NeXT Computer introduction

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 202 recordings of Steve Jobs →

1. 1985

   ‘The Entrepreneurs’ – PBS documentary on NeXT’s first year

   A rare 1985-86 PBS documentary following Jobs and the NeXT founding team through strategy retreats, with Paul Rand unveiling the NeXT logo and Joanna Hoffman confronting Jobs about his ‘reality distortion’. Jobs says the company is ‘architecting a company’ more than building a product.

2. 1987

   BBC interview on computers in higher education

   A year before the NeXT Cube launch, Jobs explains what higher education needs from workstations: simulations of historical models, tools designed by observing scholars, and the first major curriculum shift since the 1960s.

3. 1987

   BBC interview at Pixar’s first-anniversary party

   Short BBC footage from Pixar’s one-year anniversary party, focusing on Pixar and ILM, with Jobs and Ed Catmull on camera and Alvy Ray Smith and Loren Carpenter in audio.

4. 1988

   Comment on the Apple v. Microsoft GUI lawsuit

   A short 1988 clip of Jobs, then at NeXT, commenting on Apple’s look-and-feel lawsuit against Microsoft over the graphical user interface.

5. 1988

   NeXTSTEP demonstration: MIDI and the quotation application

   Wikipedia’s media timeline lists a 1988 video of Jobs demonstrating NeXTSTEP’s MIDI capabilities and its quotation (Digital Librarian) application at NeXT’s Redwood City offices, hosted on Archive.org.

6. 1988

   KPIX interview at the NeXT launch

   Local news footage from the day of the NeXT Computer launch, with KPIX reporter Hank Plante interviewing Jobs about the new machine. Released from the station’s archive in December 2023.

7. 1988

   NeXT Computer introduction

   Jobs’s first big public appearance since leaving Apple: a two-and-a-half-hour unveiling of the NeXT Computer (‘the Cube’) and NeXTSTEP before 3,000 invited educators, developers and press, ending with a violin–computer duet and a press Q&A. The full recording surfaced on YouTube in 2016.

8. 1988

   TV feature: Jobs demonstrates the NeXT Computer

   A late-1988 television report in which Jobs walks through the NeXT Computer’s Digital Librarian, dictionary and thesaurus, and music capabilities, ending with a violinist playing Bach with the Cube. allaboutstevejobs.com notes the segment was introduced by Ted Koppel.

9. 1988

   NeXT Computer demo at the Boston Computer Society

   An audience recording of Jobs presenting and demonstrating the NeXT Computer to the Boston Computer Society a few weeks after the San Francisco launch — his first East Coast product reveal since leaving Apple. Part of the 200-hour ‘Powersharing’ trove released by Charles Mann in 2020.

10. 1989

    NeXT Computer System presentation in Japan

    Jobs presents the NeXT Computer System and NeXTSTEP to a Japanese audience in a nearly hour-long keynote, part of NeXT’s push into Asia with Canon as distributor and investor. Japanese-subtitled excerpts circulated on YouTube from 2011.

11. 1990

    WGBH raw interview for ‘The Machine That Changed the World’

    The full raw interview WGBH shot with Jobs for the 1992 series ‘The Machine That Changed the World’, only minutes of which were broadcast. Jobs tells the ‘bicycle for the mind’ story, recounts the Apple II and Macintosh years, Xerox PARC, and lays out NeXT’s ‘interpersonal computing’ vision.

12. 1990

    Japanese television feature on Jobs and NeXT

    A three-and-a-half-minute Japanese television segment featuring an interview with Jobs during NeXT’s push into Japan, where Canon had become its distributor and investor in 1989. Programme and exact date unknown.

13. 1990

    Jobs on Joseph Juran and quality

    A 35-year-old Jobs explains what NeXT learned from quality pioneer Joseph Juran, who visited the company: treat everything as a repetitive process, measure it, and give the people doing the work authority to fix it. A rare window into Jobs’s thinking on manufacturing and management.