NeXT

Also see near-end crosstalk (NEXT), a network wiring term.

NeXT was a computer company formed by Steven Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer, and also the name of the advanced personal computer or workstation that the company developed and first offered in 1988. The NeXT computer was an industrial designer's triumph, a futuristic black cube with a high-resolution display, a graphical user interface, and an operating system called NeXTStep.

In 1993, the computer was taken off the market. Jobs offered the object-oriented programming components of NeXTStep as a proposed standard for a development environment called OpenStep. In 1996, Apple Computer bought what was now NeXT Software and hired Jobs to return to Apple and help run the company. In 1998, Apple continued to offer OpenStep as a development environment for object-oriented applications that will run on multiple platforms.