NeXT
NeXT, Inc. was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California, which specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later developed the first dynamic web page software. It was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been 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, it is a prominent early example of dynamic web pages rather than static content.
Apple bought NeXT in 1997 for $427million, including 1.5million shares of Apple stock. The deal appointed Steve Jobs, then the chairman and CEO of NeXT, to an advisory role at Apple; and OPENSTEP for Mach 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 SuperMicro, 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 $50million from computer sales by February 1984.Jobs met Paul Berg, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, at a luncheon in Silicon Valley held to honor 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. In September 1985, after several months of being sidelined, 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 SuperMicro 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.
Original NeXT team
NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs and several former Apple employees, 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 a workstation computer 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 $2billion 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. 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 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 kernel engineer Avie Tevanian led the development of NeXT's operating system, NeXTSTEP. NeXT's first factory was established in Fremont, California, in 1987; it was 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 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 $20million for 16% of NeXT's stock after seeing a segment about NeXT on the 1986 PBS documentary Entrepreneurs. In 1988, he joined the company's board of directors.
NeXT and Adobe collaborated on Display PostScript, 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 by mid-year. On October 12, 1988, the NeXT Computer received standing ovations when it was revealed at a private gala event, "NeXT Introduction" 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.
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. 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 uses a 25 MHz Motorola 68030 central processing unit. 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, a 256 MB magneto-optical drive, a 40 MB, 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 320x240 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 on the motherboard. This supports sophisticated music and sound processing, including the Music Kit software.
The magneto-optical 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 Businessland, a former Compaq reseller, 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. Businessland founder David Norman predicted that sales of the NeXT Computer would surpass sales of Compaq computers after 12 months.
That year, Canon invested million in NeXT, for a 16.67% stake, making NeXT worth almost $600million. 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. 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. The company reported sales of $140million for the year, which encouraged Canon to invest a further $30million 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 architectures, with the NeXT RISC Workstation. 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.