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25 Years Ago, Apple Acquired NeXT and Brought Back Steve Jobs
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True. I guess he had to know exactly what it meant for him.
The bottom line is, in effect, Jobs managed to acquire Apple by luring them into "buying" NeXT. He then killed the all but dead in the water MacOS and replace it with NeXT OS skinned to look and feel like the old MacOS.
At the time, the MacOS was struggling to handle the then modern applications and their needs and had no hope of surviving much longer. It had absolutely no future.
Yes. In fact, I worked with the betas while we (Macromedia) worked on porting the one and only major "shrink wrap" software application to ship with OSX 10.0, Macromedia FreeHand. We had to "loan" them one of our engineers in order to get some of the needed graphics components written in time for the 10.0 release. Even the 10.1 release left a lot to be desired. OSX didn't really hit its stride until 10.2. (My antique brain can't keep the cats in order; Panther, Cheetah, Leopard, ...).
At the time, the MacOS was struggling to handle the then modern applications and their needs and had no hope of surviving much longer. It had absolutely no future.
Yes. In fact, I worked with the betas while we (Macromedia) worked on porting the one and only major "shrink wrap" software application to ship with OSX 10.0, Macromedia FreeHand. We had to "loan" them one of our engineers in order to get some of the needed graphics components written in time for the 10.0 release. Even the 10.1 release left a lot to be desired. OSX didn't really hit its stride until 10.2. (My antique brain can't keep the cats in order; Panther, Cheetah, Leopard, ...).
And whether you believe that conjecture or not (I don't), TC turned out to be that person and has propelled Apple's success through outstanding products that people want to purchase paying premium prices, resulting in outstanding financials, far beyond what most could have imagined.
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I worked for Apple through the 1990’s and remember fondly when they acquired NeXT with Steve coming back as “advisor.” All of my colleagues had the same thought: he should be running the company, what does this mean for Gil’s future? Back then, Apple’s products were gray ugly boxes and we never realized how close they were to going out of business. When Gil got pushed out and Steve was “interim” CEO we all knew he would stay. When Steve killed the Newton we thought, what a mistake that was great but imperfect technology. When he introduced the iMac and cut the product lines down drastically I wasn’t sure if it was a winning formula. I left for Compaq in 1999 and then watched as Steve rolled out the iPod and later the iPhone. Oddly, it wasn’t computers or NeXT/OS X that turned Apple into one of the largest companies in the world, but consumer electronics. I think only Steve could have had the vision to know that this would work.
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I always thought it was ironic that Mac OS X 10.0's code name was Cheetah, as it was anything but fast!
Its interesting how they made the file menubar a floating window like that... what was the reason? Especially with Jobs who is a perfectionist with such things.
Not really. While Steve Jobs was the correct choice, MacOS might have been better with BeOS as base. We can never know as that is long gone in history. Do not forget it took like 4-5 years to transform NextOS to MacOS X , so if BeOS was taken just as much we will never know where we would be today.
so was Jobs+NextOS better or Jobs+BeOS better? we will never be able to tell. Apple buying NextOS for $400M was part of the deal to get Jobs on board for sure. I guess you had to buy the package and the Jobs package was definitely the right choice.
One thing I am not sure how it would have affected it is that NextStep was based on Unix and I believe BeOS was not, so I do not know how that affected things like app porting and in the future changing to Intel and now M1 and modifying it to be iOS.
Interesting. I read the linked article and that lawsuit was for MS stealing code from Apple’s QuickTime. I was talking about MS lifting Mac UI elements. But the end result is the same. MS wasn’t saving Apple as a favor. It got caught with its fingers in the pot.
Plus they didn‘t save them. They made an investment which at the time was considered „largely symbolic“. Apple still had 1.2 billion in cash when the iMac hit. It was close, but actually no „saving“ was required
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I love the introduction of steve jobs coming back by Gil Amelio. Woz shared the stage with Jobs at that event too. I especially chuckled at the glare Steve gave VP Satjiv Chahil at the end after his demo failed. Suffice to say, he and a lot of other execs were gone soon after Steve took control.
Unfortunately, that’s really bad for our wider culture. That kind of hero/visionary worship is a perfect breeding ground for powerful narcissists who treat employees as less than human
I read that a lot of Mac users felt that way but in hindsight there’s really no comparison between BeOS and NeXT.
BeOS had a lightweight OS with a cool file system, was compatible with PowerPC, and... not a whole lot else
NeXT had an incredible engineering team full of massive talent, a powerful operating system that was highly portable (which enabled Apple to make the switch to Intel) and a pretty great software library for such a small system
Be was like a reimagining of the original MacOS, which of course appealed to Mac users. NeXT was and has been the future of computers
Also, not enough credit is given to the amazing team of software engineers that worked at NeXT. Mac OS X would never have happened without them
… and probably most important of all: the by far best developer tools working perfectly hand in hand with the operating system and desktop environment (NeXTSEP/OpenSTEP)
Imo those tools and frameworks - which became Cocoa and Xcode - made the iPod and iPhone possible; they were/are so efficient that even the (back then) small number of engineers were able to develop Mac OS along with what we now know as iOS (and derivatives). All using using the same OS kernel! Something still unheard of, btw.
To this day noone else could pull a stunt like that, and and developer tools still guarantee a decisive competitive advantage
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That’s such a good point. The developer tools were next level. I think that’s another thing that helped OS X get such a breadth and depth of software so quickly -- and then you mention the iPhone!
As an iOS app developer, I'm often typing "NS" in my code, since it's a prefix for many of the built-in class names.
The prefix "NS" came from NeXTSTEP, just one of the many legacies that live on.
The prefix "NS" came from NeXTSTEP, just one of the many legacies that live on.
NeXTStep was a great OS, with a lot of good ideas. But the only thing « visionary » about it was the use of Objective C and the associated object-oriented frameworks, which survive to this day.
I wonder if BeOS was actually more advanced technically with its emphasis on multithreading.
I wonder if BeOS was actually more advanced technically with its emphasis on multithreading.
It’s amazing what he accomplished in less than 15 years upon returning to the company he started in his garage.
One of the best decisions in history, we will always remember you Steve! you changed our life....