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Ask HN: What is the modern equivalent of NeXT?

8 points by jrwoodruff ↗ HN
An earlier post linked to a Quora post about what it was like being an engineer at NeXT. My takeaway was it was filled with smart people willing to think big and work hard. Ultimately things pioneered at NeXT had far reaching influence in the industry and, especially when you consider NeXT's influence at Apple, huge impact.

What are the organizations doing this today? Is the scrappy startup of this nature still a thing, or is technology in general stabilizing into a dominant Ford/GM/Chrysler structure with FAANG and other major players dominating the industry?

5 comments

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phendrenad2
NeXT seems like it was a typical startup, but had the added bonus of being run by Steve Jobs, which likely brought it a lot of respect and buy-in. I think that today, there may be startups that are just as ambitious as NeXT, but they won't get tons of press (or be remembered if they get bought by Apple!)

On the other side of things, big tech has branched out to cover some of this space. Google mainly, trying to develop the next thing, such as Chrome OS and Fuschia, while A droid is still a cash cow.

webmaven
> What are the organizations doing this today? Is the scrappy startup of this nature still a thing, or is technology in general stabilizing into a dominant Ford/GM/Chrysler structure with FAANG and other major players dominating the industry?

Well, is your concept of 'tech' limited to computer-related stuff, or are you looking further afield?

acomjean
NeXT was innovative but financially a mess, they wouldn’t have made it if Apple didn’t buy them. Be was another company that made cutting edge machines and OS but like Next they ended up moving to just software.

Raspberry pi foundation. Making small computers, they’re latest fits in a keyboard.