4 ms·

“That said, I don't think the world would be in a better place had Apple chosen Be over NeXT.” Yes. Except that it wasn’t acquiring NeXTSTEP that saved Apple’s

by _8ljf 7y ago

“That said, I don't think the world would be in a better place had Apple chosen Be over NeXT.” Yes. Except that it wasn’t acquiring NeXTSTEP that saved Apple’s skin; it was acquiring Steven P Jobs. True, version 1 had been rough and flakey as hell, and honestly really didn’t work all that well. But Steve 2.0? Damn, that one could sell.

jimbokun 7y ago
NeXTSTEP pretty directly evolved into iOS, though, so it was certainly a significant asset in the acquisition, too.
- mattl 7y ago
  Yeah, Rhapsody > Mac OS X Server 1.0 > Mac OS X > iOS which was literally described as being "OS X" when it first launched.
- hhas01 7y ago
  True, but a technology is only a means to an end, not an end itself. What sells is product. You may have the finest tech on the planet—and that means precisely squat. What counts is putting bums on seats. Your seats. And keeping them there. Limps of tech are just a vehicle for that; to be used, abused, chewed up, and/or discarded on the road(s) to that end. Apple could have done better; they certainly did plenty worse (Copland, Taligent, the first Mac OS). As it turned out, NeXTSTEP proved it was indeed “good enough” to fit a pressing need at the time; and the rest was just hammering till it looked lickable enough for consumers to bite. All it was needed was a salesman to shift it—and Steve 2.0 proved to be one of the greatest salesman in modern marketing history. That’s what made the difference between selling a tech to a million dyed-in-the-wirewool nerds, and selling tech to a billion everyday consumers. And then up-selling all of those customers to completely new worlds of products and services invented just for the purpose. .. Want to created a whole new device? Hire Steve Wozniak. Want to create a whole new world? Oh, but that is the real trick. And Steve Jobs gave us the masterclass. .. Had Steve started Be and Jean-Louis built NeXT, we would still be in the exact same situation today, and the only difference would be chunks of BeOS as the iPhone’s bones instead. Funny old world, eh? :)
  - kbenson 7y ago
    I'm not sure I've ever encountered someone so invested in the "great man" theory of history. Jobs was obviously talented, but assuming no matter where he went he would have had the same level of success is discounting a lot of luck in how everything lined up,and who was available to help bring all the things to market jobs is famous for. There's no guarantee the hundreds or thousands of people that were also essential to the major successes of Apple would have been around jobs had he stayed at Next. Those people deserve respect and recognition too.
    - ngcc_hk 7y ago
      You forgot his family had been the largest share holder of Disney not because Steve got apple. He is VERY successful to the point he even gave up getting anything but an private jet. That is billion of course but that is not success. What is. And unlike v1 v2 seems better on human level as well. We do not need saint. He still parked in space for hadicapped only I guess. But let us admit, it is not just one for all. But all for one.
      - hhas01 7y ago
        ISTR a tale of Legal keeping a large slush fund from which to pay off all the ex-Apple-employees that Steve 2.0 would straight tell to their face to fuck off. Just because that is what worked best for him†. :) “But let us admit, it is not just one for all. But all for one.” Damn straight. Epically focused leadership. -- († For all others who aspire to build their own businesses, there is HR procedure and askamanager.org—and do not for the life of you ever bypass either!)
        machinecoffee 7y ago
        >Epically focused leadership. Just to support that, I remember hearing a story told by Larry Elison (they were apparently neighbours for a while), where he would pop over to see Steve, and would be subjected to the 100th viewing of Toy Story where Jobs was obsessively pointing out every new tiny improvement they'd made in the story or graphics. Epically focused indeed.
- shagie 7y ago
  NeXTSTEP appears to have first gotten incorporated throughly into the OS X codebase. Browse through the Foundation library for the Mac - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/ . Everything that starts with NS was part of NextStep.
  - _frog 7y ago
    My understanding was always that NeXTSTEP served as the foundation of OS X, and while it certainly got a new desktop environment and compatibility with MacOS's legacy Carbon APIs, it was essentially still NeXTSTEP under the hood.
    - ngcc_hk 7y ago
      Yes. That is all those NS... prefix meant.
      - lproven 7y ago
        I always thought that, too. It's wrong. Original NeXT classes were prefixed NX_. Then NeXT worked with Sun to make a portable version of the GUI that could run on top of other OSes -- primarily targeting Solaris, of course, but also Windows NT. That was called OpenStep and it is the source of classes with the prefix NS_ -- standing for Next/Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep#History This is why Sun bought NeXT software vendor Lighthouse, whose CEO Jonathan Schwartz who later became Sun's CEO. Unfortunately for NeXT (and ultimately for Sun), right after this, Sun changed course and backed Java instead.
  - TickleSteve 7y ago
    It didn't get 'incorporated'. OSX/macOS/iOS is the latest evolution of NeXTStep/Mach which originated in the Aleph (and other) academic kernels. (of course OS's evolve pretty far in a few decades...) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel))
  - saagarjha 7y ago

by _8ljf 7y ago

jimbokun 7y ago

NeXTSTEP pretty directly evolved into iOS, though, so it was certainly a significant asset in the acquisition, too.

