The NeXT management discarded Copland, most Apple technologies — OpenDoc, OpenTransport, GameSprockets, basically everything except QuickTime. [...] It took the

The NeXT management discarded Copland, most Apple technologies — OpenDoc, OpenTransport, GameSprockets, basically everything except QuickTime. [...] It took the existing MacOS classic APIs [...] and cut out everything that wouldn’t work on a clean, modern, memory-managed, multitasking OS. I've never seen the innards of the above technologies, but to the extent that this passage gives the impression that the technologies that were cut (and one could add QuickDraw 3D and QuickDraw GX to the list) were the least modern and future proof, I think that's exactly backward. It's largely the most modern technologies that were cut, and it's the crufty ancient APIs that made it into Carbon. Something like OpenDoc would probably have been reasonably portable, given that it was based on IBM technologies. OpenTransport was based on System V streams, GameSprockets was based on a QuickTime stack which largely survived for some time. Presumably those decisions were made because the new APIs, gorgeous as they were, didn't have major adoption yet, and Apple desperately needed to focus.