An interesting piece of technology history was highlighted by The Verge over the weekend that may be of interest to Apple users both young and old.

Amateur computer historian Kevin Savetz recently scanned the Fall 1989 issue of the NeXT catalog and uploaded the files to Archive.org. That makes the entire 138-page book available for perusal online, offering an intriguing glimpse into NeXT's software, user interface, peripherals, and more.



For those unfamiliar with the history, NeXT was the company that Steve Jobs founded in 1985 shortly after he was fired by Apple, along with a handful of co-workers. The company specialized in designing high-powered computer workstations for the higher education and business markets.

NeXT lasted until 1997, when Jobs was rehired at Apple. Apple purchased the company for $429 million (equivalent to $670 million in 2018) and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock.





I scanned the fall 1989 NeXT Software and Peripherals catalog in glorious 600 DPI and uploaded to @internetarchive. 138 pages! https://t.co/a1xpteHERt pic.twitter.com/UbV6zKcZEm — Kevin Savetz (@KevinSavetz) July 4, 2019

Estimates suggest NeXT shipped about 50,000 computers in total, so sales were limited. However, the legacy of the NeXTSTEP OS and development environment proved to be highly influential, and eventually became the basis for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.



Savetz told The Verge that the catalog was "part of a large lot of old computers that I bought from a local computer refurb/recycling organization. I had never seen a catalog like it, and couldn’t find much reference to it online, so it was an easy choice to scan it."