NeXT

Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs’ NeXT quits making computers

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NeXT Cube
The NeXT Computer was great but it didn't sell.
Photo: Rama & Musée Bolo/Wikipedia CC

February 9: Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs' NeXT quits making computers February 9, 1993: NeXT Inc., the company Steve Jobs founded after being pushed out of Apple, quits making computers. The company changes its name to NeXT Software and focuses its efforts entirely on producing code for other platforms.

In a mass layoff, 330 of NeXT’s 500 employees are made redundant in an event known internally as “Black Tuesday.” Cruelly, many people hear of their fate on the radio.

Today in Apple history: NeXT buyout brings Steve Jobs back to Cupertino

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Steve Jobs returned to Apple on December 20, 1996.
Steve Jobs pictured on December 20, 1996.
Photo: Tim Holmes/Flickr CC

December 20: Today in Apple history: Apple buys NeXT for $429 million, bringing Steve Jobs back to Cupertino December 20, 1996: Apple Computer buys NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Cupertino a decade earlier.

The deal costs Apple $429 million. It’s a massive price to pay for the failing NeXT, a computer company that already saw its hardware division crash and burn. But the price is worth it when you consider what Apple gets as part of the deal: the return of Steve Jobs.

Today in Apple history: A phone call sows the seeds of Mac OS X

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Look familiar? NeXT's OpenStep operating system laid the groundwork for OS X.
Look familiar?
Photo: The Color Convergence

Nov 25: Today in Apple history: The seeds of OS X are sown with NeXT OpenStep November 25, 1996: A midlevel manager at NeXT contacts Apple about the possibility of Cupertino licensing NeXT’s OpenStep operating system.

Garrett L. Rice’s communication with Ellen Hancock, Apple’s chief technology officer, is the first formal step in a long process. It ultimately leads to Apple buying NeXT, the creation of Mac OS X, and Steve Jobs returning home to the company he co-founded.

Today in Apple history: The world prepares for the NeXT Computer

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People couldn't wait to discover Steve Jobs' next move at NeXT Computer.
People couldn't wait to discover Steve Jobs' next move.
Image: Newsweek

October 24 Today in Apple history: World prepares for the NeXT Computer October 24, 1988: Three years after leaving Apple, Steve Jobs prepares to launch the NeXT Computer, a machine he hopes will cement his reputation as a tech genius and blow away the machines produced by Cupertino.

The new NeXT Computer receives a wave of positive publicity. Fawning stories show exactly what the 33-year-old Jobs has been working on — and what’s coming next.

Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs prepares to take on Apple

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1985 was a major turning point in Jobs' life.
Photo: ABC

2 September Today in Apple history September 2, 1985: Reports claim Steve Jobs is on the verge of setting up his own company to compete with Apple. The rumors fly after Jobs sells Apple stock holdings worth $21.43 million.

For anyone who thinks speculation about Apple’s future is an invention of the blog era, today’s “Today in Apple history” is a reminder that the tech rumor mill was alive and well in 1985.

Today in Apple history: Computer retail giant’s closure hits NeXT hard

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NeXT Cube
The NeXT Computer was great, but it didn't sell.
Photo: Rama & Musée Bolo/Wikipedia CC

May 14: Today in Apple history: Businessland closes, hitting NeXt hard May 14, 1992: Steve Jobs’ company NeXT runs into trouble as it loses a crucial deal with Businessland after the giant computer retailer closes its stores.

It comes at a time when NeXT’s luck is going from bad to worse. The closure marks one of the lowest points in Jobs’ career — before everything starts to turn around again.

1989 NeXT catalog is a stylish trip back in time

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NeXT
Can this really have been 30 years ago?
Photo: NeXT

Looking for a dose of Monday nostalgia? If so, then you might enjoy checking out the 1989 fall catalog for NeXT, the company started by Steve Jobs during his years outside Apple.

Loving scanned by amateur computer historian Kevin Savetz, it’s a fun look at computing 30 years ago.

Why SwiftUI might be the biggest thing to come out of WWDC

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Why SwiftUI is actually a big deal.
SwiftUI is actually a pretty big deal.
Photo: Apple

WWDC 2019 bug Apple lavished attention on all its platforms at WWDC this year. We even got a first look at the all-new Mac Pro. But another announcement, which didn’t grab so many headlines, may prove to be the most important thing to come out of this year’s developer conference: SwiftUI.

SwiftUI promises to fundamentally change the way developers create apps for Apple products. And you don’t need to be a techie to appreciate why it’s such a big deal.

