A /color/ Mac II went for upwards of $10k at launch, and it would be hard to argue that the NeXT system wasn't significantly more capable. It's a Unix machine vs a cooperatively multitasking box whose OS you could crash with a bug in your user-space code. That's not a fun environment to be learning C in, as a student. Trust me.
Why specify color? The $7500 NeXT cube didn't have it.
I didn't let that oddity dissuade me from reading the rest of the article, but it really doesn't match the way I remember things working back then. I sure didn't know anybody who had $7500 to spend on a computer; I always understood the exorbitant price to be the primary reason the platform never took off.
Perhaps, but the entry-level Mac II with a 20 MB drive and monitor cost about $5500. Which system was more capable is open to debate, but that wasn't my concern. I was hoping for an objective presentation of facts and observations about the evolution of what we now call the Cocoa framework, but the interview started off with a statement about the NeXT system that wasn't quite true.
>but the interview started off with a statement about the NeXT system that wasn't quite true
People don't remember any odd detail 20+ years on. But he probably remembered $7500 NeXT being much more value for money than the $5500 Mac II, and his mind translated it as "was a fraction of the price", even if it wasn't.
And curiously enough, that's exactly where the interview went, which you would've known had you not been offput by someone's slightly flawed recollection of computers from 20 years ago.
