I was applying for jobs back in 1997, and during that time they had a huge career fair called the Brass Ring fair. Employers from around Silicon Valley would have booths and hire people on the spot. I distinctly remember Apple's booth being completely barren, they were practically dead to most engineers. How the tables have turned since then. The big question is, Apple's path appears to be following the path after Steve Jobs left the first time, with the muddied product picture, no innovation, etc. I hope history doesn't repeat itself twice.
20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
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Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#22>> What came out of this deal not only saved Apple and the Mac, but made the iPhone, iPad and more possible as well. What prevents Apple from making the iPhone and iPad? They could have bought Palm, QNX, did something based on Linux... What was the key? BSD? Objective-C? I don't see those being that important. The one thing NeXT did enable them to do was the PowerPC to Intel switch.
The other way to look at it is Palm, QNX, and Linux technology never became as successful as NeXT technology in the mobile space. They could have bought those technologies and made them successful or maybe NeXTStep was the key.
My observation of the smartphone market is that Moore's law always wins. Microsoft knew that from the start; they build a mobile OS (Windows CE) designed more for future devices rather than current devices (like Palm did). So ultimately when the technology matured enough, Microsoft was ready and Palm languished trying to modernize. Ultimately, Apple did one better over Microsoft and simply ported over their desktop OS to a smartphone and beat everyone.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve Jobs.
True. And at least they got a working OS out of the deal instead of futzing with Copland or Taligent for who knows how long. Imagine if our iPhones ran BeOS.
I love BeOS and had NeXTSTEP 3.3 (& later OpenStep) and BeOS running in my office. There was no real comparison, NeXTSTEP was better in every way except doing video demos. It was easier to program and had a decent UNIX. NeXTSTEP was multi-user. BeOS was superior to quite a lot of the other OSes at the time though.
We will really never know, but I suspect there were some serious problems when Palm bought the code and couldn't build a phone / PDA OS out of it.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#24The standard snark is that NeXT bought Apple for -$400 million.
Same with Pixar/Disney/-$7.4B.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#25I was working at Pixar at the time and a couple of us went out to lunch when the news broke to figure out What It All Meant. We passed Steve's office on the way out and one of our party, who had worked with him since early Apple days, congratulated him. The big question was whether they would keep the Unix plumbing visible and useful, or would it be buried under some API layer of no use to us Unix graybeards. Fortunately, the plumbing wasn't hidden in the walls.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#26The standard snark is that NeXT bought Apple for -$400 million.
Same with Pixar/Disney/-$7.4B.
Yeah, Pixar totally "bought" Disney Animation and, to a lesser extent, the theme parks. I'm told John Lasseter has been deeply involved in them. That would be going home for him, he worked at Disneyland as a youth.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#27I was working at Pixar at the time and a couple of us went out to lunch when the news broke to figure out What It All Meant. We passed Steve's office on the way out and one of our party, who had worked with him since early Apple days, congratulated him. The big question was whether they would keep the Unix plumbing visible and useful, or would it be buried under some API layer of no use to us Unix graybeards. Fortuna…
That's great to hear. Have you read Jobs' biography and do you think everything said about Pixtar around those times are accurately portrait?
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#28I was working at Pixar at the time and a couple of us went out to lunch when the news broke to figure out What It All Meant. We passed Steve's office on the way out and one of our party, who had worked with him since early Apple days, congratulated him. The big question was whether they would keep the Unix plumbing visible and useful, or would it be buried under some API layer of no use to us Unix graybeards. Fortuna…
That's great to hear. Have you read Jobs' biography and do you think everything said about Pixtar around those times are accurately portrait?
Sadly, I haven't gotten to it yet. That's embarrassing to admit, but my time for pleasure reading has gotten frustratingly short.
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#29>> What came out of this deal not only saved Apple and the Mac, but made the iPhone, iPad and more possible as well. What prevents Apple from making the iPhone and iPad? They could have bought Palm, QNX, did something based on Linux... What was the key? BSD? Objective-C? I don't see those being that important. The one thing NeXT did enable them to do was the PowerPC to Intel switch.
Steve Jobs, the team he assembled, and a willingness to cut. Apple at the time was running the Newton which, although I loved programming it, was a totally wrong direction. It just wasn't connected as Mr. Jobs explained in his Q&A[1]. He built a much better OS than the Mac at that time. Palm couldn't build the iPhone with Palm and had to build WebOS. QNX is amazing, but its UI and client developer library wasn't ther…
> GNU thing at NeXT.
Can you elaborate on this?
Re: 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
#30I read that the NeXT, let's call it, "adventure", is the reason Apple went with a Linux distribution as basis for their new OS and thus, we're all using OSX now?