It is the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser, and on which id Software developed the video games Doom and Quake.

NeXTSTEP originated or innovated a large number of other GUI concepts which became common in other operating systems: 3D chiseled widgets, large full-color icons, system-wide drag and drop of a wide range of objects beyond file icons, system-wide piped services, real-time scrolling and window dragging, properties dialog boxes called "inspectors", and window modification notices (such as the saved status of a file).

The system is among the first general-purpose user interfaces to handle publishing color standards, transparency, sophisticated sound and music processing (through a Motorola 56000 DSP), advanced graphics primitives, internationalization, and modern typography, in a consistent manner across all applications.

The kits made the system particularly interesting to custom application programmers, and NeXTSTEP had a long history in the financial programming community.

The last version, 3.3, was released in early 1995, for the Motorola 68000 family based NeXT computers, Intel x86, Sun SPARC, and HP PA-RISC-based systems.

NeXTSTEP's direct descendant is Apple's macOS, which then yielded iPhone OS 1, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Current Web browsers used in "surfing the Internet" are mere passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute.

I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French...Some features and keyboard shortcuts now common to web browsers originated in NeXTSTEP conventions.

This basic design can be enhanced by the simple addition of new links and new documents, located anywhere in the local area network, that foreshadowed Tim Berners-Lee's initial prototype that was written on NeXTSTEP in October–December 1990.

Other games based on the Doom engine such as Heretic and its sequel Hexen by Raven Software, and Strife by Rogue Entertainment were developed on NeXT hardware using id's tools.

It is the product of an effort to separate the underlying operating system from the higher-level object libraries to create a cross-platform object-oriented API standard derived from NeXTSTEP.