Steve Jobs’s dream of creating a workstation that would become a standard in higher education ended last week.
Mr. Jobs’s company, Next Inc., announced that it had sold its hardware business to Canon and would concentrate on producing the sophisticated NextStep operating system for other types of computers.
The much-awaited unveiling of the sleek, black Next workstation in 1988 followed a promise by Mr. Jobs to build a machine for colleges that would be powerful and easy to use.
The machine was not widely adopted in academe, falling into a gap between the markets for personal computers and powerful scientific workstations. It was regarded as too expensive for students and professors who use PC’s for spread sheets and word processing, and not powerful enough for many engineers and scientists.
In a statement, Next said it would sell its workstation until May 25 and would continue to honor all service agreements on the machines.
The statement said Next was focusing on becoming a “first-tier software company” rather than a “second-tier supplier of hardware.”
The company believes its NextStep operating system can be a leader in “object-oriented computing,” which makes computer programming simpler. Next is now developing a version of its operating system for IBM-compatible computers that contain the 486 microprocessor.
