37 years ago today...

[Rhetorica]

37 years ago today, the greatest workstation in computing history was officially born, setting off a series of chain reactions that still define the modern age of technology today. The video above is considered the canonical recording of the NeXT Introduction, and includes some Q&A at the end between Steve and journalists at the NeXT Day event, filmed Oct 13, 1988. Another copy can be found on archive.org, presumably without any of the music muted for copyright reasons.

We also have a clean recording of the demo sequence provided to us by the late, great Keith Ohlfs on Vimeo, posted shortly after Steve's passing. Sadly, he notes in the description that he had prepared the file it with the intention of sending it to Steve, but never got the chance. You can view it here: https://vimeo.com/30110130

Other media include the famous launch poster—which goes for quite a lot if signed—and some of the accompanying papers designed by Paul Rand himself (it seems he put together the agenda and invitation.)

Does anyone else have any materials related to the Introduction they'd like to add? Perhaps some personal recollections, or secondary sources? (It's a bit out of my personal depth, since I wasn't born for another month afterward... !)

[ZombiePhysicist]

For some reason my heart breaks and I get chills watching that Vimeo by Keith Ohlfs. I remember talking with Kieth on a few occasions, and such a nice person.  He never quite understood how much of a rockstar he was. And to see his Vimeo post, and knowing he's now gone too. The world got a good bit smaller.

There are less and less of us that remember the truth of all this first hand. And once it's gone, it's gone. I've seen so many "takes" about next that are so wrong, but get labeled as "history". Among the bad takes are the issacson book. Thankfully Hertfeld's folklore site gets so much right about Apple history.

We need something like that for next. It's the equivalent of the missing years of Jesus' maturing into a man. Steve went from booted raging toddler, to a seasoned savvy business person during those years, and there is simply a black hole about all that history.