NeXT

NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California. It was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who had been ousted from Apple earlier that year. The company initially developed workstation computers for higher education and business markets before shifting its focus to software.

NeXT introduced the NeXT Computer in 1988, followed by the NeXTcube and NeXTstation in 1990. Although its computers achieved limited commercial success, the company's NeXTSTEP operating system and its object-oriented software development environment and graphical user interface proved highly influential. NeXT later partnered with Sun Microsystems to create the OpenStep specification, which decoupled the NeXTSTEP operating system's application layer to host it on third-party operating systems. In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry to concentrate on marketing OPENSTEP for Mach, its own OpenStep implementation, to other computer vendors. The company also developed WebObjects, one of the first enterprise web frameworks, and a prominent early example of dynamic web pages rather than static content.

In 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $427 million. The deal returned Jobs to Apple as an advisor, and he would eventually be appointed as the company's CEO. Apple used NeXT's software technologies as the foundation for Rhapsody, Mac OS X (later macOS), and the operating systems that followed.

The company’s workstations and software served as the development platform for the first web server (CERN httpd), the first web browser (WorldWideWeb), and the video games Doom and Quake.