Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
The history of Lotus reminds us of the fact that there are only two
common exit strategies for software corporations or any other cor-
porations: they fail and go out of business or they are acquired by a
larger company. Two other options occur for the luckier ones: they
generate enough revenues to go public, or they generate stable rev-
enues and can operate forever as private companies.
NeXT
The history of NeXT is also part of the history of the famous entrepreneur Steve
Jobs, who founded both Apple and NeXT. The excellent biography of Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson provides the details of how Jobs was forced out of Apple and
started NeXT. While the politics of Jobs's leaving Apple are fascinating, what he
did at NeXT is the topic of this section: primarily the NeXT software and to a less-
er degree the hardware.
Jobs had been interested in the concept of specialized workstations for educa-
tion and professional scientific work, because ordinary Apples, Macs, and IBM
computers were not fast enough and lacked high-end graphics.
After being forced out of Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs founded NeXT in Red-
wood City, California, the same year. He was also able to get several of his former
Apple colleagues to join him. (Apple had an unusual employment agreement that
allowed employees to own some of the software they developed at Apple, unless
it had been released. This fact would be useful at NeXT.)
However, the departure of several key Apple players for NeXT put a kink in
the immediate plans when Apple sued. The suit was eventually settled out of court
and the former Apple personnel were allowed to continue their design work for
NeXT.
The prestige of Jobs and his past successes meant that other entrepreneurs had
confidence in him. For example, Ross Perot, the founder of EDS, invested $20
million in NeXT and acquired 16% of its stock.
The first NeXT computer came out in 1988 and was called “the cube” because
of its physical dimensions. The case was in fact a cube made of magnesium and
sized 12 inches on each side. While it was elegant, it had some design and per-
formance problems.
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