The NeXT had such a clean aesthetic, even on the original B&W displays that were limited to just four shades of grey. I still use the house icon from the later color systems on my Linux desktop.
I cobbled together a NeXT-compliant Intel box in '95 so I could get NeXTSTEP 3.2 installed. What started it all? An old BYTE magazine article that featured a screen capture of NeXTSTEP. It looked so good that I just had to try it out firsthand.