NeXT Cube
For today’s entry in my ongoing “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Device” series, I wanted to honor Zscaler’s amazing Zenith Live event… by featuring the Zscaler logo on one of the most important and influential computers of all time: the legendary NeXT Cube!
After Steve Jobs quit (and/or was fired from) Apple in 1985, he started a new company called NeXT. Instead of competing with Apple for consumer customers, NeXT developed high-powered workstations designed for scientists, researchers, government labs, and other demanding uses. This is their first workstation, simply called the “NeXT Computer.” It was later upgraded and renamed the “NeXT Cube” to differentiate it from their later slim “pizza box” workstations, but I’ll just refer to it as a NeXT Cube here. Our NeXT Cube is actually a very early pre-production machine (serial number 000251!) and it came to us with both its original 16MHz motherboard and a faster 25MHz motherboard pulled from a later Cube.
Setting aside how insanely powerful it was for its time, the NeXT Cube is an incredible physical object. Its imposing black case is actually made of magnesium, which makes it very strong, very heavy and (under the right conditions) very 🔥flammable.🔥 Similarly, the matching “MegaPixel Display” is a marvel of precision engineering - it weighs over 50 pounds, but balances on a cantilevered stand attached by a single pivoting hinge, making it look from certain angles like it’s floating in the air. I’m clearly not the only person who loves the design of this system, as they have been popular exhibits at various Museums of Modern Art (including the SFMoMA, where I first saw a Cube over 20 years ago).
As if the hardware wasn’t impressive enough, the NeXT Cube runs their bespoke operating system called NeXTSTEP. NeXTSTEP was wildly advanced for its day, as it combined a UNIX core with a beautiful user interface. NeXTSTEP was designed to be a “programmer’s dream environment,” which lead to a huge range of popular software being built on NeXT machines, including famous games like Doom I & II, Quake, Heretic, Hexen and others.
After Apple bought NeXT in the mid-90's, NeXTSTEP rapidly evolved into Mac OS X, which then spawned macOS, iOS, watchOS, etc., making the NeXT Cube the direct ancestor of Apple’s entire modern product line!
More importantly (and more to the point of this post), the NeXT Cube was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to build and host the first World Wide Web server ever, which in my opinion makes the Cube a historic artifact of human evolution on par with the Gutenberg Press or the Marconi wireless telegraph. For all these reasons, it feels appropriate to showcase the Zscaler logo on a NeXT Cube - a beautiful merger of one of the most important computers in history and the world’s largest and most powerful security cloud.
That’s it for today - have a great weekend, everyone!
