POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Computer for NeXT workstation designed by Hartmut Esslinger

Object No. 2003/41/1

The NeXT computer was the pet project of Steve Jobs after he was ousted from Apple Computer by the then (1985) CEO John Scully. Although Jobs had been a founder of Apple and had driven the development of its most successful product the Mac he had managed to "get up the nose of every senior manager at Apple" (Barker C. 2000, vnunetcom). The NeXT was designed for small labs, academics and professionals who had been using larger computing power to solve computational problems but, as Steve Jobs thought, were frustrated by the difficulties involved in access to time share computing power. Although the NeXT computer was a commercial failure, it is the device on which Tim Berners-Lee developed a system for linking academics across the internet using hypertext - which became known as the world wide web, it runs a Unix operating system (for reliability, open source), it could be networked, it used an object-oriented language for easier (than Mac) programming of the graphical user interface and the body was designed by Hartmut Esslinger. The NeXT computer offered a very friendly environment in which software developers could design custom applications. The computer proved popular with business and found its way into the telecommunications, banking and healthcare sectors where their ability to manage information and produce new information products was critical to their profitability and competitiveness. Companies also purchased the computer because it was "exquisitely attractive" (Garfinkel & Mahoney 2002, Building Cocoa Apps.). Apple Computer bought out NeXT Computer Inc. in 1996 and Steve Jobs went back to Apple with it. By this time NeXT had well and truly ceased the business of hardware and was focussed upon its software development and in particular NeXTSTEP. NeXTSTEP was one of the principle reasons behind the acquisition of NeXT by Apple as they were shopping around for a new operating system after failing to produce one in house. The operating system developed for the NeXT computers then evolved over the following years into the Mac OS/X operating system for Apple computers (launched march 2001). Campbell Bickerstaff, 2003 This NeXT came from a small collection of computers at the Sydney headquarters of the Data General Corporation. Data General had developed this small collection of significant computers with a focus on their own products over the life of the company in Australia. The material was offered to the museum prior to the take-over of Data General by the "Health Gate data Corp." in early 2000.