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It's crazy to think that if: 1. Apple had bought Be instead of Next. 2. Then OS X would have been based on BeOS instead of OpenStep. 3. Which in turn means i
by munificent 7y ago
It's crazy to think that if:
1. Apple had bought Be instead of Next.
2. Then OS X would have been based on BeOS instead of OpenStep.
3. Which in turn means it would have been written in C++ instead of Objective-C.
4. Which means iOS wouldn't have chosen Objective-C.
5. Which means Swift would never have been created to address its shortcomings.
Maybe there would have been some alternate-universe Swift to deal with C++'s shortcomings, but it would likely be a very different language. If nothing else, the lack of keyword arguments would lend a very different feel.
- chrislund 7y agoI wonder then if iOS would’ve ever happened. Probably not, unless they still somehow got Steve Jobs. Apple at least incidentally got some of the benefit of BeOS, or really, the talent behind it: Dominic Giampaolo, who contributed significantly to BeFS, has been with Apple for some time now working on their file systems. I think he is/was a principal on APFS. I’m sure there are others! Also, muni! From robot frog!
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoNewton's OS was the iOS of the 90s. A very compelling system.
- smallstepforman 7y agoThe Newton team ended up becoming the BeInc team. iPhone might have happened earlier. BeInc in 1999 focus shifted to internet appliances and had tablets on their minds. The iOS revolution would have happened 5 years earlier.
- jki275 7y agoApple would not exist if they had bought Be instead. Buying Next brought Steve back, and that's the only thing that kept Apple alive.
- rvz 7y agoWell regardless of whether if Be or NeXT was chosen, Apple was very close to becoming bankrupt in 1997 and without the Microsoft $100M investment in Apple shares, I'm not sure if Apple would be here anyway without it even with Jobs being on board. Apple lost their lawsuits against Microsoft and had to compromise with a deal with Bill Gates to save themselves. It was at that point Microsoft could have refused at the time and Apple would simply be relegated to the history books. You have to thank Gates for saving Apple because Jobs did too. [0] [0] https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/08/06/august-6-1997----the-day-apple-and-microsoft-made-peace https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/08/06/august-6-1...
- jki275 7y agoThat’s a different discussion.
- rvz 7y agoWell you said: "Buying Next brought Steve back, and that's the only thing that kept Apple alive." earlier and the on-going lawsuits were critical for Apple's survival with them having to compromise a deal with Microsoft in order for Bill Gates to save them. The acquisition choice alone was half of the story even if NeXT or Be were bought and Apple still wouldn't be here without compromising a deal with Microsoft to invest in them since the lawsuits were in Microsoft's favour.
- jki275 7y agoApple would be dead if Steve Jobs had not come back. Nothing MS did would have saved Apple if Jobs hadn't come back and turned the company around. That's the end of the story.
- rvz 7y agoIt would be safer to say that history would certainly be different if that outcome happened. But you’re almost there on completing the actual story. You do realise that to turn the company around in the first place you still need cash / stock in the company? The time that Jobs joined, Apple was close to bankruptcy and couldn’t afford to lose anymore lawsuits. He had to compromise with Gates with a lawsuit settlement to invest $100M+ shares in the Apple and offer Office on the Mac which essentially saved them from bankruptcy. There’s plenty of evidence to explain this outcome. My point to this argument is regardless of Jobs returning from NeXT or not, he couldn’t have even performed the turn around without the investment from Gates and the company would be bankrupt anyway. The Microsoft settlement and the investment is the reason why Apple still exists today or else Apple would have no doubt be certainly bankrupt and finished. Period.
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoDylan was the C++ alternative that was being developed at Apple before the Jobs coup. It had all kinds of awesome sauce, much much better than Objective-C. Likely a non-Jobs Apple would have used Dylan in conjunction with C++, or Java since that was in ascendency at the time. The hate for any tech that came from Newton or was non-NeXT in general was a Jobs thing. Also it's nice to think about an alternate universe where we had Newton descended mobile products, rather than iOS.