There was a lot of awesome things about NeXT machines and NeXTStep but there were also crappy things. The endless list of nested menus for example was nice in that it was standard and you knew what to expect in every application, but also could be less than ideal in some applications.
Nostalgia favors remembering the good things and forgets the frustrations of daily usage.
In the end NeXT failed not because the machines were too expensive (it was competing against Sun, DEC and SGI workstations which were also very expensive, so the price was not really out of line in that context -- only if you compare it to PCs, which you shouldn't.) It lost for a variety of other reasons, and I'm sure if you talk to 20 different people who placed the PO's for workstations in the early 90's you'd get 20 different reasons.
A lot of the times it just came down to "Our guys are used to SunOS/Irix/etc. and don't want to adjust." Or "Our software works best on X." or only works on X. etc.
Nostalgia favors remembering the good things and forgets the frustrations of daily usage.
In the end NeXT failed not because the machines were too expensive (it was competing against Sun, DEC and SGI workstations which were also very expensive, so the price was not really out of line in that context -- only if you compare it to PCs, which you shouldn't.) It lost for a variety of other reasons, and I'm sure if you talk to 20 different people who placed the PO's for workstations in the early 90's you'd get 20 different reasons.
A lot of the times it just came down to "Our guys are used to SunOS/Irix/etc. and don't want to adjust." Or "Our software works best on X." or only works on X. etc.