OK, ISWYM. I mean, yes, NeXTstep was much more mature. No argument. But OS X Server was aimed at a different job, and a different job to classic MacOS as well.

OK, ISWYM. I mean, yes, NeXTstep was much more mature. No argument. But OS X Server was aimed at a different job, and a different job to classic MacOS as well. People did use NeXTstep as a server -- the first ever web server, notably -- but it wasn't a great one and wasn't its intended role. Classic MacOS was usable as a server too. It seems to be largely forgotten now but the US Army officially moved all its web servers to classic MacOS at one point, because not having any form of shell at all made it largely unhackable. You can't get shell access when there is no shell to get to, and no clever x86 code exploit will help you when none of the servers have an x86 chip in them. It wasn't a very good server, though, and quietly I think they changed to something else a bit more conventional not long afterwards. Compared to Classic, I bet OS X Server was a great server OS. ;-) I think the real purpose of OSXS was to answer the question: "OK, we've done a ton of work porting NeXTstep to PowerMac and grafting a kinda sorta MacOS-like desktop on the thing, and it's cost us a sh1t-tonne of money and person-hours of work with not much to show for it so far. Is there any way we can start to make some money off this thing before it's ready to ship as a desktop OS?"