Today in Apple history: NeXT customers get early taste of OS X

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NeXTstep
NeXTStep was an operating system ahead of its time.
Image: NeXT

September 18: Today in Apple history: NeXTStep gives NeXT customers an early taste of OS X September 18, 1989: Steve Jobs’ company NeXT Inc. ships version 1.0 of NeXTStep, its object-oriented, multitasking operating system.

Incredibly advanced for its time, NeXTStep is described by The New York Times as “Macintosh on steroids.” In an ironic twist, the operating system Jobs plans to use to compete with Cupertino turns out to be one of the things that saves Apple a decade later.

How Steve Jobs poached a Microsoft employee with a restaurant menu

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A successful Steve Jobs recruitment pitch came from an Il Fornaio menu. (It's an Italian restaurant in Palo Alto, California.)
"Do you want to eat pasta all your life, or join me and change the world?"
Photo: Lou Stejskal/Flickr CC

It’s not exactly breaking news that Steve Jobs was a great salesman. But a hilarious anecdote from Adam Fisher’s recent oral history of Silicon Valley, Valley of Genius, gives a great example of Jobs’ next-level skills.

Want to know how Jobs persuaded a product marketing expert from Microsoft to join his company NeXT? It turns out it involved little more than a bit of patented Steve Jobs charm — and a helping hand from a local Italian restaurant menu.

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Doom’s lead programmer recalls working with Steve Jobs

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John Carmack was one of the brains behind some of the biggest PC games of the 1980s and 90s.
Photo: Id Software

Id Software co-founder John Carmack was behind some of the most iconic computer game of the 1980s and 90s. This week, the legendary coder behind the smash hit games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake shared some memories of working with Steve Jobs.

Writing on Facebook, Carmack described some of his interactions with Jobs over the years — for better and for worse.

Unseen Steve Jobs interview shares business secrets

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Jobs
Who wouldn't want Steve as their instructor?
Photo: Deliberate Think

Who wouldn’t have wanted Steve Jobs to have visited their university class for a casual Q&A with the students? That’s what folks at MIT were lucky enough to experience in 1992.

Running NeXT at the time, Jobs stopped by to drop some wisdom on everything from his thoughts on leaving Apple to the state of computing to his thoughts on the right way to run a company. Excerpts from the discussion recently landed on YouTube. Check them out below.

Former Apple exec tapped to lead Computer History Museum

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Dan’l Lewin in NeXT’s Palo Alto, California, offices, 1986–1987.
Dan’l Lewin in NeXT’s Palo Alto, California, offices, 1986–1987.
Photo: Doug Menuez

The Computer History Museum named former Apple executive Dan’l Lewin as its new CEO and President today.

Lewin was one of Steve Jobs’ top guys back in the early days of Apple. He served in a number of marketing roles from 1981 to 1985 and was recruited by Jobs to join his new company, NeXT, after Jobs was fired from Apple.

Rare Steve Jobs-signed magazine goes up for auction next month

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Who wouldn't want their very own Steve Jobs autograph?
Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC

Do you fancy getting your hands on some Steve Jobs memorabilia, but can’t quite stretch to the high six figure dollar mark needed to purchase a big ticket item like an original Apple-1 computer? No problem if so — because an upcoming auction for a Steve Jobs autograph may be more in your ballpark.

The autography in question is on the front cover of a Newsweek magazine from October 24, 1988, features Jobs with his NeXT computer — the first of several computers he launched during his wilderness years outside of Apple.

Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs talks to Rolling Stone

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Steve Jobs during the NeXT years.
Steve Jobs during the NeXT years.
Photo: Doug Menuez/Fearless Genius

thursday16 There was, to put it mildly, a lot that was insanely great about Steve Jobs’ return to Apple. But one thing that always struck me as less than good from an Apple fan’s perspective was that he stopped giving revealing in-depth interviews.

As his ability to command the narrative increased, Apple’s CEO understandably shifted away from playing the media hound he’d been for the first part of his career, where he’d speak with often painful honesty to seemingly any magazine that would have him. One of his last such interviews? The one that appeared in the June 16, 1994, edition of Rolling Stone.

Apple officially makes one of Steve Jobs’ favorite projects obsolete

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WebObjects came to Apple when Steve Jobs returned from NeXT.
Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC

Twenty years after it was first released to the public, Apple has finally confirmed that its WebObjects Java-based web application framework is dead — at least as far as official Apple updates are concerned.

