The NextStep was way ahead on the curve for it's time (which is one of the reasons it failed).

I read an awesome piece a while back (and for the life of me I can't remember where) that said if you want to design for the future, estimate what computing power will be available in 10-15 years then buy that for your developers.

In that project I think they spent 186,000 per machine per user on average but they where designing software light years ahead of its time.

I don't think it worked out for them? The systems were way to expensive for most users.

The NextStep didn't work out for a bunch of reasons cost been one of the major ones.

The other project wasn't trying to create a product they where trying to capture a sense of what hardware would be on every desk in 10 years and design for that, in effect skating to where the puck will be rather than where it is.

I wish I could remember where I read it :|.