Just get a modern Mac and remove half the RAM. That should get you the same experience. The visual design was first class, but I remember when I went from NeXTStep to NEWS to X11 and was very relieved to not have to have my mouse spin for minutes at a time.
One will still be missing:
- pop-up/vertical main menu
- PANTONE colour library
- Display PostScript
I actually used similar machines running NeXT/OPENSTEP, Mac OS, and Windows shortly after graduation and the performance was smoother and more consistent in NeXTstep 3.3, though I will admit OPENSTEP 4.2 felt just a tad more sluggish, but it was far and away the more useful and capable machine, even when running the same software (e.g., Altsys Virtuoso vice Aldus Freehand, or FrameMaker or WordPerfect).
Probably helped that the Cube had 52MB RAM, the Mac 8MB, and the Windows 12MB.
To some extent everything was like that unless you had bleeding edge hardware. Running an up to date version of Windows was endlessly frustrating until the Core 2 Duo came along.
That brought me back! The Intel Core 2 Duo was the “Apple Silicon” moment before Apple Silicon.