Al Diblasi over at Alfred.TV keeps coming up with fun videos with old Apple or related devices as the centerpiece. In this latest 53-minute masterpiece on YouTube (below), Al boots up a 1991 68040-based NeXT Cube, and then shows off some of the built-in applications, an original brochure for the NeXT, a cool NeXT black turtleneck (Steve Jobs' influence, obviously), and a couple of versions of the NeXTstep OS and development environment.

For those of you who are new to the Mac world, NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after being kicked out of Apple. Originally, they produced both hardware, of which this NeXT Cube is a prime example, and software. NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997, and the NeXTstep environment evolved into what we now know as Mac OS X and the Cocoa development suite. A NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee was the world's first Web server.

Be sure to watch or at least skim through to the end of the video, where Al finds a couple more Apple gems in his brother's basement. You can follow Al's trips through retro computing on Twitter.

Fun fact: September 16 is the day in 1985 that Steve Jobs left Apple, and also the same day in 1997 that he returned to Apple as then-iCEO.

Jobs first left after CEO John Sculley ousted him from Apple's board of directors after both had tried to be "co-CEOs."

Jobs also filed papers that same day in 1985 founding NeXT, the company that he intended to use as a weapon against Apple. Instead, Apple wound up acquiring NeXT for $400 million in 1996. Parts of the NeXT operating system, NeXTStep, eventually became the underpinnings of Mac OS X.

[Via Wired.]

Combining two of our little trends lately, retroware and eBay vintage, here's the motherload for any NeXT fan-- a complete (and boy do I mean complete) set of NeXT computer cube stuff on eBay.

Holy cow that's a lot of stuff-- he's a matching grayscale (!) display and speakers, all the cables, a spare motherboard, all the books and discs, and even the original sticker sheet. Who keeps the sticker sheet?!? The thing even still runs Omniweb (inside NeXTSTEP 3.3 patch 2), and he's got a screenshot of Google up and working.

So how much will it run you? Currently, the auction is at $710 with a business week left to go even higher, but seriously now-- how much is it worth to you to get a little piece (or in this case, a lot of pieces) of non-Apple Jobs?

Thanks, Richard! (who saw it on Boing Boing)

Joel Rosenblatt of Bloomberg.com writes that former General Counsel Nancy Heinan may still be sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the backdating issues that recently plagued Steve Jobs, Apple, and Pixar according to her attorney Miles Ehrlich. Heinan's history with Jobs goes way back, into the days of NeXT, where she was general counsel before moving with him back to Apple. She stayed with Apple until last May, when she resigned several months before Apple disclosed the backdating investigation.

I'm always a sucker for interesting stories about the history of the Mac and I just ran across this fascinating account of Steve Jobs in the eleven years after he left (or was pushed out of) Apple and his triumphant return in 1996. It's an interesting story, well-told, and all of the characteristic Jobsian traits are on display, including and especially his quasi-maniacal perfectionism and demand for control. And of course since OS X is built on what was NeXTstep, it's also a kind of genealogy of our favorite operating system as well. Head over to Low End Mac for a very interesting read.

Stevemas (that's Macworld to you) is just around the corner and the Mac web can hardly wait. What will Apple wow us with this time around? A true video iPod? New displays with built in iSights? Only Steve knows for sure, however, let's cast our gaze into Apple's past for a moment. Let's go all the way back to January 1997.

Picture it: San Francisco, early January 1997. Alanis Morissette was playing on the radio, though ironically enough her song 'Ironic' wasn't ironic at all. Just last month Apple announced that they had acquired NeXT. During the Keynote Gil Amelio announced that Steve Jobs would be returning to the fold. People were happy right? Well, I am sure some people were but this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article (Find Articles seems to be a big fan of pop ups, so fair warning) paints a different picture.

Mac users were worried that Apple would be abandoning the Macintosh OS for the Unix based NeXT OS and that their current machines would be rendered useless. They were right, OS X is based on NeXT, but luckily for Mac users it took Apple a very long time to get OS X out the door. It is interesting, though, to see the Apple faithful a little anxious about having Steve Jobs back at Apple, since now everyone is afraid that Steve might actually leave Apple at some point.

In the summer of 1989, I had a really, really tough assignment: I had to evaluate the NeXT Cube for a publishing company. What a hardship to have that black box on my desk, along with that 400-dpi laser printer! I don't know how I ever managed.

It's hard to believe that it was ten years ago, on 12/20/1996, that we welcomed Steve Jobs and NeXT Computers back into the Apple family. Legendary game developer John Romero remembers, and he's got a fascinating post up about the role of NeXT in bringing his babies to market.

According to Romero, the original development environment for both Doom and Quake was NeXTSTEP; in fact, the first four years of id Software's efforts were on NeXT. He fondly remembers the days of simultaneously building for three different architectures, and side-by-side map editing across the LAN with cofounder John Carmack.

Romero ends his post by noting that he spent the 15 years prior to 1996 working on computers built by Steve Jobs, and that "maybe someday I'll get one of those kickass iMacs." Cue the salivary glands of Mac gamers everywhere...

[via IMG]

During The Grube's UI presentation at C4, he pointed to one particular example of "functional inconsistency" in Apple's software: the discrepancy in results when you drag-and-drop text in Carbon apps (TextWrangler, AppleWorks, etc.) vs. Cocoa apps (TextEdit, Safari, etc.).

When you select text in Carbon applications, you're able to drag the text by simply clicking the selection and dragging it. In Cocoa apps, however, you need to click the selected text and hold the mouse button down for a fraction of a second before you're able to drag it. Your cursor changes from the text selector to the pointer. But clicking and immediately dragging results in you re-selecting the text.

The Cocoa differentiation is a result of NeXT designing a way to enable both dragging and re-selecting, which was carried into OS X.

It's a minor inconsistency, but has frustrated me countless times. Glad that's all cleared up.

Thanks John!

If you've ever wished for the ability to go to the next unread message in Mail, instead of having to shuffle through all the unread ones, some enterprising AppleScript.net forum members have put together a script that might go well with your favorite app/script launcher, such as FastScripts.

I tried this out with my preferred everything-launcher, Quicksilver, and it worked like a charm. I saved the script in Script Editor, then simply added it as a Trigger in Quicksilver with a keyboard shortcut. This has the fortunate side effect of being accessible from anywhere in the OS, so when I press my hotkey, Mail comes to the front and moves to the next unread message in the selected mailbox. Here's hoping Apple's Mail engineering team is listening and has something a little more integrated cooked up for Leopard's Mail.

[via Hawk Wings]

Flickr user brrm (I really like that user name for some reason) shows off his great collection of vintage Apple hardware. Check out the great Lisa II (in very nice condition), his collection of Powerbooks (180, 180c, 520c, 190, 100, 2400/180c, Pismo and 15" G4) doing the wave, Newton 2000 (with original iPod) and various compact Macs. Also noteworthy is his NeXT cube. No, it's not Apple hardware but it does have a place in Apple history. Plus, it's autographed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who used a NeXT cube to write the very first web server and browser. Cool.

Untitled  by brrm.

For the month of April, the theme for our Rig of the Day will be "Vintage Macs" in honor of Apple's anniversary. If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Let's see your vintage Macs (Apples and Newtons, too)! We'll select an image every day to highlight.