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Apple and NeXT announce merger (1996)
- JAFTEM 9y agoI'm too young to know, so I'm guessing, but was this move also to get Jobs back? I think not long after he became CEO.
- walrus01 9y agoThe move was more to acquire a rock solid Unix/BSD based operating system with serious multitasking functionality, for the purpose of building professional workstations... If you look at the G4 power macs and G4 powerbook laptops from the 2000 to 2006 era the result is evident. Legacy MacOS on PowerPC was a dead end. At that time in 1996 they knew that Microsoft was going to take the NT kernel and build it into something very stable and more consumer friendly. NT 3.5 and NT4.0 never saw widespread consumer adoption, only in corporate environments. But the later release of Windows 2000 was significantly more stable and capable than legacy MacOS.
- erikj 9y agoApple even considered licensing the NT kernel before the acquisition: http://lowendmac.com/2013/the-rise-and-fall-of-apples-gil-amelio/ http://lowendmac.com/2013/the-rise-and-fall-of-apples-gil-am...
- walrus01 9y agoI forgot about that. Windows NT 3.5 and I think 4.0 were ported to the DEC Alpha CPU architecture and shipped on a number of (very expensive) DEC workstations at the time. So it is not totally nuts to possibly port it to the then-current Apple/Motorola PowerPC architecture as well. https://www.google.com/search?q=dec+alpha+windows+nt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b https://www.google.com/search?q=dec+alpha+windows+nt&ie=utf-...
- geesejuggler 9y agoI thought there once was a Windows NT version for PowerPC, but it was never released, or was pulled short after release. Never seen it in action though.
- twoodfin 9y agoEven Windows 95/98 had a significantly stronger multitasking architecture than classic Mac OS.
- EGreg 9y agoI remember BeOS was being developed to replace tor MacOS and they had the BeBox, pre-emptive multitasking and even multiprocessor support. Jean-Louis Gassee never got the opportunity. EDIT: Actually he HAD the opportunity and because he passed it up we have Mac OS X today!! From Wikipedia: In 1996, Apple Computer decided to abandon Copland, the project to rewrite and modernize the Macintosh operating system. BeOS had many of the features Apple sought, and around Christmas time they offered to buy Be for $120 million, later raising their bid to $200 million. However, despite estimates of Be's total worth at approximately $80 million,[citation needed] Gassée held out for $275 million, and Apple balked. In a surprise move, Apple went on to purchase NeXT, the company their former co-founder Steve Jobs had earlier left Apple to found, for $429 million, with the high price justified by Apple getting Jobs and his NeXT engineers in tow. NeXTSTEP was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X.
- jaysonelliot 9y agoVery much so. There were two primary candidates in the running, NeXT and Be Inc., run by Jean-Louis Gassée, previously the president of Apple Europe. Some very strong arguments have been made for why BeOS would have been a better choice for Apple at the time, but the truth is that Be was always a second choice for Apple if NeXT could not be acquired. Apple got a great two for one deal by acquiring both a solid UNIX-based foundation for their future and Steve Jobs, but Jobs was really the crown jewel. Apple was in a terrible position at the time, and most industry watchers didn't expect them to survive. WIRED ran their famous "101 Ways to Save Apple" cover story around that time, and Michael Dell made his infamous quote that Apple should "shut down and give the money back to the shareholders." It really was a bleak time, and a technology solution was only part of what Apple needed. Steve Jobs' return was what the acquisition was ultimately about.
- reaperducer 9y ago1990something: >Michael Dell made his infamous quote that Apple should "shut down and give the money back to the shareholders." 2017: Who's Michael Dell? Steve Jobs is better known dead than Michael Dell is alive.
- favorited 9y agoSteve emailed Apple employees in 06, saying: > It turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today.
- robotresearcher 9y ago> 2017: Who's Michael Dell? He's a guy worth $23.5B (says Google today). Dell may not be very exciting, but Michael Dell is doing fine.
- geesejuggler 9y ago> Michael Dell made his infamous quote that Apple should "shut down and give the money back to the shareholders." In a bizarre turn of events, he took Dell (the company) off the stock market himself making it non-publicly owned.
