Apple Acquires NeXT

Apple announces its acquisition of NeXT for $400 million, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple and adopting NeXTSTEP as the basis for its next-generation operating system.

Significance

This acquisition was the foundational event. Without NeXTSTEP's object-oriented OpenStep framework (which became Cocoa), Cocoa Touch would not exist. It provided a modern, powerful foundation for all future Apple software.