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I was looking for the punchline... I guess in a way this is very Steve Jobsian, buying next.com for however much and making it the apple website

the store.apple.com link doesn't work... any link taking you away from the next domain wont work... odd.

well if you go to next.com/buy and use the find a store or find a re-seller menus you can get away from next.com, curiouser and curiouser

It was bought in July of 1994¹ for a company called NeXT that Steve Jobs started in 1985² and sold to Apple in 1996³.

After which he had a second "boardroom coup"[4] which he won; going on to become the CEO for a second time[5].

The first coup he lost[6], resigned, and started NeXT[7]. Due to horrible sales of the Lisa[8], Apple III[9], and original Macintosh ref:1984-86[10], Jobs wasn't trusted to make sound business decisions[11]. NeXT didn't sell many machines either; only 50k over its 11 years[12]; one of which TBL used to make the World Wide Web[13].

The nextgen Mac OS was scrapped in favor of a nextgen NeXTStep[14], branded as OS X[15] [16].

Fun Fact: I own zero Apple products except for some stock I bought in 1998 (after trying a rhapsody developer preview) and one NeXTStation color turbo I got at a surplus sale in early 2001 (in my parents garage, up in the rafters; call it an investment). Best $1,000 and $25 I've ever spent, respectively.

[1] http://who.is/whois/next.com

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#1985.E2.80.931986:_Foundin...

[3] http://news.cnet.com/Apple-acquires-Next,-Jobs/2100-1001_3-2...

[4] http://news.cnet.com/Amelio,-Hancock-out-of-Apple/2009-1001_...

[5] http://news.cnet.com/Jobs-named-interim-Apple-CEO/2100-1001_...

[6] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JiAyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3...

[7] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1987/...

[8] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dxEhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J...

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/16/business/apple-expands-pro...

[10] http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CgwhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=T...

[11] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1985/...

[12] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/next-computer

[13] http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html

[14] http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/january/new0114c...

[15] http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/12/business/rhapsody-s-out-os...

[16] http://www.rhapsodyos.org/misc/rhap_timeline/Rhapsody_Timeli...

archive.org[1] shows that the URL has redirected to apple.com since at least 2007. There are no entries between 2001 and 2007, but the last one for 2001 has a delayed redirect to apple.com/enterprise. This delayed redirect to the apple.com domain took place sometime between February and December 1998. Before that, next.com just loaded Apple Enterprise content.

The last pre-acquisition snapshot is from April 18, 1997: http://web.archive.org/web/19970418052856/http://www.next.co...

1: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://next.com

It's a mirror rather than a redirect though. And I notice there's no rel=canonical tag. Not like Apple needs it, anyway.

LOL is that supposed to imply that apple is the next thing? xD okay... presumptuous much?

You've got it all wrong. The domain refers to the company that Steve Jobs founded when he was first kicked out of Apple in the 80's. The company name is actually spelt like this, "NeXT" Apple purchased the company back in 1996 which is why the domain points to the Apple site.

Yup - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#1985.E2.80.931986:_Foundin...

Ahh see I didn't know that but even still it kinda just makes apple seem like they are trying to say they are the "NEXT" thing whether or not it has alternative meanings...

Next.com