Sure, I couldn't afford a NeXTCube in 1990. But by 1993 I was running NeXTstep on my generic intel hardware, a full two years prior to the release of Windows 9

Sure, I couldn't afford a NeXTCube in 1990. But by 1993 I was running NeXTstep on my generic intel hardware, a full two years prior to the release of Windows 95. (Incidentally, I also had the pleasure of running it on a SPARC laptop made by Tadpole, and on one of the HP PA-RISC "gecko" machines, but those were owned by employers. I could afford to run it on a PC, though.) But, you're right, people continued to believe that NeXTstep required a $10000 machine long after it did not.