[STEVE JOBS]

Gregor Bailar, Steve Jobs’ primary System Engineer and later Technical Director of NeXT Europe who worked at NeXT from August 1988-October 1992, with his ownership label on the back panel. Bailar would go on to serve as Chief Information Officer at the NASDAQ Stock Market, CIO at Capital One Financial, CIO at Citibank Corp., etc. Lot includes 3 of Bailar’s business cards while at NeXT.

STEVE JOBS: “IT’S GREAT TO BE BACK!”

Prototype NeXT Computer used by Steve Jobs on stage during the “NeXT Introduction,” his return to the spotlight after having left Apple three years earlier.

Steve Jobs founded NeXT, Inc. shortly after being pushed out of Apple in late 1985. He brought with him a concept that he had begun to explore while at Apple: powerful workstation with a UNIX operating system but with the friendly Macintosh user interface. The idea had its origins in a conversation Jobs had with Stanford biochemist and Nobel laureate Paul Berg where the latter described how difficult it was and how much time it took to perform experiments in a biology lab. Jobs thought that he could design a computer system where experiments could be simulated: “’Suddenly, he was excited about the possibilities,’ Berg recalled. ‘He had it in his mind to start a new company. He was young and rich, and had to find something to do with the rest of his life’” (Isaacson pp 211-212).

Jobs began to enlist some of the disgruntled employees from Apple's Macintosh division, several of whom had been urging him to start a new company and had offered to join him. He struck upon the idea of "starting a company to build a powerful but personal workstation" (Isaacson p 212). Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and began NeXT directly afterwards bringing some of those key members of the original Macintosh team with him.

There were countless delays, due in part to Jobs’ obsessive pursuit of perfection, before the NeXT Computer was finally introduced on October 12, 1988. The present computer was the main computer used by Steve Jobs in that gala event, the “NeXT Introduction” held at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall. The event was masterfully planned – with staging and design by celebrated San Francisco theater director George Coates. Jobs took the stage with great applause: “I think I speak for everybody at NeXT, saying it’s great to be back.” The audience stayed with him through the three-hour presentation.

Jobs had been urged by his team to run a simulation since neither the OS nor hardware was yet finalized, but he insisted on a live demonstration. The present computer, dubbed “LV-1” as it was the #1 computer connected to the GE Talaria Light Valve projector, was put through its paces when Jobs first ran a prepared animation (present on the current hard drive) and then went right into the menu system and the dock. He ran applications like Interface Builder where he created a simulated lab experiment. He looked up words in the Digital Webster (the word “mercurial,” which had been used to describe his personality); played “symphony quality” sound clips and generated synthesized music via Music Kit; and even provided a peak at object-oriented programming. Jobs seemed to have easily won over the 1,000-person crowd and his performance was a sign of what would come several years later when he returned to Apple – at least partially due to meeting Steph Adams, his longtime producer, while he was preparing for this event.

Gregor Bailar, who was recruited to NeXT from Hewlett Packard in 1988 because of his familiarity with UNIX, was Jobs’ primary System Engineer at the time of the NeXT Introduction. It was his issued prototype NeXT computer, the “LV-1,” that Jobs had used for this and for other high profile presentations such as “The NeXT Day”- a more hands-on, detailed dive for select guests of the NeXT Introduction, Educom and a visit by Canon, the company that had provided the much-needed funding that kept NeXT alive during a difficult time. Bailar would also travel with Jobs to give presentations at smaller events at college campuses and give demonstrations to press, etc. The early NeXT computers with 0.8 and 0.9 operating systems were prone to glitches and Bailar was always close at hand during the demonstrations. Bailar recounted one instance where he had to come on stage to fix a problem and Jobs said not to worry, “a Gregor comes with every system.”

Since the computer was a prototype – and used for demonstrations, it had to be updated to reflect the latest developments. The lot includes the original prototype motherboard as well as three further iterations. It also includes a pair of earlier ROM chips. There are several iterations of the operating system on MOD discs and the original hard drive (working, but later used as a data-only, non-bootable drive). Interesting to note, the early mouse includes the company’s location as Palo Alto - pre-dating the Redwood City move.

Bailar went on to be responsible for technical support of the introduction of NeXT into the commercial marketplace, he co-created the business plan and established initial reseller and distribution partners and eventually managed all technical resources throughout United Kingdom and Europe. He later moved into the financial sector holding executive roles at Citicorp N.A., Capital One Financial and the NASDAQ Stock Market/NASD.

The original NeXT Computer was clearly advanced for its time. While there were important adopters like Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN who used it to develop the world’s first web server and web browser – the WorldWideWeb – (Sotheby’s sold the Source Code for the WWW on 30 June, 2021),  it was introduced at a price point far beyond the grasp of its intended market and its software wasn’t ready until the year following the Introduction. NeXT would introduce two further computers before dropping the hardware to become a software company. Fortunes changed for both companies when Apple Inc purchased NeXT in 1996 to provide the foundation for OSX. Today, we’ve seen ample evidence of Steve Jobs’ stunning prognostications and the fact that high end personal computers like the Mac Studio, MacBook Pro and gaming PCs have the power of a workstation is more evidence of his abilities.

The NeXT Introduction, October 12, 1988 Video; Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. NY: [2011]; Stross, Randell E. Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing.  NY: 1993; Webster, Bruce F. The NeXT Book. Reading, MA: [1989].