e 3D graphics market.The NeXT was Steve Jobs' first major computer after leaving Apple. It was released in late 1989, and featured a Motorola 68040 processor (early NeXT's used a 68030), greyscale graphics (color was added later), 8 Mb of RAM, a built-in DSP (digital signal processor) and the first commercial magneto-optical drive (256 Mb capacity). Its NeXTstep operating system was a version of UNIX with a friendly and consistent GUI wrapped around it. The NeXT cost just under $10,000.Unfortunately, the NeXT had a few critical flaws. The primary programming style for the NeXT was correctly chosen to be object oriented, but the primary language chosen for the machine was Objective-C, a hybrid mix of C and SmallTalk. It should have been C++. Objective-C went on to become a dismal failure in terms of wide spread use, whereas C++ went on to supersede C as the dominant language for the entire computing industry. The NeXT was also based on the aging Motorola 68000 CISC architecture. It should have been based on a RISC architecture such as MIPS or SPARC. And finally, the user interface relied heavily on PostScript for its text rendering, which made it slow.These flaws, plus the fact that it was priced slightly too high, meant that the NeXT never really caught on. The NeXTstep operating system was eventually ported to other platforms including x86 and SPARC, but it still failed to capture any significant market share. Nevertheless, it served as an inspiration for future workstations. It took several years before mainstream UNIX workstations came with a decent GUI, for example.Whew! As the Grateful Dead said, What a long, strange trip it has been! ...
