Steve Jobs, the co-founder and longtime leader of Apple, may have owed part of his success to an unexpected customer: the U.S. intelligence community. In the 1980s, his new company, NeXT, reportedly received a major order for computers from U.S. government agencies. The story was reported by The Wall Street Journal, based on excerpts from a book by former WSJ journalist Sharon Weinberger.
In 1985, Jobs left Apple after a serious conflict with the company’s management and founded NeXT. The company produced powerful workstations with high-quality displays, but they were extremely expensive for ordinary consumers. Jobs hoped that universities would become the main customers, but sales were far below expectations.
Things changed when U.S. intelligence agencies became interested in NeXT computers. According to Weinberger, government officials wanted around 20,000 machines and expected the entire order to be delivered within about a year. To help NeXT increase production, specialists from Sun Microsystems were brought in.
Sun was already working with U.S. government agencies, which made the cooperation easier. NeXT computers were reportedly used by organizations involved in intelligence and satellite-image processing. In particular, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) used the machines to process satellite imagery and prepare briefing materials for government officials and national leaders.
Some of the workstations were later modified with more powerful components and specialized graphics hardware to improve their performance. The government deal gave NeXT valuable financial support at a critical moment and helped the company expand its production capabilities. But the most interesting part of the story came years later.
In 1996, Apple acquired NeXT for about $400 million, and Steve Jobs returned to the company he had co-founded. NeXT’s technology turned out to be far more important than its sales numbers suggested. Its operating system, NeXTSTEP, became the technological foundation of Mac OS X and later influenced the software platforms used across Apple’s ecosystem.
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