor. He invested $20 million for 16% of NeXT’s stock after seeing a segment about NeXT on the 1986 PBS documentary Entrepreneurs.

This NeXT Computer was used by computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to create the world’s first web server and web browser, which is also a web page editor.

In 1988, he joined the company’s board of directors.

NeXT and Adobe collaborated on Display PostScript (DPS), a 2D graphics engine that was released in 1987. NeXT engineers wrote an alternative windowing engine edition to take full advantage of NeXTSTEP. NeXT engineers used DPS for on-screen graphics such as title bar and scroller for the user-space windowing library.

The original design team anticipated completing the computer in early 1987 and launching it for $3,000 (equivalent to $8,000 in 2023) by mid-year. On October 12, 1988, the NeXT Computer received standing ovations when it was revealed at a private gala event, “NeXT Introduction – the Introduction to the NeXT Generation of Computers for Education” at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The following day, selected educators and software engineers were invited to attend the first public technical overview of the NeXT computer at the event “The NeXT Day” held at the San Francisco Hilton. The event gave developers interested in NeXT software an insight into their architecture, object-oriented programming, and the NeXT Computer. The luncheon speaker was Steve Jobs.

I want some kid at Stanford to be able to cure cancer in his dorm room.

Steve Jobs, on the purpose of the NeXT Computer

The first NeXT Computers were test launched in 1989, and then NeXT sold a limited number to universities with NeXTSTEP 0.9 beta pre-installed. Initially, this targeted the United States higher-education institutions only, with a base price of $6,500 (equivalent to $16,000 in 2023). The computer was widely reviewed in magazines, primarily the hardware portion. When asked if he was upset that the computer’s debut was delayed by several months, Jobs responded, “Late? This computer is five years ahead of its time!”

The NeXT Computer has the 25 MHz Motorola 68030 central processing unit (CPU). The Motorola 88000 RISC chip was originally considered, but it was not available in sufficient quantities. The computer has between 8 and 64 MB of random-access memory (RAM), a 256 MB magneto-optical (MO) drive, a 40 MB (swap-only), 330 MB, or 660 MB hard disk drive, 10BASE2 Ethernet, NuBus, and a 17-inch MegaPixel grayscale display with 1120×832 pixels. In 1989, a typical new PC, Macintosh, or Amiga computer included a few megabytes of RAM, a 640×480 16-color or 320×240 4,096-color display, a 10- to 20-megabyte hard drive, and few networking capabilities. It is the first computer to ship with a general-purpose DSP chip (Motorola 56001) on the motherboard. This supports sophisticated music and sound processing, including the Music Kit software.

The magneto-optical (MO) drive manufactured by Canon Inc. is the primary mass storage device. This drive technology was relatively new to the market, and the NeXT is the first computer to use it. MO drives were cheaper but much slower than hard drives, with an average seek time of 96 ms; Jobs negotiated Canon’s initial price of $150 per blank MO disk so that they could sell at retail for only $50. The drive’s design made it impossible to move files between computers without a network, because each NeXT Computer has only one MO drive and the disk can not be removed without shutting down the system. The drive’s limited speed and capacity makes it insufficient as NeXTSTEP’s primary medium.

In 1989, NeXT started a deal for former Compaq reseller Businessland to sell the NeXT Computer in international markets. Selling through a retailer was a major change from NeXT’s original business model of only selling directly to students and educational institutions. Business land founder David Norman predicted that sales of the NeXT Computer would surpass sales of Compaq computers after 12 months.

That year, Canon invested $100 million in NeXT, for a 16.67% stake, making NeXT worth almost $600 million. This had the condition of installing NeXTSTEP on its own workstations, greatly expanding NeXTSTEP’s market. After NeXT exited the hardware business, Canon produced a PC line called object.station—including models 31, 41, 50, and 52—specifically designed to run NeXTSTEP on Intel. Canon was NeXT’s distributor in Japan.

The NeXT Computer was released in 1990 for $9,999 (equivalent to $23,000 in 2023). In June 1991, Perot resigned from the board of directors to concentrate on his company, Perot Systems, a Plano, Texas–based software system integrator.

Second generation

In 1990, NeXT released a second generation of workstations, a revised NeXT Computer called NeXTcube and the NeXTstation. The NeXTstation’s nickname is “the slab” for its low-rise box form-factor. Jobs ensured that NeXT staffers did not nickname the NeXTstation “pizza box” to avoid inadvertent comparison with competitor Sun workstations, which already had that nickname.

The machines were initially planned to use the 2.88 MB floppy drive, but its floppy disks were expensive and had failed to supplant the 1.44 MB floppy. NeXT used the CD-ROM drive instead, which eventually became the industry standard for storage. Color graphics were available on the NeXTstation Color and NeXTdimension graphics processor hardware for the NeXTcube. The new computers, with the new Motorola 68040 processor, were cheaper and faster than their predecessors.

