NeXT Computer was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs - one of the founders of Apple Computer Company. Involved in the personal computer industry since its fledgling 8-bit days, and with the experiences of the sucessful AppleII and Macintosh systems, Steve set his sights on a new object oriented graphical system which he called "NeXT".
In 1989 NeXT debuted their first system, a 12x12x12 black box which quickly became known as the "NeXT Cube". In a break from industry standards, the cube had NO FLOPPY! Instead, the machine sported a high capacity optical drive. Hailed as groundbreaking by some, and as "just a another CPU in a box" by others, the main feature of the NeXT system was the NeXTstep operating system, a graphical user interface built on top of unix.
The NeXT Cube was pricy and the optical drive exhibited reliability problems. In 1990 NeXT redesigned the system, releaseing a cost-reduced Cube with a floppy drive, and a flat "pizza box" style system called the NeXTstation. The system never really caught on, and the NeXT hardware was discontinued in 1993.
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The NeXTstation. Following in the geometric theme of the Cube, this machine quickly earned the nickname "The slab".
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The most innovative feature of NeXT computers is the NeXTstep operating system. With a graphical user interface (GUI), object oriented design, and it's foundation on industry standard UNIX, NeXTstep has outlived the hardware it was designed for. NeXT company coninued to provide NeXTstep software for other platforms, until 1996 when NeXT was acquired by Apple Computer Company, and the NeXTstep operating system became the basis for Apples OS X.
Shown here are some original NeXT manuals and floppy/CD media.