NeXT, Inc. was an American computer company founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs to build advanced workstations and software for higher education and enterprise after his ouster from Apple Inc.; contemporaneous accounts and later biographies place the founding in 1985 with early backing from Ross Perot and Canon. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jobs “quickly started another firm, NeXT Inc., designing powerful workstation computers for the education market,” with Perot and Canon among the funding partners. (Britannica).

Founding, funding, and identity

NeXT’s earliest years were capitalized in part by billionaire H. Ross Perot, who invested $20 million and joined the board, a deal widely reported in the period and recounted in business histories and Jobs’s authorized biography. (book://Walter Isaacson|Steve Jobs|Simon & Schuster|2011; Newsweek). The company’s visual identity—an isometric black cube with tilted lettering—was designed by Paul Rand, who charged a flat $100,000 fee and presented the work in a rationale “book,” a collaboration later detailed by Rand’s critics and by Jobs himself. (WIRED, book://Walter Isaacson|Steve Jobs|Simon & Schuster|2011).

Hardware: the Cube and the Slab

NeXT unveiled its first system, the NeXT Computer (informally “the Cube”), at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on October 12, 1988. Contemporary and retrospective reporting notes its 1‑ft³ magnesium chassis, Motorola 68030 CPU, 256 MB magneto‑optical drive, Display PostScript graphics, and integrated DSP. (Tom’s Hardware). Subsequent models included the NeXTcube and the more affordable NeXTstation (“the slab”), introduced in 1990. Technical summaries and museum histories describe the distinctive industrial design and storage choices, with the MO drive showcased at launch as cutting‑edge yet slower than hard disks. (Tom’s Hardware; Computer History Museum).

Operating system and developer tools

NeXT’s operating system, NeXTSTEP, combined a Mach microkernel and BSD UNIX userland with innovative application frameworks written in Objective‑C, plus Interface Builder (for visual UI composition) and Project Builder, creating a cohesive object‑oriented environment for rapid application development. Apple’s historical developer documentation explicitly traces Cocoa’s lineage to NeXTSTEP’s AppKit and Foundation, explaining the evolution from “kits” to frameworks and the adoption of the “NS” prefix in the OpenStep era. (Apple Developer – Cocoa: A Bit of History). The system’s on‑screen imaging used Display PostScript, co‑developed with Adobe, extending printer PostScript to interactive displays, a milestone described in technical reporting of the era. (IEEE Spectrum; Tech-Insider/Byte DPS explainer).

NeXT’s integrated tools and object libraries made the platform attractive to researchers and custom application developers; the company later introduced the Enterprise Objects Framework for object‑relational data access and, in 1996, WebObjects for server‑side dynamic web applications. Trade press coverage from the time documented WebObjects 3.0’s arrival and Java integration, while Apple later confirmed that pre‑acquisition pricing for developer + deployment licenses exceeded $50,000 before being reduced to $699 in 2000. (InfoWorld; Apple Newsroom).

Role in the birth of the web

Tim Berners‑Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT workstation at CERN; the world’s first web server (info.cern.ch) and the initial browser/editor ran on that machine. CERN’s official history notes that “the first website at CERN—and in the world—was hosted on Berners‑Lee’s NeXT computer,” and the earliest web software prototypes were developed on NeXT systems. (CERN – Birth of the Web; CERN – Where the web was born).

From hardware to cross‑platform frameworks

Amid limited hardware sales, NeXT shifted strategy in 1993 to emphasize software, renaming itself NeXT Software, Inc., and partnering with Sun Microsystems to publish the OpenStep API specification so NeXT’s object frameworks could run on Solaris and other operating systems. Contemporary wire reports announced Sun’s equity investment and the joint OpenStep initiative, with Sun later shipping an OpenStep environment for Solaris. (UPI). Developer and press briefings documented OpenStep’s separation of Foundation and Application Kit and its goal of platform independence. (Apple Developer – Cocoa: A Bit of History).

Acquisition by Apple and software legacy

On December 20, 1996 Apple announced it would acquire NeXT in a friendly deal valued at about $400 million, a transaction widely covered in the press; Apple finalized the acquisition on February 7, 1997. Reprints of Apple’s press statements and contemporaneous reporting describe the strategic aim: to use NeXT’s modern object‑oriented OS and tools to build Apple’s next‑generation system. (MacTech – Apple Agrees to Acquire NeXT; Tech‑Insider – Acquisition Finalized; WIRED). Apple’s subsequent Mac OS X announcements and ship dates positioned Mac OS X as a UNIX‑based system with Quartz graphics (replacing Display PostScript) and the Cocoa frameworks derived from OpenStep/NeXTSTEP. (Apple Newsroom – Unveils Mac OS X; Apple Newsroom – Mac OS X GM/Ship). Industry analyses have since noted how NeXT’s frameworks and development philosophy continued into macOS and, by extension, iOS and other Apple platforms. (Ars Technica).

Cultural and developer impact

Beyond academia and finance, NeXT systems were valued by early internet and game developers; id Software’s John Carmack has described adopting NeXT hardware across the company in the early 1990s and building the Doom toolchain there before porting the game to DOS. (Cult of Mac). NeXT’s Interface Builder and object kits informed later Cocoa design patterns, visible today in the “NS” prefix used throughout macOS APIs and documented in Apple’s historical notes. (Apple Developer – Cocoa: A Bit of History).

Technologies and products (selected)

• –Workstations: NeXT Computer (1988), NeXTcube (1990), NeXTstation (1990), noted for magnesium enclosures, MO storage, integrated DSP, and Display PostScript graphics. (Tom’s Hardware; Computer History Museum).
• –Operating systems and frameworks: NeXTSTEP (Mach/BSD with AppKit and Foundation in Objective‑C), OpenStep (cross‑platform API specification), OPENSTEP (NeXT’s implementation), Portable Distributed Objects, Enterprise Objects Framework. (Apple Developer; InfoWorld).
• –Web software: WebObjects (1996), an early enterprise web application server used by major firms; Apple later reduced licensing costs dramatically and used it internally (e.g., Apple Online Store, iTunes Store). (InfoWorld; Apple Newsroom).

Aftermath and influence

Following the 1997 acquisition, NeXT’s engineers and technologies formed the backbone of Apple’s software renaissance, with Cocoa derived from OpenStep/NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X (macOS) built on a UNIX foundation with a different graphics layer (Quartz). Apple’s official announcements throughout 2000–2002 emphasized the UNIX core and Cocoa frameworks that originated at NeXT. (Apple Newsroom; Apple Newsroom).