Retro: Next Supercomputer

Steve Jobs is synonymous with Apple - after all, this was the man who co-founded the company on 1 April 1976, launched the Macintosh in 1984 and currently serves as its CEO and supreme evangelist. However, it's easy to forget that Jobs fell out with Apple in 1985 and left for 11 years. During this time he developed perhaps the most extravagant, technically impressive, but ultimately doomed computer system: Next.

When Jobs recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Cola to run Apple in 1982, he couldn't have imagined a situation where his new employee would turn against the chairman. Times changed quickly though and, faced with the unstoppable PC architecture, Sculley and Jobs agreed Apple's best bet was to find a corporate buyer, so they began wooing GE, AT&T and Xerox.

Sadly, none followed through and, ironically, Jobs and Sculley also turned down the opportunity to snap up Compaq for a bargain $100m (£62.5m), shortly before it became the third largest computer company in the world.

At this time Jobs was increasingly upsetting Apple's senior management, so on 10 April 1985, Sculley asked him to step down from running the Macintosh division and threatened to resign if the board didn't back his decision. They did - unanimously.

Many of Apple's employees still worshipped Jobs though and offered their services should he start up a new company. Jobs put the wheels in motion that summer when he sold $11.2m of his Apple shares, while still retaining his position as the largest shareholder. In a mid-September meeting, chairman Jobs informed the Apple board that he would be leaving to start up a new venture and the following day took five senior employees with him - Jobs was 30 years old.

Jobs' dream was to produce an affordable supercomputer for scientists and academics. It would be based on powerful hardware, running Unix and an innovative graphical interface - essentially a super-Macintosh.

After investing his own money to set up Next, Jobs persuaded H Ross Perot, multi-millionaire founder of EDS and future US Presidential candidate, to stump up $20m for a 16 per cent stake. Canon was the single largest investor, reportedly putting forward over $100m.

The Next computer eventually arrived in 1988, and delivered in both power and style. Inside the one foot black magnesium cube were three Motorola chips: the main 68030 CPU backed up by a 68882 coprocessor and an impressive 56001 DSP sound chip. With hard drives an optional extra, the Next instead employed revolutionary 256MB rewritable 5in optical discs from Canon. But the Next Step operating system was most impressive of all, delivering display Postscript on top of Mach Unix.

On the downside, a Next system would set you back $6,000 (£4,200), and even then, the UK market had to wait until 1990 to get hold of one. When quizzed about its late arrival, Jobs, never one to miss an opportunity, said: 'Late? This computer is five years ahead of its time!'

Tim Berners Lee certainly thought so, and used Next to develop hypertext links, which subsequently became the backbone of the World Wide Web, while the influential first-person shooter Doom was also developed using Next.

The fact remained, though, that Next was way too expensive for its target markets - besides, Sun's Sparcstation's already had the high end wrapped up. Jobs may have created the perfect workstation but few wanted or could afford it, and by 1993 he pulled out of the hardware market.

After pushing the Next Step OS to several platforms including Intel, salvation ironically came from Apple. Desperate for a true multitasking OS for its Macintosh, Apple chose Next over Be OS, buying it in 1996 for $400m. The deal also included hiring Jobs as a consultant. Jobs has since retaken the role of Apple CEO while Next Step greatly influenced the development of Mac OS X.

It seems as if Jobs and Apple were destined to be inseparable, but before you consider him a one-trick pony, remember he also bought Lucasfilm's computer graphics division in 1986 for $10m and called it Pixar. Responsible for Toy Story 1 & 2, A Bugs Life and Monsters Inc, Pixar may have Steve Jobs as CEO, but it uses Sun workstations - the box office receipts must be some consolation though.