When Jobs started NeXT in 1985, I was following his every move. The thing I remember about the launch besides being blown away was the NeXT playing a beautiful sounding version Of Louis Armstrong's - What a Wonderful World. This was a high fidelity computer. I convinced Disney that I needed one and the Cube became my preferred computer. I got all the software for it I could including early versions of Adobe Illustrator and Lotus Improv. Lotus actually flew me to Boston for a few days to help them with feedback. My first meeting with Steve Jobs was when I was making a push that the NeXT should be our new standard for desktop publishing. Even though there wasn't software comparable to the Mac (PageMaker), the fact that it was a pure PostScript machine and he was coming out with a new super graphics card called NeXT Dimension made it compelling. I called NeXT and setup an appointment to come and see NeXT and Steve. The office was just beautiful, Steve showed up and gave us a little overview and then he demoed NeXT dimension to us (just my boss and I). He just really went into another gear when demoing, he was so proud and loving of his creation it was striking. As we talked more about NeXT, I asked him why he went with Motorola 68k chips instead of Intel. He angrily fired back "What the fuck do you know about processors?". I was kind of stunned both by his comment and the kick my boss landed on my shin. We continued with the meeting and when we left, my boss yelled at me most of the way home.
I heard about the internet and decided to try e-mail on my NeXT (we had corporate e-mail). Disney.com was only being used by a couple of engineers at Imagineering so for a short time I got art@disney.com. I was playing around with a 3D modeling program on my NeXT one day when I decided to e-mail the developer in Italy with a question. He responded almost instantly, this blew my mind. I started playing around with Mosaic and quite frankly everything I did at Disney and beyond has been web-related.
My next meeting with Steve was when I asked him to come down and do a little talk to the studio with the lure being that SImpson/Bruckheimer was setting up shop at Disney and luckily wanted black computers. I told them about NeXT and set up a meeting between Jobs and them. We ordered NeXT's for their whole office, it was cool. I didn't chat much with Steve but he did remember me.
My final meeting with Steve was when I was VP Software at Disney Online and we were looking for ways to partner with all sorts of people and NeXT was selling WebObjects, a powerful web app server. I went to visit Steve with my boss, he served a beautiful vegetarian lunch to us. He was quite warm and I was thrilled because he remembered meeting me. We talked pretty expansively about the web. He proposed that we turn over our whole web business to NeXT. I was disinclined simply because I figured I would be out of a job, but it obviously went no where.