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Steve Jobs - NeXT marketing strategy video 1991

Vickin Kane · 58.7K views · 2013-11-22 · 18:48

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Overview

An internal 1991 NeXT video in which Steve Jobs explains the company's product and marketing strategy. It shows NeXT aiming at the Unix workstation market.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as primary-source evidence that NeXT adopted Unix as a means to reach the workstation market rather than out of ideology.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2021–2026

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What people said

pjmlp · 2026-01 · Reference

If you want to piss off even more, those that buy Apple only because they want a shinny UNIX, but don't buy into Apple's culture since Mac OS Classic days, you only need to remind them that Steve Jobs was hardly a UNIX fanboy. Just like with Microsoft strategies, for NeXT, having NeXTSTEP being based on UNIX was more to check boxes against Sun, and bring software into the platform, not to make it easy to go out, hence the whole userspace stack, even drivers, are based on Objective-C frameworks. "Why We Have to Make UNIX Invisible." [LINK] > They said a Unix weenie was code for software engineers who hated what we were doing to Unix (the operating system we licensed)—putting a graphical user interface on it to dumb it down for grandmothers. They heckled Steve about his efforts to destroy it. His nightmare would be to speak to a crowd of them. [LINK] "NeXT marketing strategy video (1991)" [VIDEO]

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pjmlp · 2025-10 · Reference

Indeed, however many people are too young to remember that he looked down into UNIX, as a bunch of greybeards without taste. "Why We Have to Make UNIX Invisible." [LINK] "That time I had Steve Jobs keynote at Unix Expo" > They said a Unix weenie was code for software engineers who hated what we were doing to Unix (the operating system we licensed)—putting a graphical user interface on it to dumb it down for grandmothers. They heckled Steve about his efforts to destroy it. His nightmare would be to speak to a crowd of them. From [LINK] The value proposition NeXT found on UNIX, was the same as Microsoft (after they let go of Xenix, thanks to MS-DOS golden goose deal with IBM), a means to an end, the market of companies and universities that wanted something with UNIX in the box. "NeXT marketing strategy video (1991)" [VIDEO] Note that he wasn't at Apple when A/UX and MkLinux efforts took place.

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pjmlp · 2024-11 · Reference

It is definitly an accident caused by NeXT acquisition, neither BeOS nor Copland had great plans regarding UNIX like support. And even in NeXTSTEP's case, that was a side effect of Steve Jobs wanting to go after the UNIX workstation market, the idea was to make it easier to sell NeXTSTEP into those clients, there is very little UNIX in Objective-C, or the related XXXXXXXKits. "NeXT marketing strategy video (1991)" [VIDEO] Surviving NeXTSTEP documentation, [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Vickin Kane, played through YouTube.

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