A piece of computing history is now sitting on my desktop!
January 12, 2010It is finally here! Ever since I laid my eyes on Steve Jobs NeXT Cube workstation almost 19 years ago, I have been lusting for it. The NeXT Cube was Steve Jobs vision for the future of the workstation, and at the time it was released, the specifications were unheard of. Megapixel display, Read Write MO disc, DSP on board, Mach OS with full Display Postscript, etc.
It is no secret that Tim Berners-Lee literally invented the WorldWideWeb on the NeXT Cube. The first Web Browser and the first Web Server first ran on the NeXT. The NeXT was far ahead of its time, but as with most visionary leading edge technologies (think Xerox Star,etc) , it didn’t quite make it in the marketplace. But when Apple bought NeXT, the NeXT OS became the foundation for the Mac OSX, and the NeXT DNA lives on in the current and next generation of Apple machines.
After almost a year of searching for the right NeXT Cube on the eBay US site to come along, I finally snagged a great one for a grand. A NeXT Cube with the NeXT Dimension board, with an SSD internal drive! The system boots and works flawlessly and is now sitting on my desk purring away.
I finally have a piece of computing history sitting on my desk, right next to my Apple Mac Pro.
Computing Nirvana indeed.
