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A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

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Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#21

Post by nradov »

jhbadger wrote: post #10
coldcode wrote: post #7

I think the main long term benefit of buying NeXT was getting Steve back. I left Apple a year or so before this happened (I remember Gil being all excited talking about Apple to the staff right before he realized what a disaster it was and we never saw him again around Infinite Loop) but I left because I was sure doing what they were doing would be the end of Apple. The OS and kernel were nice, the smart people from…

Classic MacOS was a disaster once multitasking became a needed feature, and Copland (its in-house replacement) wasn't going anywhere. The only other option would have been to buy Be, to get BeOS. That could have worked too, BeOS was great (and its modern clone Haiku is fun too), but it was clear Apple needed something from outside.

BeOS might have worked well enough in the short term but it would have turned into a disaster later. It lacked the fundamental security foundations that Nextstep already had built in. Retrofitting that level of security would have been extremely difficult, perhaps just as hard as adding preemptive multitasking to classic MacOS.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#22

Post by chx »

agloeregrets wrote: post #15
jhbadger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic MacOS was a disaster once multitasking became a needed feature, and Copland (its in-house replacement) wasn't going anywhere. The only other option would have been to buy Be, to get BeOS. That could have worked too, BeOS was great (and its modern clone Haiku is fun too), but it was clear Apple needed something from outside.

Multitasking was needed and Be could have filled the Darwin gap but what they really needed was a leadership kick in the head. Steve was hired, almost immediately led a coup that ended up with Gil gone, the board disbanded and him with near pure control over the company. He fired, chopped, focused, and brought operations to the point where they were not lighting their cash on hand on fire. The business turnaround sto…

https://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE

Transcription at: https://austenallred.com/steve-jobs-insult-response-transcri...

> The hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision that’s gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars — 10 billion dollars of product a year? One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room, and I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#23

Post by zyang »

ksec wrote: post #8

Slightly Off Topic. I consider both Andy Grove and Steve Jobs as the greatest CEO ever lived in Silicon Valley. ( Sorry it is hard to pick just one between the two ) Current Generation are Patrick Gelsinger ( VMware ), Jensen Huang ( Nvidia ). Satya Nadella ( Microsoft ) and Lisa Su ( AMD ) are two possible candidate but I think it is still too early to tell. Sometimes if I think if I did't set the bar so high for Ap…

Cook deserves more credit. iPhone survived the onslaught of Android and remained the most profitable smartphone. That alone is a minor miracle.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#24

Post by mullingitover »

endorphone wrote: post #16
mullingitover wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook arguably made Apple what it is today. Without him, Apple might've had great products but failed miserably in the supply chain management side of the business. It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive. Tech aficionados (myself included) might have qualms about their product strategy, but overall the business continues to be wildly successful with regula…

"It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive." Tim Cook is clearly incredibly important to the success of Apple, but from a product perspective it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company. Those products are faster and slicker and have better cameras -- the innovations afforded to a hyper-profitable company -- but it isn…

Apple Watch and AirPods both launched after the Jobs era, and they're doing pretty well in their respective categories. I wouldn't bet against Apple on their product strategy with Cook running things, they're a lot doing more than just adding polish to what Jobs left them with.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#25

Post by _rutinerad »

endorphone wrote: post #16
mullingitover wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook arguably made Apple what it is today. Without him, Apple might've had great products but failed miserably in the supply chain management side of the business. It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive. Tech aficionados (myself included) might have qualms about their product strategy, but overall the business continues to be wildly successful with regula…

"It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive." Tim Cook is clearly incredibly important to the success of Apple, but from a product perspective it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company. Those products are faster and slicker and have better cameras -- the innovations afforded to a hyper-profitable company -- but it isn…

> it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company

Not really. You could say that the iPhone still carries the company, but with the exception of that outlier newer initiatives like Services and Wearables/Home/Accessories bring in way more money than products that Steve Jobs launched (Mac and iPad).

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#26

Post by AceJohnny2 »

austincheney wrote: post #6

> And that’s when Andy lost some credibility with me. I can’t remember exactly what he said about future speeds, but I seem to remember 400 megahertz or maybe even more. Oh, please. You’re claiming 10x more than Motorola? Discarding numbers out of hand, at least those number actually were fictional. Reminds of a recent comment on HN where people twisted themselves into knots ignoring numbers they could easily reprodu…

I love this story so much because of that paragraph specifically. (I had read it before but couldn't find it anymore. Happy to see it show up again!)

> The only thing more insane was Intel’s 80486 running at 66 megahertz! Can you imagine? I was a physicist, I should know.

It's so perfect! I'm glad he gives us the benefit of his hindsight.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#27

Post by jmastrangelo »

ksec wrote: post #8

Slightly Off Topic. I consider both Andy Grove and Steve Jobs as the greatest CEO ever lived in Silicon Valley. ( Sorry it is hard to pick just one between the two ) Current Generation are Patrick Gelsinger ( VMware ), Jensen Huang ( Nvidia ). Satya Nadella ( Microsoft ) and Lisa Su ( AMD ) are two possible candidate but I think it is still too early to tell. Sometimes if I think if I did't set the bar so high for Ap…

Definitely would add Bezos and Musk. Bezos is one of the most managerially/business astute CEOs and Musk is able to will futuristic companies basically out of thin air.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#28

Post by endorphone »

_rutinerad wrote: post #25
endorphone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive." Tim Cook is clearly incredibly important to the success of Apple, but from a product perspective it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company. Those products are faster and slicker and have better cameras -- the innovations afforded to a hyper-profitable company -- but it isn…

> it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company Not really. You could say that the iPhone still carries the company, but with the exception of that outlier newer initiatives like Services and Wearables/Home/Accessories bring in way more money than products that Steve Jobs launched (Mac and iPad).

Not really? Then you casually say "if you exclude the iPhone" which kind of undercuts the entire argument, doesn't it?

70% of Apple revenue comes from the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Services revenue is entirely and absolutely based upon that, and certainly didn't originate post Jobs.

Even the Watch -- have one and love it -- exists on the back of the iPhone.

So, yeah, really.

Everything Apple has done that has been successful since Jobs is entirely in the halo of the iPhone, which of course still accounts for the vast bulk of Apple's profits.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#29

Post by munificent »

It's crazy to think that if:

1. Apple had bought Be instead of Next.

2. Then OS X would have been based on BeOS instead of OpenStep.

3. Which in turn means it would have been written in C++ instead of Objective-C.

4. Which means iOS wouldn't have chosen Objective-C.

5. Which means Swift would never have been created to address its shortcomings.

Maybe there would have been some alternate-universe Swift to deal with C++'s shortcomings, but it would likely be a very different language. If nothing else, the lack of keyword arguments would lend a very different feel.

Re: A secret call to Andy Grove that may have helped Apple buy NeXT (2018)

#30

Post by chrislund »

munificent wrote: post #29

It's crazy to think that if: 1. Apple had bought Be instead of Next. 2. Then OS X would have been based on BeOS instead of OpenStep. 3. Which in turn means it would have been written in C++ instead of Objective-C. 4. Which means iOS wouldn't have chosen Objective-C. 5. Which means Swift would never have been created to address its shortcomings. Maybe there would have been some alternate-universe Swift to deal with C+…

I wonder then if iOS would’ve ever happened. Probably not, unless they still somehow got Steve Jobs.

Apple at least incidentally got some of the benefit of BeOS, or really, the talent behind it: Dominic Giampaolo, who contributed significantly to BeFS, has been with Apple for some time now working on their file systems. I think he is/was a principal on APFS. I’m sure there are others!

Also, muni! From robot frog!

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