- adolfojp 9y agoBack in the day there was a clear distinction between personal computers and dedicated workstations. Personal computers were cheap, underpowered and used wimpy operating systems and workstations were expensive, powerful and used powerful operating systems. At some point personal computers became powerful enough to run workstation operating systems so Microsoft started working on Windows NT after hiring workstation guys like Dave Cutler. Dave Cutler had worked on VMS which was one of the few non Unix-based workstation operating systems of the day. Apple purchased NeXT to acquire its workstation team and tech and as a bonus they got Steve Jobs who founded that company after leaving Apple. Every Windows OS of today descends from NT and every version of Mac OS X descends from NeXTSTEP. Dedicated workstation companies like Sun and SGI couldn't compete with much cheaper workstation PCs and nowadays just about every modern personal computer on the planet uses a workstation OS.
- racl101 9y agoIt's basically Napoleon coming back to defeat Duke Wellington except he mops the floor with him.
- protomyth 9y agoI still miss the UI for NeXTSTEP. The joy of tear-off menus floating near my windows is missed. I still have the discs and the full set of books in storage along with the complete run of NeXTWorld magazine[1]. I also miss the librarian. A lot of NeXTSTEP didn't make the transition. Watch Steve Jobs videos from 1996 and you get some interesting insights. 1) now available online https://archive.org/search.php?query=nextworld https://archive.org/search.php?query=nextworld
- smacktoward 9y agoI vividly remember being in an airport when this announcement hit the news, waiting to catch a plane to go home for the holidays. And thinking "huh, bad move, they should have bought Be instead." What can I say, nobody's perfect :-D
- mikeash 9y agoI’d love to get a peek at the alternate universe where they bought Be instead and see how it worked out. Obviously NeXT worked out really well for them and Be would have a tough time matching that success, but who can say for sure?
- grzm 9y agoIt would have been interesting. One of the driving factors for me with Apple's acquisition of NeXT has been the underlying Unix support. I've been using Mac OS since System 5, primarily in desktop publishing. Having that Unix subsystem opened up a whole new range of opportunities for the Mac in ways that I think would have been hard for BeOS to compete with. I agree a peek would be interesting, particularly the multi-tasking, but I think more for curiosity's sake than anything else.
- itomato 9y agoJean-Louis Gassée is on the record saying Apple made the right choice. Gil Amelio thought the 20th Anniversary Macintosh was really awesome and clones were a good idea. With (seriously cash strapped) Apple doubling down on Multimedia on rebranded BeOS as a licensed OS for Clones, they would have gone head-to-head with the entirety of the PC market that already had a taste of BeOS. BeOS was quick and fun, but barely had a TCP/IP stack. See BONE. Apple probably would have switched to Intel earlier.
- AceJohnny2 9y agoTo this day, people still joke that this was a reverse-acquisition of Apple by NeXT, as Apple entirely switched their software to NeXT's. For the unaware, this is why the macOS/iOS APIs are prefixed with NS (NSObject, NSString...), for NeXTSTEP. I believe iTunes is still based on WebObjects.
- pavlov 9y agoActually NS is short for "NeXT & Sun". The prefix was adopted for OpenStep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep The pre-OpenStep version of the APIs used a NX prefix. You can still see some lingering NX* classes/functions in macOS stack traces.
- saagarjha 9y agoHuh, interesting. I came across NXHashMap in the Objective-C runtime documentation and was wondering what the "NX" stood for.
- jmull 9y agoI can’t find a source for NS meaning NeXT and Sun either in the article you linked or elsewhere (sorry if I missed it). I get there was a name change associated with OPENSTEP, where the prefix changed from NX- to NS- and makes some sense because otherwise wouldn’t the prefix change for OPENSTEP have been something like OS- or OP-? I’m just wondering about the source for this. It would be interesting to hear from someone privy to reasoning behind choice of prefix.
- mattl 9y agoYeah, I've also heard that NS stands for "NeXT Software, Inc" vs "NeXT, Inc"
- tcdent 9y agoThis Wikipedia article [0] mentions both, but doesn't conclude. Would be interesting to hear from someone who was actually there to settle it; I haven't been convinced of a consensus either way. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_(API)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_(API)#History
- itomato 9y agoI still find a lot of joy from messing around in system releases from this time period. Watching the evolution of NeXTSTEP/Openstep, Yellow Box, Rhapsody and Mac OS X has been just about as rewarding as I had hoped. The benefit of UNIX overlaid with a friendly, usable UI is as promising now as it was then. I just wish I had been able to invest more when AAPL was at @ $18.00.
- rubicon33 9y agoThis sadly seems all too common... Once people finally have money to invest, buy a home, etc... The prices are suddenly much higher.
