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Much of the hoopla over NeXT is due to the fact that the company's founder, Steve Jobs, has had such an impact on the computer industry. In 1977 he marketed the Apple II computer, which ultimately spawned the personal computer revolution. (Before that time, all computers were room-fillers.) after it became clear that there was a business use for such "microcomputers," IBM jumped into the arena with its IBM PC, stealing most of the market away from Apple by improving on the basic concept and marketing it directly to business. Superior spreadsheets, word processors and databases for the new platform made the PC the undisputed standard in short order.

In the meantime, though, Jobs wasn't standing still. He developed concepts for new products, one of which was the Macintosh. Developing the Mac was a huge risk, because by the time it came to market Apple was in trouble. Being totally new and incompatible with previous computers, it had little software at first, and after a brief burst of sales it floundered. The company scraped by until a year and a half later, when high-end software, hard disks and laser printers finally made it to market. What really ensured the Mac's success was its usefulness in desktop publishing -- the ability to do page layout, typeset with real fonts and generate high-resolution output.

Power struggles within Apple ultimately resulted in Jobs being ousted. He formed NeXT in reaction and set out to create a machine that would leave the Mac behind, just as he had originally intended for the Mac to supersede the IBM PC. Despite the friction that occurred within Apple, most observers believe the Mac wouldn't even have come to market without the vision of Steve Jobs. The Mac has taken its place as an established standard, which is a fine measure of success in the computer business.

Things certainly have changed a great deal after the Macintosh came to market. The machine was a year and a half old when desktop publishing emerged as a new kind of application that catapulted it to stellar sales. Could there be a newer kind of application in the near future that will do the same for NeXT? In all probability the NeXT computer won't need any such single application to make it successful. This computer has almost all the ingredients to make it what Steve Jobs originally claimed it to be; the machine for the '90s. It has true multitasking, tremendous storage, CD-quality sound, the highest-resolution displays, Display PostScript and path-breaking built-in software development tools. (Back in the early Mac days, developers needed to craft their software on Lisa computers using unfamiliar tools.)

Will History Repeat Itself?

The big question now is whether the NeXT computer can achieve the same success as the Macintosh ultimately did. Jobs has once again created a next-generation machine (even if it's not quite as dramatic as the Mac was) and has swung deals with giant companies, including IBM and Canon, reputed to total over $500 million. And he's managed to hold on to 50 percent of his company -- he's not going to get booted out again!

But can he hold out until the Cube finally catches on? Some people think it will be a success by the sheer force of Jobs's personality. But they forget that only half of Apple products were hits -- the Apple III was such a spectacular failure that even today Apple Computer refuses to give a product a name with a III after it -- and the Lisa didn't do any better.

And yet the NeXT is truly a "reference point" for the future. Other platforms are already starting to mimic it, with dimensional-looking interfaces, magneto-optical disks and so on.

And keep in mind that this is only the first NeXT machine. New versions are on the way, and future Cubes may be as different from today's as a Mac II is from an old 128K. In fact, the danger of buying this very first Cube may be similar to the problems with those ancient Macs -- they were too expensive on the one hand and too under powered on the other.

Michael Waitsman