The NeXTonian

An incredibly creative thing happened between 1985 and 1996 in Redwood City, California.

After an unsuccessful attempt to oust Apple executive John Sculley whom he'd himself hired some years earlier, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, took five Apple employees - Susan Barnes, George Crow, Dan'L Lewin, Rich Page, and Bud Tribble - along with Randy Heffner and Gary Moore to 900 Chesapeake Drive.

There they founded the legendary NeXT Computer.

Jobs traveled to Carnegie-Mellon University to pick up Avadis Tevanian from the MACH project, wooed Jean-Marie Hullot, author of SOS Interface, and did a deal with Brad Cox, inventor of the Objective-C programming language.

NeXT and Apple finally 'merged' in December 1996, Jobs returning without salary (but with $429 million for Apple's acquisition of NeXT) to head Apple again.

NeXT is no more, the expensive hardware now collectors items, and the fabulous NeXTSTEP operating system has become Apple's Cocoa.

Not much documentation of these amazing years is available. Of the few resources accessible over the Internet, the best are either incomplete or in a foreign language, making things difficult for the casual but eager student.

This section serves to bridge the gap.