NeXT, Inc. was a computer company founded by Steve Jobs in 1985 after his departure from Apple, and it produced the workstation on which Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser and HTTP server in 1990. The NeXTSTEP operating system — with its object-oriented framework and advanced development tools — provided the technical environment that made rapid prototyping of the web possible, though the web itself was designed to be platform-independent from the outset. The NeXT computer is therefore a historical contingency, not a technical necessity: the web could have been built on any Unix workstation, but it happened to be built on this one. The company's later acquisition by Apple and the incorporation of NeXTSTEP into macOS represents a path not taken for the web's own architecture, which deliberately avoided the proprietary elegance that NeXTSTEP exemplified.