thrilled by the factory that was used to produce Macintosh — he wanted to do even better this time with NeXT. He set up to build the most advanced automated factory in the world, in Fremont, not too far from the Mac factory itself. The NeXT computers would be built untouched by human hands, using robots operated by other NeXT computers. The factory was designed to mass produce NeXT Cubes and bring the costs down with volume... a disastrous choice for the future.

And finally, the design of the machine, of course, had to be a stunner as well. Steve hired frogdesign again, the same firm that had designed Macintosh, and they came up with a perfect black cube built out of magnesium. Although the Cube clearly deserved its place at the SF MOMA, many of its features made it a pain to build: from the perfect right angles to its materials to its color, it was extremely complicated — and expensive — to put together. In addition, Steve had made a point on also designing a “beautiful” board for the Cube.

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