In 1992, NeXT launched “Turbo” variants of the NeXTcube and NeXTstation, with a 33 MHz 68040 processor and the maximum RAM capacity increased to 128 MB. In 1992, NeXT sold 20,000 computers, counting upgraded motherboards on back order as system sales. This was a small number compared with competitors, but the company reported sales of $140 million for the year, which encouraged Canon to invest a further $30 million to keep the company afloat.

In total, 50,000 NeXT machines were sold, including thousands to the then super-secret National Reconnaissance Office located in Chantilly, Virginia. NeXT’s long-term plan was to migrate to one of the emerging high-performance Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architectures, with the NeXT RISC Workstation (NRW). Initially, the NRW was to be based on the Motorola 88110 processor, but it was later redesigned around dual PowerPC 601s, due to a lack of confidence in Motorola’s commitment to the 88000-series architecture in the time leading up to the AIM alliance’s transition to PowerPC.

1993–1996: NeXT Software, Inc.

In late 1991, in preparation for NeXT’s future withdrawal from the hardware industry, the company started porting the NeXTSTEP operating system to Intel 80486-based IBM PC compatible computers. In January 1992, it was demonstrated at NeXTWorld Expo. By mid-1993, the process was completed, and version 3.1 (NeXTSTEP 486) was released.

NeXTSTEP 3.x was later ported to PA-RISC– and SPARC-based platforms, for a total of four versions: NeXTSTEP/NeXT (for NeXT’s own hardware), NeXTSTEP/Intel, NeXTSTEP/PA-RISC, and NeXTSTEP/SPARC. Although the latter three ports were not widely used, NeXTSTEP gained popularity at institutions such as First Chicago NBD, Swiss Bank Corporation, O’Connor and Company, due to its sophisticated programming model. The software was used by many U.S. government agencies, including the United States Naval Research Laboratory, the National Security Agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Some IBM PC clone vendors offered somewhat customized hardware solutions that were delivered running NeXTSTEP on Intel, such as the Elonex NextStation and the Canon object.station 41.

In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry, and the company was renamed to NeXT Software, Inc. Consequently, 230 of the 530 staff employees were laid off. NeXT negotiated to sell its hardware business, including the Fremont factory, to Canon, which later cancelled the deal. Work on the PowerPC machines was stopped, along with all hardware production. Sun CEO Scott McNealy announced plans to invest $10 million in 1993 and use NeXT software in future Sun systems. NeXT partnered with Sun to create a programming environment called OpenStep, which is NeXTSTEP’s application layer decoupled for third party operating systems. In 1994, Microsoft and NeXT collaborated on a port of OpenStep to Windows NT, which was never released.

In January 1994, a developers’ conference was held in Washington, D.C. Attendees of the 1994 NeXT East Coast Developer Conference had the opportunity to purchase a software bundle including NEXTSTEP 3.2.

Stepstone, originally named Productivity Products International (PPI), was a software company founded in 1983 by Brad Cox and Tom Love, best known for releasing the original version of the Objective-C programming language. In April 1995, NeXT acquired the Objective-C trademark and rights from Stepstone. Stepstone concurrently licensed back from NeXT the right to continue selling its Objective-C based products. Apple Computer acquired the rights to Objective-C along with NeXT one year later.

After exiting the hardware business, NeXT focused on other operating systems. New OpenStep products were released, including OpenStep Enterprise for Windows NT. NeXT launched WebObjects, a platform for building large-scale dynamic web applications. It did not achieve wide popularity, partly because of the initial high price of $50,000 (equivalent to $100,000 in 2023), but it did generate profit for the company. WebObjects is the first and most prominent early example of a web application server that enabled dynamic page generation based on user interactions instead of static web content. WebObjects was used by many large businesses including Dell, Disney, Deutsche Bank, the BBC, Ford, Nissan, and later Apple for the iTunes Store and online Apple Store.

Legacy

Though not very profitable, the company had a wide-ranging impact on the computer industry. Object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces became more common after the 1988 release of the NeXTcube and NeXTSTEP. The technologically successful platform was often held as the trendsetter when other companies started to emulate the success of NeXT’s object-oriented system.

Widely seen as a response to NeXT, Microsoft announced the Cairo project in 1991; the Cairo specification included similar object-oriented user-interface features for a proposed consumer version of Windows NT. Although Cairo was ultimately abandoned, some elements were integrated into other projects.

By 1993, Taligent was considered by the press to be a competitor in objects and operating systems, even without any product release, and with NeXT as a main point of comparison. For the first few years, Taligent’s theoretical innovation was often compared to NeXT’s older but mature and commercially established platform, but Taligent’s launch in 1995 was called “too little, too late”, especially when compared with NeXT.

Several developers used the NeXT platform to write pioneering programs. For example, in 1990, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer to develop the first web browser and web server. The video game series Doom, and Quake were developed by id Software using NeXT computers. Other commercial programs were released for NeXT computers, including Altsys Virtuoso—a vector-drawing program with page-layout features, which was ported to Mac OS and Windows as Aldus FreeHand v4—and the Lotus Improv spreadsheet program.