- wmf 9y agoThere are good investments out there today but we just don't know what they are yet.
- vasilipupkin 9y agobitcoin?
- sametmax 9y agoCrypto in general if you manage to cash out before the bubble bursts. But it can be next month or in 5 years so good luck.
- mikestew 9y agoYeah, same thing I said over twenty years ago. Yet here I am with an assload of money in the brokerage account, and a house that has tripled in value since we bought it. AAPL at $18 was still a crap shoot, you don’t hear anyone going on about how well their pets.com stock worked out. But AAPL at $30? At $100 pre-split? There was still plenty of money to be made on AAPL above $18, and after AAPL had established that they were not going anywhere. I had some AAPL @ $17, IIRC, but most of my money made on AAPL was long after that price point. And that’s just an example, buying opportunities are everywhere, the trick is separating the AAPLs from the PETS. (sorry, I tried to find a dot.boom company that sold oranges online so as to have an appropriate comparison, but failed.) Housing? If you’re complaining about SV, I have no help for you, that place is nuts. Everywhere else, generally, isn’t any worse than when we bought our first house 25 years ago. But once you’re in and can make the payment, the numbers just get bigger as time goes on, as your house price is going to be relative to those around you.
- juicy-fruit 9y agoProbably the single greatest acquisition in history. Definitely the most profitable with an ROI >$1 trillion.
- danaliv 9y agoStill have my NeXTstation Turbo. God, they were nice. (The "Turbo" means it has a 33MHz m68k instead of the standard 25MHz, in case you were wondering why all of us olds are constantly complaining about crummy performance these days.)
- chx 9y agoWatch Jobs in his prime a year later describing his philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE I am very far from an Apple fanboy but gosh, this guy totally gets it.
- mrbill 9y agoI remember getting the "ACTUAL SIZE" brochure in '89 for the Cube.. Owned a number of slabs (black and white and color) over the years, used one as my primary work machine for about a year.. but never acquired a Cube until 2014. Even got the cable that let me use a modern flatpanel LCD with it instead of an ancient CRT - http://www.mrbill.net/next/ http://www.mrbill.net/next/
- grajaganDev 9y agoI was a NeXT employee during the acquisition. As I was a WebObjects consultant working in the field I found out via email. Probably the most mind-blowing email I have ever opened. I left Apple 6 months later to join WebLogic.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoIt's the single best business decision ever made in the history of business. It brought it back from death to the most successful company in the history of the world. I still remember at the Brass Ring job fairs how the Apple booth was completely empty and no one wanted to work for Apple in fall of 1996.
- earenndil 9y agoI wouldn't say the most successful company. IIRC the east india company, inflation-adjusted, was worth significantly more.
- philwelch 9y agoMaybe even the Hudson's Bay Company at one point, too. But then, those were the days when companies literally ruled entire countries.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoYou can choose to measure successful company that way, but I surely won't. Apple is worth almost $1 trillion.
- earenndil 9y agoSure, apple is incredibly successful. But the east india company was around for hundreds of years and could wage its own wars and had enormous. That wasn't their primary purpose, they just also waged war. Could you even begin to say the same about apple?
- dbbk 9y agoIn retrospect yes it was, but at the time that wasn't obviously true.
- racl101 9y agoIt is so mind blowing that so much innovation that not only saved a floundering company, but set the foundation for several computing revolutions, came from such a small company.
- mehrdada 9y agoMust watch recollection of the history of Mach and NeXT and Apple by Avie Tevanian. Long but great. 1/2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE (early days) 2/2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtpIFrOGTHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtpIFrOGTHk (around Apple acquisition and beyond)
- beamatronic 9y agoCan I bring up the vintage NeXT interface?
- itomato 9y agoYou can emulate the 68K NeXT computer line, including Dimension and Printer with the "Previous" emulator. Oddly coincidental is the recent ability to build on Haiku OS: https://sourceforge.net/p/previous/code/HEAD/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/p/previous/code/HEAD/tree/
- qubex 9y agoI didn’t know this existed, thanks for binging it up.
- anton_gogolev 9y agoThe legalese is astonishing: ...in consideration of the foregoing and the mutual covenants and agreements herein contained, and intending to be legally bound hereby, Parent, Merger Sub and the Company hereby agree as follows...
- hossbeast 9y agoWhat is special about that sentence?