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I’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 w

I’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 ago
It 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.
- bartread 9y ago
  Thing is, if they'd bought Be they wouldn't have got Steve and, whatever you may think of him, I suspect that's the real X factor [1] that ensured their success. [1] Pun very much intended, I'm afraid.
  - mattl 9y ago
    "10 factor"
itomato 9y ago
Jean-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.
- qubex 9y ago
  My BeBox running BeOS5 has been happily participating in TCP/IP (v4) communications on my home Ethernet network for twenty years. (Admittedly it’s off most of the time these days because I’m concerned about the health of the hard-drive, but still.) It even ran a web-server for a decade with uptimes measured in years. (I had an amateur radiotelescope wired up to the GeekPort and exposed the controls over HTTP. I’ve long since retired that setup in favour of a modern SDR linked to a Raspberry Pi 3.)
protomyth 9y ago
I get the feeling Jean-Louis Gassée would have probably pushed out the existing management the same way Steve Jobs did, but I just don't think he would have been successful at reviving the company. I had both BeOS and NeXTSTEP and pretty much left BeOS to sit while NeXTSTEP was my daily driver (along with a Windows NT machine because IBM was problematic with OS/2).
yuhong 9y ago
I am more interested in the post-NeXT acquisition Apple with Gil Amelio and later Ellen Hancock as CEO. Thinking about it, the path without Steve Jobs of "CHRP" and maybe eventually open-sourcing OS X completely would probably work better in a world where PC manufacturing was not outsourced to China.

grzm 9y ago

It 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.

bartread 9y ago
Thing is, if they'd bought Be they wouldn't have got Steve and, whatever you may think of him, I suspect that's the real X factor [1] that ensured their success. [1] Pun very much intended, I'm afraid.
- mattl 9y ago
  "10 factor"

itomato 9y ago

Jean-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.

qubex 9y ago
My BeBox running BeOS5 has been happily participating in TCP/IP (v4) communications on my home Ethernet network for twenty years. (Admittedly it’s off most of the time these days because I’m concerned about the health of the hard-drive, but still.) It even ran a web-server for a decade with uptimes measured in years. (I had an amateur radiotelescope wired up to the GeekPort and exposed the controls over HTTP. I’ve long since retired that setup in favour of a modern SDR linked to a Raspberry Pi 3.)

protomyth 9y ago

I get the feeling Jean-Louis Gassée would have probably pushed out the existing management the same way Steve Jobs did, but I just don't think he would have been successful at reviving the company. I had both BeOS and NeXTSTEP and pretty much left BeOS to sit while NeXTSTEP was my daily driver (along with a Windows NT machine because IBM was problematic with OS/2).

yuhong 9y ago

I am more interested in the post-NeXT acquisition Apple with Gil Amelio and later Ellen Hancock as CEO. Thinking about it, the path without Steve Jobs of "CHRP" and maybe eventually open-sourcing OS X completely would probably work better in a world where PC manufacturing was not outsourced to China.