PS/2 Model 80 release MSRPs were $6,995, $8,295, and $10,995, depending on the configuration, without monitor, OS, FPU, or support for display resolutions beyond standard VGA[1]. The top model included a 20 MHz CPU, 2 MB RAM, and a 115 MB ESDI hard drive.
NeXT shipped two years later, but its $9,995 MSRP[2] included the OS, application software, additional software, a 17" 1120x832 greyscale monitor, FPU, DSP, and four times the RAM of the top-end Model 80.
IIRC — and I may not, it's been decades — NeXT generally sold at or around MSRP, while other UNIX vendors and IBM typically sold at a considerable discount to large accounts and academia.
To compare with a more "garden-variety" PC, in the same BYTE issue[2] as the NeXT article, Dell was selling its lowest-end 386 for $4,199, with a 25 MHz CPU, 1 MB RAM, monochrome VGA display (640x480, size unspecified), and 40 MB (interface unspecified, probably IDE) hard drive for $6,299, no FPU, OS extra.
This same Dell system with a 150 MB hard drive, SVGA color display (800x600, size unspecified), and 8 MB RAM cost around $7,000 ($5,900 for 150 MB SVGA, +$600 for 4 MB RAM; 8 MB, I presume, would cost another $600×4/(4-1) = $800 or so).
Adding a $500 387/25 FPU (based on ads in the back of the same BYTE[2]) and a $500 Dell UNIX license[3] brings the cost of our Dell system to $8,000, so within 20% or so of NeXT.
Unlike Dell, NeXT also bundled a variety of high-quality developer tools (Allegro Common Lisp and Sybase SQL Server in addition to the expected GNU C/ObjC toolchain, Interface Builder, and NS class libraries), useful application software (Mathematica, WriteNow, Mail.app), and convenient reference works (dictionary, thesaurus, book of quotations, complete works of Shakespeare, product docs).
Finally, NeXT charged $3,695 to upgrade the Cube's internal hard drive from 40 MB to 330 MB, which makes Apple SSD upgrade pricing sound entirely reasonable, as a comparable upgrade from a hypothetical 512 GB to 4 TB NeXT SSD would cost almost $3,000.
PS/2 Model 80 release MSRPs were $6,995, $8,295, and $10,995, depending on the configuration, without monitor, OS, FPU, or support for display resolutions beyond standard VGA[1]. The top model included a 20 MHz CPU, 2 MB RAM, and a 115 MB ESDI hard drive.
NeXT shipped two years later, but its $9,995 MSRP[2] included the OS, application software, additional software, a 17" 1120x832 greyscale monitor, FPU, DSP, and four times the RAM of the top-end Model 80.
IIRC — and I may not, it's been decades — NeXT generally sold at or around MSRP, while other UNIX vendors and IBM typically sold at a considerable discount to large accounts and academia.
To compare with a more "garden-variety" PC, in the same BYTE issue[2] as the NeXT article, Dell was selling its lowest-end 386 for $4,199, with a 25 MHz CPU, 1 MB RAM, monochrome VGA display (640x480, size unspecified), and 40 MB (interface unspecified, probably IDE) hard drive for $6,299, no FPU, OS extra.
This same Dell system with a 150 MB hard drive, SVGA color display (800x600, size unspecified), and 8 MB RAM cost around $7,000 ($5,900 for 150 MB SVGA, +$600 for 4 MB RAM; 8 MB, I presume, would cost another $600×4/(4-1) = $800 or so).
Adding a $500 387/25 FPU (based on ads in the back of the same BYTE[2]) and a $500 Dell UNIX license[3] brings the cost of our Dell system to $8,000, so within 20% or so of NeXT.
Unlike Dell, NeXT also bundled a variety of high-quality developer tools (Allegro Common Lisp and Sybase SQL Server in addition to the expected GNU C/ObjC toolchain, Interface Builder, and NS class libraries), useful application software (Mathematica, WriteNow, Mail.app), and convenient reference works (dictionary, thesaurus, book of quotations, complete works of Shakespeare, product docs).
Finally, NeXT charged $3,695 to upgrade the Cube's internal hard drive from 40 MB to 330 MB, which makes Apple SSD upgrade pricing sound entirely reasonable, as a comparable upgrade from a hypothetical 512 GB to 4 TB NeXT SSD would cost almost $3,000.
[1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-06/page/n134/...
[2] See, e.g., page 178 of
https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199001_Byte_Magazine_Vol_1...
(warning: slow PDF link)
[3] https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1992/0706.html