With NeXT, Jobs wanted to create computers for universities and researchers. NeXT was a project where Jobs could regain the control he had lost at Apple, and he was confident enough in this idea to invest $12 million of his own money. In 1988, NeXT released its first computer. It was a powerful machine that embodied similar design philosophies to current-day Apple. Even down to its custom circuit board. But the NeXT computer was expensive. While other computers at the time ranged from $700 to a few thousand dollars, the NeXT computer had a base price of $6,500.
But the education market it was targeting already had a lot of older computers and limited budgets. NeXT’s computers never found mass success. So in 1993, NeXT completely stopped developing its hardware and shifted its focus to the real innovation: software.
