181–190 of 267 posts
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> GNU thing at NeXT. Can you elaborate on this?
See: http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-... NeXT wanted to keep the Objective-C frontend to GCC proprietary, but Richard Stallman believed that would violate the GPL. I know, it's terrible: NeXT had to contribute back to a community they only wanted to take from.
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You're getting downvoted to hell for a small misunderstanding, and the replies aren't necessarily helping. NeXT is the reason Apple went with a UNIX-type OS that evolved into OS X, yes. Linux is also a UNIX-type OS, but is not an ancestor of OS X. Linux is so popular now that it's easy to identify it with UNIX but historically it's only one of several implementations that work in roughly similar ways. Other replies a…
Linux = "Linux Is Not UniX" It's in the name.
(I'd just like to interject, etc.)
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You're getting downvoted to hell for a small misunderstanding, and the replies aren't necessarily helping. NeXT is the reason Apple went with a UNIX-type OS that evolved into OS X, yes. Linux is also a UNIX-type OS, but is not an ancestor of OS X. Linux is so popular now that it's easy to identify it with UNIX but historically it's only one of several implementations that work in roughly similar ways. Other replies a…
Linux = "Linux Is Not UniX" It's in the name.
"I’d argue that this is probably the single most important tech acquisition of all time." However, it was not Apple's first choice. They first attempted to acquire Be Inc. (BeOS) but Jean-Louis Gassée held out for $275 million and lost the deal in a surprise move when Apple, instead, bought NeXT.
And completing the circle: Gassée was partially responsible for Jobs leaving Apple, and was promoted to Jobs' former position after Jobs resigned. He founded Be after also being forced out of Apple.
Silicon Valley really can be thoroughly incestuous at times.
I 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…
Didn't Steve have an email that was in your mailbox by default when you got a new account on a NeXT machine? It had some embedded images and an audio file of him talking. Anyway, I sent whoever it was, pretty sure Steve, an email with read receipt enabled and he bitched me out for invading his privacy. This was ~93 or so.
My father's most regretted financial move is ignoring his weird thought to buy 10 shares of Apple stock at this time.
And how long would he have held on to them before selling?
That's the really fun part of trading: it's one thing to see a profit, and quite another to bet on whether it's as good as you're going to get, or go 5x - 10x - 100x higher.
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> Crystal balls that see the future are certainly in short supply. Yes, but Apple, from 1999 until Jobs died at least, and for some time more, gave people opportunity after opportunity to buy a constantly sky-rocketing stock. If someone didn't see it with the first iMac (1999 IIRC), they should have seen it with the iPod. If not, then with the iPhone. They had many chances to buy that stock.
Yes, but again, this is in hindsight. For all you knew back then, it could crash at any time, and any other company could also skyrocket. The point is, right now, any of the hundreds of startups you see just starting now /could/ potentially be the next Facebook. Statistically, most won't be. But of course in 20 years, you won't remember thinking about buying stocks for all the companies that failed. You'll only remem…
That's the same for every company, so it's a moot point. What would the lesson from that be? Nobody has a crystal ball, so nobody should invest in any stock?
Since investing does happen, and is based on signs and trends, what I'm saying is that Apple gave many of those repeatedly, and if someone didn't see a revived company when the original iMac came out, and then OS X 10.0, and then the iPod, and then the iPhone, and then the iPad, etc, then they only have their selves to blame.
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Now that would be an interesting alternate timeline! / MacBook Pro with Blinkenlights bar /
The Mac would not have been a huge success probably in that scenario.
"I’d argue that this is probably the single most important tech acquisition of all time." However, it was not Apple's first choice. They first attempted to acquire Be Inc. (BeOS) but Jean-Louis Gassée held out for $275 million and lost the deal in a surprise move when Apple, instead, bought NeXT.
I knew at the tine that Gassee was making a huge mistake. Be had some fantastic tech but it wasn't otherworldly. A MacOS based on Be would have been amazing, at the time. X ended up being a better way to go, the other changed made when Jobs came back turned me off of Apple's products but I can appreciate the overall improvements.
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See: http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-... NeXT wanted to keep the Objective-C frontend to GCC proprietary, but Richard Stallman believed that would violate the GPL. I know, it's terrible: NeXT had to contribute back to a community they only wanted to take from.
I hope all your software is free.