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How was Next a failure? 11 years from start to being acquired for 400M 1996 dollars is not "failing".

I'm not at a real computer to check, but I think $400m barely paid back the investors.

And speaking as a former NeRD (NeXT Registered Developer), it was definitely a flop. The computers sold only in a few niches, and they had to kill off the hardware entirely. The OS and the dev tools lasted longer, but they wouldn't have survived more than another few years.

A flop? The name may have changed, but NeXTSTEP has been a remarkable success in its new incarnation as OS X and iOS.

Yes, NeXT and NextStep were flops as products: nobody bought them. Some of the OS technology was great, and it eventually got incorporated into a successful product after a lot more work. But a flop with good tech is still a flop.

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