We tend to imagine Steve Jobs’ return to Apple as a triumphant comeback story, and that’s usually how it’s told, but the reality was more strategic than anything else and simply the very accurate outcome of a corporate operation: Apple’s acquisition of NeXT at the end of 1996. A takeover that allowed Jobs to return to the company he had founded and, at the same time, provide Apple with the technological foundation on which macOS, iOS and the whole ecosystem we know today has been built. Let’s see what happened.
From leaving Apple to founding NeXT
As we recently saw, after clashing with John Sculley and the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT that same year, taking with him several key members of the Macintosh team in order to create a powerful new computer aimed at the university and business world. With an operating system that would offer capabilities and tools which, at the time, seemed like science fiction.
Well, all of that materialised in the first and legendary NeXT Computer, known as “the cube”, which, in terms of hardware, stood out for its black magnesium chassis, its 256 MB optical drive and its Motorola 68030 processor at 25 MHz, designed for demanding university and professional environments.
But, as we already saw, the real gem was in the software. NeXTSTEP, and later OPENSTEP, was built on the Mach kernel and BSD, derived from UNIX, and already offered multitasking, memory protection and a graphical interface ahead of its time. All of this laid the groundwork for a very modern development environment, with high-level frameworks that greatly accelerated the creation of applications and that, years later, we would recognise in Cocoa and in the APIs with the NS prefix that we still see today.
The negotiation and acquisition that changed Apple’s course
Meanwhile, Apple was getting by with a classic Mac OS that was increasingly limited and with multiple operating system projects that overlapped with each other. So, after exploring several options, and at the time under the leadership of Gil Amelio, the company from Cupertino decided that the best idea was to buy NeXT. This would provide the company with a mature technological platform, as well as the invaluable leadership of Steve Jobs himself.
Thus, in February 1997, Apple acquired NeXT Software Inc. for around 427 million dollars. The deal combined cash, shares and the assumption of certain obligations, and included approximately 1 500 000 Apple shares for Jobs, which meant his definitive return to the company he himself had created, as a special advisor to Amelio.
This acquisition also brought much of NeXT’s executive team into Apple. In a short time, key figures such as Avie Tevanian or Jon Rubinstein were involved in redefining the product strategy, while Jobs was quickly appointed interim CEO.
From Rhapsody to the iPhone: NeXT’s legacy in today’s Apple
From the very beginning, the strategic objective was clear: Apple wanted to use NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP as the foundation for its next-generation operating system, unifying its platform around a modern architecture prepared for the future. This project was given the codename Rhapsody and turned out to be a success.
Rhapsody first evolved into Mac OS X Server 1.0 and then Mac OS X in 2001, which inherited the Mach kernel, the UNIX base and the object frameworks from NeXTSTEP, while offering an interface adapted to Apple’s visual identity. Since then, the architecture resulting from this fusion has underpinned macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS, so that practically every device we use today carries NeXT at the heart of its system.
Likewise, the Objective-C programming language, which NeXT acquired from Stepstone and which Apple later adopted, became the foundation for app development for more than a decade and a half. And, in parallel, the development environment and high-level APIs made it easier to launch such important products as the original iMac, the iPod and, later on, the iPhone.
It was from this fusion with NeXT that the “next” Apple was born, the modern, current Apple that brings us such capable and surprising devices that we enjoy every day.
Thanks to this merger, Steve Jobs returned to the company he had founded and once again took the helm in Cupertino. From there he adjusted the course, steered Apple away from bankruptcy and brought to life projects such as the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, the products that have turned Apple into the creative and influential company it is today.
On Hanaringo | iOS 26.1 is here: these are all the new features