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This review first appeared in Issue 361 ofPC Pro.
In summer 1985,Appleco-founder Steve Jobs rebuffed three offers to become a professor.
Yet he still wanted to make a big impact in the education sector.
Jobs was 30 years old and ready for a new challenge.
These are very low-level people that you wont miss, and they will be leaving anyway, Jobs explained.
But he wasnt entirely telling the truth.
Jobs had little love for those running Apple at the time.
And that was about as black and white as you better make things.
It was a dual-boot machine allowing for the UNIXoperating systemas well as Mac OS but ended up being cancelled.
All were disillusioned with life at Apple.
In that respect, Jobs was being honest.
His chosen few likely would have left regardless of his intention to create afresh.
Jobs didnt waste much time, either.
Steve called me and I went for a long walk with him, Lewin toldPC Pro.
But I was a little frustrated by what was going on inside of Apple.
One of the products which mattered to me was Big Mac, he added.
I didnt feel like I could trust getting the things done that needed to be done at Apple.
Jobs new company offered a way forward and Lewin climbed aboard.
The next step
Apple was furious.
Apple threatened to sue Jobs, who told the press he found the situation strange.
The teams expertise would be enough to make an impact.
We have an immense amount of confidence in each others abilities and genuinely like each other, Jobs toldNewsweek.
It helped that the groundwork was already laid.
Lewins internet ran deep and he had a great understanding of the computing needs of higher education.
You have consumers who are replenished annually.
You have researchers doing the most far out, extensive research on the planet.
Major research institutions in the US are billion-dollar operations complete with this unique set of characteristics.
It led us to thinking about the architecture of the computer we wanted to build.
Seeking perfection
It took a long time for the NeXT computer to be developed.
It had no revenue or products, Isaacson wrote.
But thats not to say it didnt have anything of note.
NeXT had also hired Hartmut Esslinger.
Again, as Isaacson wrote, its difficult to get precise cubes out of tight moulds.
The solution was moulds with separately created sides, but it added $650,000 to the manufacturing costs.
Jobs penchant for perfection also prompted the purchase of a new sanding machine.
The screws inside the NeXT were plated as well, further inflating the costs.
But at least the NeXT was moving forward.
That was a lot of storage at the time, Lewin told us.
It was also erasable, removable and non-magnetic.
You didnt pay any monthly fees.
We wanted to dismantle the distribution side of the workstation market.
Lewin knew that universities didnt relish having to build power plants to run workstations.
That happened at Berkeley when they got 1,000 Sun 1 workstations, he said.
The NeXT Computer would need 300W of power.
We could help create large labs, Lewin said.
Groundbreaking OS
NeXTSTEP was an object-oriented, multitasking Unix operating system based on the Mach kernel.
But the graphical mouse-based operating system was hugely innovative in other ways.
It introduced the idea of the Dock seen in modern Macs.
Networking is pretty fundamental to Unix and also where the world was heading, Lewin explained.
Its just a shame it took so long for it to see the light of day.
Jobs had wanted the NeXT Computer to be released with the operating system within 18 months.
That was never going to happen, but you couldnt fault the ambition and attempt to push development along.
But there was beef between Jobs and Gates.
Jobs wanted Microsoft to create software for the NeXT Computer but Gates didnt want to go in that direction.
Yet the computer was a pricey little thing.
Jobs wanted the computer to cost no more than $3,000 when it was under development.
It ended up selling for $6,500, and that was with a university discount.
If buyers wanted a printer, that would cost an extra $2,000.
Theyd also need to wait for version 1.0 of NeXTSTEP, which wasnt released until 1989.
He told them it was actually five years ahead of its time.
The legacy
Even so, Lewin soon became concerned.
Although the NeXTcube and NeXTstation were released in 1990, the company wasnt in good financial health.
But in the end the asset was always software.
Other variations followed, until NeXT decided to concentrate on NeXTSTEP in 1993.
The company would go on to leave a strong legacy.
NeXTs biggest legacy, however, involved Apple.
Apple wanted NeXTSTEP to become the foundation for a new Mac operating system to replace classic Mac OS.
The move also heralded Jobs return to the company.
And far from having an adverse impact on Apple, it played a large role in being its saviour.
In that sense it was a successful failure, one that ultimately ended up making Jobs a household name.
It was, Lewin said, with a level of understatement, an interesting moment in time.
