Some of you may not know, but when Steve Jobs was fired he left Apple in September 1985, he soon founded another technology company, also focused on computer creation: NeXT.
Despite Jobs's expertise in the area, NeXT's computers were not prominent, unlike the company's operating system, NeXTSTEP, which lived long enough to underpin Apple's Mac OS X.
Although they have gone offline, NeXT computers have in some ways marked the evolution of personal computers, and an interesting part of this story has been highlighted recently or rather, remembered, as reported by The verge.
Computer historian Kevin Savetz digitized the autumn 1989 edition of the NeXT catalog and archived the document in great quality on Archive.org. This made the 138-page magazine available online, providing an understanding of NeXT's software, user interface, and peripherals.
Savetz said the catalog was part of a large number of older computers ”he had purchased from a local computer recycling company. After digitizing the document, the historian auctioned it off and donated the proceeds to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES).
I had never seen a catalog like this, and couldn't find much reference about it online, so I decided to scan it.
Some estimates suggest that NeXT shipped about 50,000 computers in all, so its sales were very limited. As we said, the NeXTSTEP software legacy inspired the building of Ma's best-known operating systems, such as current macOS and iOS.