Never heard of WebObjects? You’re probably not alone, but back in the 1990s it was considered a breakthrough product, was one that Steve Jobs was incredibly high on, and officially came over to Apple as part of the historic deal to acquire Jobs’ former company NeXT. Even today, aspects of WebObjects are used to power its online Apple Store and iTunes Store.

Steve Jobs’s smelly old sandals just sold at auction

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These stinky old Birkenstocks from Steve Jobs's NeXT years sold for a pretty price at auction today.
These stinky old Birkenstocks from Steve Jobs's NeXT years sold for a pretty price at auction today.
Photo: Mark Scheff

An odd assortment of purported artefacts from Steve Jobs’s wilderness years – including a pair of his rated running sandals – were sold at auction today. And while it’s not entirely clear who bought them, all of the disparate items, dating back to Steve Jobs’s NeXT years, still ended up earning a pretty penny.

Long-lost video shows Steve Jobs launching his biggest failure

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Steve Jobs during the NeXT years.
Steve Jobs during the NeXT years.
Photo: Doug Menuez

Only a handful of products Steve Jobs introduced to the world became flops, but three years after he was kicked out of Apple, the tech visionary unveiled his biggest failure ever: the NeXT computer.

Video footage of Jobs’ first major public appearance since he left Apple in 1985 was lost to the world until researchers for Aaron Sorkin’s movie came across two videotapes of the NeXT’s gala unveiling at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall in 1988.

Pinterest hires former Apple designer Susan Kare

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Early Apple designer Susan Kare.
Early Apple designer Susan Kare.
Photo: Photo: Ann Rhoney

As part of the original Macintosh team back in the 80s, Susan Kare created some of Apple’s earliest typefaces and icons, but now the famous designer is ready to bring her iconic skills to Pinterest, as the company’s newest design lead.

Steve Jobs’ business cards from Apple, Pixar and NeXT go up for auction

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stevejobs1
Kate Winsley praised the Steve Jobs biopic and co-star Michael Fassbender.

Steve Jobs memorabilia collectors can now grab the holy trifecta of business cards while also doing a bit of good along the way.

Three of Jobs’ business cards from his days at Apple, Pixar and NeXT are up for auction, with proceeds going to The Marin School in California. Bidding started at $600 but it’s already up to $2,405.

Here’s a look at the cards you’ll win if you place the high bid:

AT&T baits customers with new 24-month Next plan

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att logo

Today AT&T announced a Next 24 plan that allows you to pay for your phone in small payments over the course of 30 months, with the option to upgrade after two years.

The new 24-month plan joins Next’s current 12 and 18-month upgrade options, which AT&T has been promoting heavily to get subscribers off traditional two-year contracts.

iSpy: How a photojournalist became Steve Jobs’ hand-picked photographer

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Doug Menuez photographed Steve Jobs for close to a decade. Picture: Tereza Machado-Menuez
Doug Menuez photographed Steve Jobs for close to a decade. Picture: Tereza Machado-Menuez

Family and a few close friends aside, very few people got the inside track on Steve Jobs.

One of the few exceptions was Doug Menuez, an award-winning documentary photographer. For almost a decade between 1985 and 1994, Menuez shot an unprecedented number of photos of Jobs during his wilderness years outside Apple. And, as can be seen in the gallery above, he also took some astonishing inside shots of Apple during this same time frame.

In the process, Menuez became one of the foremost documentarians of an incredible period in Silicon Valley history. To celebrate the launch of his new book, Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000, Menuez spoke with Cult of Mac about his background with one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs to ever live.

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T-Mobile: AT&T’s Early Upgrade Program Is ‘Calculating, Sneaky, Underhanded’

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AT&T’s new early upgrade program is “calculating, sneaky, underhanded,” according to a new print ad from T-Mobile that will be published in USA Today.

AT&T Next is designed to let customers upgrade their smartphone more often — once every 12 months — and it is a direct competitor to T-Mobile’s new Jump plan. But T-Mobile has been quick to make its feelings about Next clear, accusing AT&T of trying to take more money from its customers.

T-Mobile CEO Says AT&T Next Is All “Smoke And Mirrors”

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John-Legere

As a response to T-Mobile’s new Jump plan that allows customers to upgrade their smartphone once a year for free, AT&T announced Next two days ago, which offers similar perks as Jump but at a much higher cost.

T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere has already launched an AT&T Next bashing campaign to go along with the anti-AT&T rant filled keynote he delivered on July 10th. According to an email exchange with CNET, Legere views AT&T Next as just “a poor copycat” of Jump that’s designed to ripoff consumers more than ever: