5 ms·
Mac OS X was a work in progress during the late 90s. The Apple/NeXT merger was in 1996, there were developer releases of Rhapsody (with x86 support) in 1997 and
by wtallis 5y ago
Mac OS X was a work in progress during the late 90s. The Apple/NeXT merger was in 1996, there were developer releases of Rhapsody (with x86 support) in 1997 and 1998, and Mac OS X Server 1.0 was released in 1999. But the first public beta of Mac OS X with the Aqua UI was in 2000, and OS X version 10.0 was in 2001. So any deal negotiated in the late 90s to bring Mac OS X to Intel PCs would have taken a few years to come to fruition, but Apple did have a usable x86 operating system to base negotiations on in the late 90s.
- throwawayboise 5y agoOPENSTEP was running on x86 even before the merger. The work would have been mostly to make it look and feel more like what Mac OS users were familiar with, and adding the ability to run "Classic" Mac OS applications.
- wtallis 5y agoTrue, but OPENSTEP on its own would not have been of much interest to Dell given the very small software ecosystem. The promise of also inheriting the Mac application ecosystem made Mac OS X far more marketable.
- thewileyone 5y agoI used to work on OpenStep and it was nothing like the previous version of MacOS; I used to work on MacOS before OpenStep.