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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)

#61

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

baebeegeezus wrote: post #56
watertom wrote: post #53

After Steve left, and Apple was floundering I wanted Sun to buy Apple. I was working with Wall Street Companies at the time and I tried my best to make it happen. I also worked with Scott McNealy here and there and brought it up to him a couple of times. Once he said to me, “Apple’s not worth having without Jobs, and Apple doesn’t need anyone else if they have Jobs.” So I knew Sun would never buy Apple.

Imagine if Oracle ended up owning Apple. Unthinkable.

One would hope that Apple+Sun would have been successful enough to never be acquired by Oracle.

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

#62

Post by rvz »

jki275 wrote: post #57
rvz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well regardless of whether if Be or NeXT was chosen, Apple was very close to becoming bankrupt in 1997 and without the Microsoft $100M investment in Apple shares, I'm not sure if Apple would be here anyway without it even with Jobs being on board. Apple lost their lawsuits against Microsoft and had to compromise with a deal with Bill Gates to save themselves. It was at that point Microsoft could have refused at the t…

That’s a different discussion.

Well you said: "Buying Next brought Steve back, and that's the only thing that kept Apple alive." earlier and the on-going lawsuits were critical for Apple's survival with them having to compromise a deal with Microsoft in order for Bill Gates to save them.

The acquisition choice alone was half of the story even if NeXT or Be were bought and Apple still wouldn't be here without compromising a deal with Microsoft to invest in them since the lawsuits were in Microsoft's favour.

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

#63

Post by rspain »

vikramkr wrote: post #45
jmastrangelo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think bezos has to show continued dominance - but he's obviously up there. I don't know I'd you can call it for muak without a few decades to see whether his companies stick. Sure, he's changed the conception of electric cars and made low earth orbit really accessible, but as a CEO and leader it's still not clear whether he can lead that revolution long term or if some of his more erratic tendencies will bring thin…

”Bezos has to show continued dominance”....?

Please say that is a typo, surely it should say...

Bezos has shown continued dominance

Amazon is a huge conglomerate on a huge scope and scale. Bezos has built a book store into a Japanese style mega-corp.

AWS is killing it, Amazon.com is killing it, Prime is killing it, A9 is killing it, Whole is killing in....

So many subsidiaries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)

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

#64

Post by kls »

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…

A big piece to that power play was Bill Gates backing Job with capital. It was a win win for both of them, Steve used it to wrangle political control of the company and Gates used it to stave off an impending anti-trust litigation. Had Steve not had the capital from Gates a year after rejoining, the story would have been much different.

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

#65

Post by kls »

sjwright wrote: post #49
agloeregrets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Be was a tech demo at best. It looked finished on the surface but had less than 10% of what a complete operating system needs in terms of feature depth, libraries and extensive real word testing. Steve Jobs was utterly critical, but NeXT technology was also insanely valuable.

Right it was a great single user workstation, but had no where near the underlining stack to compete in a corp environment. Be did one thing and, did that one thing light years better than anything on the market. next was the clear choice for what apple needed to stay competitive.

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

#66

Post by kls »

linguae wrote: post #47
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any engineers on HN who worked on Copeland? Because I've always found it astounding that while the stated reason for the NeXT aquisition and the transition to the OpenStep-based OS was that Copeland was still years away from completion -- but then after Jobs took over it was still 5ish years for OS X to finally be released... And in the meantime they continued to release OS 8 and OS 9 as updates, including…

I was in elementary school during Copland and the NeXT acquisition and so I wasn't there, but based on everything that I've read, the reason for the long gap between the purchase of NeXT in December 1996 and the release of Mac OS X 10.0 in March 2001 had largely to do with the inclusion of the Carbon API. The story goes as follows: after Copland was cancelled in 1996, Apple then pursued the idea of purchasing or lice…

Yep Adobe and their unwillingness to port was a big part of it. I think Steve carried that with him and gained a little joy in staking Flash in the heart when he did.

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

#67

Post by kls »

jki275 wrote: post #57
rvz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well regardless of whether if Be or NeXT was chosen, Apple was very close to becoming bankrupt in 1997 and without the Microsoft $100M investment in Apple shares, I'm not sure if Apple would be here anyway without it even with Jobs being on board. Apple lost their lawsuits against Microsoft and had to compromise with a deal with Bill Gates to save themselves. It was at that point Microsoft could have refused at the t…

That’s a different discussion.

It's not really that cash backed Steve's power play to gain control of the company. They are interrelated.

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

#68

Post by WalterBright »

usefulcat wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof that a good CEO is worth the money.

Now all we need is a reliable way to identify a 'good' CEO without the benefit of hindsight.

Not just anybody is hired to be a CEO. A candidate has to have a track record of success. That's how.

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

#69

Post by usefulcat »

WalterBright wrote: post #68
usefulcat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now all we need is a reliable way to identify a 'good' CEO without the benefit of hindsight.

Not just anybody is hired to be a CEO. A candidate has to have a track record of success. That's how.

If you know of a reliable way to identify CEOs who can effect the kind of turnaround that Jobs executed at Apple, then, with respect, I tend to think you may be in the wrong business :)

My point was that the rarity of that kind of turnaround is strong evidence that that level of CEO performance is not even close to being predictable.

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

#70

Post by WalterBright »

usefulcat wrote: post #69
WalterBright wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just anybody is hired to be a CEO. A candidate has to have a track record of success. That's how.

If you know of a reliable way to identify CEOs who can effect the kind of turnaround that Jobs executed at Apple, then, with respect, I tend to think you may be in the wrong business :) My point was that the rarity of that kind of turnaround is strong evidence that that level of CEO performance is not even close to being predictable.

Most CEOs run their companies successfully. The ones that don't get the boot and are not likely to be recruited for another CEO position. After all, would you?
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