mattl 7y ago
Yeah, Rhapsody > Mac OS X Server 1.0 > Mac OS X > iOS which was literally described as being "OS X" when it first launched.
hhas01 7y ago
True, but a technology is only a means to an end, not an end itself. What sells is product. You may have the finest tech on the planet—and that means precisely squat. What counts is putting bums on seats. Your seats. And keeping them there. Limps of tech are just a vehicle for that; to be used, abused, chewed up, and/or discarded on the road(s) to that end. Apple could have done better; they certainly did plenty worse (Copland, Taligent, the first Mac OS). As it turned out, NeXTSTEP proved it was indeed “good enough” to fit a pressing need at the time; and the rest was just hammering till it looked lickable enough for consumers to bite. All it was needed was a salesman to shift it—and Steve 2.0 proved to be one of the greatest salesman in modern marketing history. That’s what made the difference between selling a tech to a million dyed-in-the-wirewool nerds, and selling tech to a billion everyday consumers. And then up-selling all of those customers to completely new worlds of products and services invented just for the purpose. .. Want to created a whole new device? Hire Steve Wozniak. Want to create a whole new world? Oh, but that is the real trick. And Steve Jobs gave us the masterclass. .. Had Steve started Be and Jean-Louis built NeXT, we would still be in the exact same situation today, and the only difference would be chunks of BeOS as the iPhone’s bones instead. Funny old world, eh? :)
- kbenson 7y ago
  I'm not sure I've ever encountered someone so invested in the "great man" theory of history. Jobs was obviously talented, but assuming no matter where he went he would have had the same level of success is discounting a lot of luck in how everything lined up,and who was available to help bring all the things to market jobs is famous for. There's no guarantee the hundreds or thousands of people that were also essential to the major successes of Apple would have been around jobs had he stayed at Next. Those people deserve respect and recognition too.
  - ngcc_hk 7y ago
    You forgot his family had been the largest share holder of Disney not because Steve got apple. He is VERY successful to the point he even gave up getting anything but an private jet. That is billion of course but that is not success. What is. And unlike v1 v2 seems better on human level as well. We do not need saint. He still parked in space for hadicapped only I guess. But let us admit, it is not just one for all. But all for one.
    - hhas01 7y ago
      ISTR a tale of Legal keeping a large slush fund from which to pay off all the ex-Apple-employees that Steve 2.0 would straight tell to their face to fuck off. Just because that is what worked best for him†. :) “But let us admit, it is not just one for all. But all for one.” Damn straight. Epically focused leadership. -- († For all others who aspire to build their own businesses, there is HR procedure and askamanager.org—and do not for the life of you ever bypass either!)
      - machinecoffee 7y ago
        >Epically focused leadership. Just to support that, I remember hearing a story told by Larry Elison (they were apparently neighbours for a while), where he would pop over to see Steve, and would be subjected to the 100th viewing of Toy Story where Jobs was obsessively pointing out every new tiny improvement they'd made in the story or graphics. Epically focused indeed.
shagie 7y ago
NeXTSTEP appears to have first gotten incorporated throughly into the OS X codebase. Browse through the Foundation library for the Mac - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/ . Everything that starts with NS was part of NextStep.
- _frog 7y ago
  My understanding was always that NeXTSTEP served as the foundation of OS X, and while it certainly got a new desktop environment and compatibility with MacOS's legacy Carbon APIs, it was essentially still NeXTSTEP under the hood.
  - ngcc_hk 7y ago
    Yes. That is all those NS... prefix meant.
    - lproven 7y ago
      I always thought that, too. It's wrong. Original NeXT classes were prefixed NX_. Then NeXT worked with Sun to make a portable version of the GUI that could run on top of other OSes -- primarily targeting Solaris, of course, but also Windows NT. That was called OpenStep and it is the source of classes with the prefix NS_ -- standing for Next/Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep#History This is why Sun bought NeXT software vendor Lighthouse, whose CEO Jonathan Schwartz who later became Sun's CEO. Unfortunately for NeXT (and ultimately for Sun), right after this, Sun changed course and backed Java instead.
- TickleSteve 7y ago
  It didn't get 'incorporated'. OSX/macOS/iOS is the latest evolution of NeXTStep/Mach which originated in the Aleph (and other) academic kernels. (of course OS's evolve pretty far in a few decades...) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel))
- saagarjha 7y ago