On this day in 1988, Steve Jobs unveiled the new apple of his eye, the NeXT Computer. While ‘The Cube’ wasn’t a commercial success, it shaped the future of personal computing in several ways.
An event at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco was chosen for the unveiling of The Cube. Contemporary reports suggest this theatrical setting was used because one of the crowd-pleasing demos of the NeXT Computer highlighted its built-in DSP, which can be a boon to computer audio processing, among other things. During the staged gala event, The Cube even ‘played a duet’ with a professional violinist.
