Few people know that many Apple products—including the iPhone—are running on software developed nearly 40 years ago at NeXT.
On stage at CHM Live on May 26, 2026, Geoffrey Cain, author of the new book Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary, moderated a discussion with NeXT insiders Dan’l Lewin, Avie Tevanian, and Bud Tribble. Insider Rich Page shared memories in a recorded video early in the program. Without CHM’s collection, Cain noted as he kicked off the evening, he would not have been able to write his book.
In 1985, after failing to get rid of Apple CEO John Sculley in a coup, Steve Jobs decided to start a new company. He had a vision to build powerful computers for those who truly wanted them: higher education and intelligence communities. Software engineer Bud Tribble was drawn in by Jobs’s storytelling about what the company could be, and along Director of Global Education Sales and Marketing Dan’l Lewin and others, he agreed to leave Apple and join Jobs.
Apple was not happy that Jobs had poached valuable employees, and while the new company was working out of Jobs’s home and trying to come up with a product, they were also fighting an aggressive lawsuit. Meanwhile, the broader industry was exploding—Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics all went public in quick succession. And the major player, IBM, seemed to want what startups like NeXT had.
NeXT insiders remember a failed project with IBM.
NeXT VP of Engineering, Avie Tevanian shared how as a geeky software guy working on his PhD at Carnegie Mellon he was drawn to working on low levels of operating systems. He wanted to create something from scratch, and the university’s focus on doing things people could use, led him to build a kernel, the core component of an operating system. His Mach kernel ran well on multiprocessors, and he built it into Unix, a system that researchers loved.
Some people from NeXT learned about the Mach kernel when they saw the Carnegie Mellon team present a paper at a conference. They were impressed. So, Steve Jobs and Bud Tribble and others set out to recruit Avie.
Bud Tribble remembers a trip to Falling Water.
Tevanian came on board at NeXT, and the Mach kernel became the powerful foundation for the company’s NeXTSTEP operating system.
Steve Jobs’s obsession with design drove his insistence that NeXT’s machine would be a perfect cube. The cube was extremely difficult to manufacture, and only one company, located in Chicago, could make the molds for its lightweight magnesium casing.
But it was difficult to get perfectly parallel sides in a mold, and so the resulting seams had to be sanded down. The dust was extremely flammable, and the subcontractor doing the work was shut down by the fire department, recalled Dan'l Lewin.
The cube was not only complex to build, it was also extremely expensive. The paint job alone cost as much as what the whole cube was supposed to cost. To Dan'l Lewin that was a warning sign that couldn't be ignored.
Dan’l Lewin leaves NeXT.
Although the early machines had limitations and universities were wary, Lewin noted that NeXT found traction in government intelligence agencies and advanced research labs. In Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine at CERN to create the World Wide Web, touting its sophistication and ease of use. But it wasn’t enough.
Reality set in as problems with the hardware continued and it became clear that competing with hardware giants was unsustainable. “Black Tuesday” layoffs marked the collapse of NeXT’s hardware division. But Bud Tribble emphasized that NeXT’s software breakthroughs would not have been possible without the hardware experimentation done for the cube. Only with a machine of that size and power could the team explore powerful software.
Though it was painful, the pivot to software alone was necessary. Tevanian noted that Steve Jobs had done what he needed to do at this time to help the company succeed. It was a maturation of his leadership that was clear to Tribble, who had worked with Jobs since 1980. He noted that Jobs had learned he was most effective when he was evangelizing for products to those who would be using them, an insight that would later define Apple’s consumer focus.
While NeXT was pivoting, Apple had been struggling. The company began to look outside to acquire a new operating system. When Avie Tevanian heard that Apple was considering Be Inc., he encouraged Jobs to call and offer their OS instead. Jobs and Tevanian won the “bakeoff” between the two companies, and within a month Apple had struck a deal to acquire NeXT and its software.
When the NeXT team arrived to work at Apple, the iconic company was, in Tevanian’s words, “complete and utter chaos.”
Avie Tevanian describes getting control at Apple.
Jobs was excited to be back at Apple and have a chance to turn the company around, and with his backchannel support, Avie was able to get everyone headed in the same direction.
The final discussion focused on how the NeXT insiders saw Jobs transform as a leader during his time at the company. All three believe that marrying and raising children was the critical factor that softened and matured Jobs. He became more self-aware, learned to trust others, and grew as a leader and a person.
Steve Jobs in Exile | CHM Live, May 26, 2026
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