The NeXT Cube was a personal computer designed by Steve Jobs during his time away from Apple. It had advanced features but was too expensive and lacked a floppy drive. Its design was distinctive and it had a powerful CPU and operating system. It is remembered as a forerunner of later Apple computers.
The NeXT Cube, also known as the NeXTcube, was a personal computer designed by Apple Computers founder and CEO Steve Jobs during a time he was in between stints with the company. After Jobs was fired from Apple in the mid-1980s, he founded NeXT Computers. The NeXT Cube, while advanced for its time, may have been too advanced and introduced too many idiosyncrasies to be widely accepted.
The NeXT Cube was produced from 1988 to 1993. The computer had a number of features expected of modern machines, such as a graphical user interface. It was complete with a monitor and printer, although the monitor could only be displayed in grayscale, which some considered one of its drawbacks.
One of the most distinctive features of NeXT Cube&trade was its design. While most computers of the time were rectangular cream-colored horizontal or vertical towers, the NeXT Cube tinkered with a new design. It was black and cubic in shape, as the name suggests.
Jobs’ vision was to create one of the most powerful personal computers in the world up to that time, and he seemed to achieve that goal. It had 8 Mb of RAM, up to a 33 MHz CPU, and a 25 MHz math coprocessor. It also included a modem. The operating system was called NeXTstep. It was based on the Unix operating system, just as later versions of the Mac computer would be.
Also, like the iMac, the computer didn’t have a floppy drive. This lack of portable storage, which was way out of the ordinary at the time, may have contributed to the downfall of the NeXT Cube. During its early years, very few people had email, and the only way to transfer files was through portable storage devices. Most people had disk drivers for such purposes.
However, even more than the lack of a hard drive, it was the machine’s price that arguably prevented it from gaining widespread popularity. The NeXT Cube had an original price of 6,500 US dollars (USD) when it first hit the market. Even by today’s standards, it’s an expensive computer.
Despite being so expensive, the NeXT Cube is fondly remembered as a revolutionary machine for its time and a forerunner of many of the features found in later versions of Apple Computers. Indeed, Jobs’ return to Apple was facilitated by the fact that Apple acquired NeXT Computers. Today, despite being nearly 20 years old, some NeXT Cube&trade computers are still used for servers.
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