The most interesting part of that article was that they produce prototype boards on the same assembly line as production. No waiting for boards to come in. If they want a board made simply queue it and it's done.
They were agile before it was cool to be agile.
EDIT: Also, I had a NeXT Cube and NeXT Turbostation with laser printer. They were fantastic. We've barely budged the needle since then.
Well... that is the difference between PR and practicality. PR says "can" like they do it every day.
While they could run prototype boards down the line, it is not quite as easy as the video makes it sound and it is unlikely they would do that lightly.
To run a prototype board down the line they would have to:
* Get the prototype PCBs fabricated (in 1990, this took a lot more time than today where you can get a multi-layer board fabbed in days). Note also that the NeXT boards were probably a lot more than 4 layers, which adds time and expense, especially 20 years ago. The good news is all the other items probably would take less time to complete than the PCB fab, so this would be the pacing item for the schedule.
* Get a new soldermask made to match the board.
* Procure the necessary non-production parts. With luck, can get small quantities (or samples) quickly from distributors.
* Reprogram the pick-n-place machines to put the parts in the right places.
* Load the pick-n-place machines with the right (new non-production) parts.
* Possibly have to tune the soldering ovens to get the temperature/time profile right (should be OK for small part changes).
Once everything is in-house and programmed, you can simply queue it and it is done.
It's also likely that they did it on the same line because the automated equipment to build the stuff was so hideously expensive that they had to build it on the same line.
Completely agree with this. I also had a Cube, and then a NeXTStation Turbo Color (which I still own), and while Mac OS X has certainly evolved, basically all the important things we have today, and the elegance of design, were already present in NeXTStep 3.x. If I were required by law to stop using OS X tomorrow, I'd go back to NeXTStep.
If they had started to gain traction that factory would have been a significant competitive advantage for them. Further, I think that it could have helped them lower prices even more think, sub $1500 workstations.
Their hardware was a resounding flop and building a state-of-the-art production facility for something for which there was no demand is in retrospect clearly a mistake.
Also, given that NeXT was bought for about 15% of Apple's market cap (after laying off most of their employees), it's disingenuous to imply that Apple == NeXT. What saved Apple was the iPod, not OS X and Cocoa.
NeXT, effectively, acquired Apple for negative $429 million (and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock): As everyone knows by now, what began as an Apple purchase of NeXT has been turned inside out and become a NeXT takeover.
edit: I want to add a couple points to my followup.
1. NeXT's hardware was a resounding flop. Their state-of-the-art factory turned out to be for naught. This is absolutely true.
2. That said, this mistake did not prevent NeXT from co-opting Apple and becoming the third largest company (by market cap) in the world.
3. Apple == NeXT: Apple was, pun intended, rotten. Steve Jobs and his most trusted lieutenants assumed key positions of power throughout Apple. The only highly visible and critical Apple employee I can identify who pre-dated Steve's return to Apple is Jony Ive. However, Ive was laboring in obscurity before Steve assumed his position as "iCEO" of Apple[1 and 2].
4. Arguably, the iMac saved Apple. In one of the recently-posted WWDC or Macworld keynotes, Steve addresses this point in quite a bit of detail. The iPod made Apple a veritable powerhouse...but not at first[3]. The iPhone made Apple, well, Apple. As it happens, the iPhone (and OS X, and the iPad) is the result of decades of engineering work that started at NeXT[4].
The only highly visible and critical Apple employee I can identify who pre-dated Steve's return to Apple is Jony Ive.
Fred Anderson, the CFO under Amelio, was kept on until the backdating scandal. He played a key role in saving Apple--they were almost cash broke when Amelio took over, and Anderson arranged a key bond issue to keep the company afloat.
Journalistic hyperbole is not equal to fact. Apple acquired NeXT, for $400 million in cash in stock, at a time in which Apple had a market cap of $3.1 billion. I don't know why you seem to think otherwise. Read it from the horse's mouth along with the relevant financial statements:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020208190346/http://product.inf...
Within a period of, I believe, 12 months, Steve Jobs became CEO, installed NeXT execs in almost every key exec role in Apple, and replaced the board of directors.
Although Apple acquired NeXT, in every meaningful way, NeXT consumed Apple.
Takeover for me means change of hands of ownership and power of decision in the company, and whatever your technical or managerial arguments are I think the resulting company was owned by Apple's stockholders, Steve Jobs probably among then after the acquisition, not by NeXT investors.
For the 2 people that downvoted I would love to know what you consider a takeover. I'm pretty sure that in financial term takeover means change of ownership.
BTW, I'm quit, HN is just becoming a place where Steve Jobs and Rails must not be criticized, even when they must be. I will put some random string as my password and never return here, it was a good time but I think the community lost something in these years.
They were agile before it was cool to be agile.
EDIT: Also, I had a NeXT Cube and NeXT Turbostation with laser printer. They were fantastic. We've barely budged the needle since then.