3 ms·

It’s about how much money did it take for them to want to sell instead of continue as an independent business. In 1996 WebObjects was starting to get traction.

It’s about how much money did it take for them to want to sell instead of continue as an independent business. In 1996 WebObjects was starting to get traction. After a decade it seemed like there was perhaps a viable future for the company.

panick21_ 2y ago
There is a difference between a 'viable future' and 400 million $. The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. Specially companies with their own programming, language, compilers and so on. First a devastating economic crisis and then the rise of open source. So maybe they could have survived, but likely nowhere close to that value.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It most certainly wouldn’t. Would be a very tight window, and it’d be going against the likes of BEA and soon to be killed by open source solutions. The best bet was to vertically integrate with a large hardware manufacturer that’d bundle their OS. WebObjects was, however, doomed anyway. And this, kids, is why everything now is a subclass of NSObject.
- WoodenChair 2y ago
  > The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. You're using 20/20 hindsight instead of putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1996. The term "open source" was not even in wide use in 1996. But actually even with hindsight your analysis is flawed. 1996 is right at the start of the .com bubble. A company whose software (WebOjects) was being used to power real world .coms (it was even being used by large companies like UPS and Dell) almost certainly would have risen tremendously in value (even as a private company). Now, if they would have been acquired before the 2000 crash is another discussion.
  - KerrAvon 2y ago
    Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. And OpenStep on PC hardware was slow, crashy, unpolished, and generally much less pleasant to use than the fastest Macs at the time. Apple bought it because it had a fully working graphics architecture (BeOS couldn’t even print!), and vastly overpaid for it because Gil Amelio was an idiot. Irony: the graphics architecture had to be fully rewritten from scratch for Mac OS X because Adobe didn’t want to support Display PostScript anymore. Have I mentioned that Gil Amelio was an idiot?
    - WoodenChair 2y ago
      > Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction.
    - icedchai 2y ago
      Do you remember how unstable the original Mac OS was? I remember working with a guy doing web development work on his circa-1996 PowerPC Mac. It would crash at least daily, resulting in a reboot. Perhaps it was Netscape's fault.
      - lproven 2y ago
        This is true and it was a joke at the time. "The best thing about using a Mac is that you can rely that something in your life is going to go down on you every single day."
        icedchai 2y ago
        Whoa! Nowadays, you'd get banned from social media for a joke like that.
        lproven 2y ago
        One of the things I particularly like about the joke is that while it's sexual, it's not specific to any sexuality. :-)
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role. They valued the OS and Jobs. The reality is Apple had spent 10 years trying to make an OS and failed. Next was only really had one potential buyers and they had been losing value and losing money for a long time. So their value shouldn't have been so high. That said, one could make the argument in the other direction, Apple needed an OS. BeOS was much, much cheaper but also less complete. Arguable just in terms of OS still the better value. Switching to something Solaris is what they arguable what they could have done instead for far less money. In the end they had to put huge amount of work in anyway, so its not even really clear what Next really added that they couldn't have done based on Be, Copland or Solaris. And in terms of WebObjects, the problem with the whole 'WebObjects' is gone drive value is that literally everybody was trying to sell some something like that. Every company and many knew ones were getting into that game and few of them were successful. And even those that were successful aren't worth 400 million $. A company starting to use some Web framework stuff in 1996 doesn't necessarily stick to it forever. In fact historically many didn't.
    - WoodenChair 2y ago
      > No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role. I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction. In fact, NeXT was planning to IPO into the .com craze on the strength of WebObjects. Here's a whole Computer History Museum article about that: https://computerhistory.org/blog/next-steve-jobs-dot-com-ipo-that-never-happened/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/next-steve-jobs-dot-com-ipo...
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        My point was that Apple paid to much, and I do stand by that. Yes during the biggest bubble in computing history they might have been able to IPO and that might have given them enough money to survive. Sure, great, but that doesn't mean there is inherent long term value in a web framework that made the company worth almost 900 million $ in today's money.

panick21_ 2y ago

There is a difference between a 'viable future' and 400 million $. The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. Specially companies with their own programming, language, compilers and so on. First a devastating economic crisis and then the rise of open source. So maybe they could have survived, but likely nowhere close to that value.

rbanffy 2y ago
It most certainly wouldn’t. Would be a very tight window, and it’d be going against the likes of BEA and soon to be killed by open source solutions. The best bet was to vertically integrate with a large hardware manufacturer that’d bundle their OS. WebObjects was, however, doomed anyway. And this, kids, is why everything now is a subclass of NSObject.
WoodenChair 2y ago
> The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. You're using 20/20 hindsight instead of putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1996. The term "open source" was not even in wide use in 1996. But actually even with hindsight your analysis is flawed. 1996 is right at the start of the .com bubble. A company whose software (WebOjects) was being used to power real world .coms (it was even being used by large companies like UPS and Dell) almost certainly would have risen tremendously in value (even as a private company). Now, if they would have been acquired before the 2000 crash is another discussion.
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. And OpenStep on PC hardware was slow, crashy, unpolished, and generally much less pleasant to use than the fastest Macs at the time. Apple bought it because it had a fully working graphics architecture (BeOS couldn’t even print!), and vastly overpaid for it because Gil Amelio was an idiot. Irony: the graphics architecture had to be fully rewritten from scratch for Mac OS X because Adobe didn’t want to support Display PostScript anymore. Have I mentioned that Gil Amelio was an idiot?
  - WoodenChair 2y ago
    > Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction.
  - icedchai 2y ago
    Do you remember how unstable the original Mac OS was? I remember working with a guy doing web development work on his circa-1996 PowerPC Mac. It would crash at least daily, resulting in a reboot. Perhaps it was Netscape's fault.
    - lproven 2y ago
      This is true and it was a joke at the time. "The best thing about using a Mac is that you can rely that something in your life is going to go down on you every single day."
      - icedchai 2y ago
        Whoa! Nowadays, you'd get banned from social media for a joke like that.
        lproven 2y ago
        One of the things I particularly like about the joke is that while it's sexual, it's not specific to any sexuality. :-)
- panick21_ 2y ago
  No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role. They valued the OS and Jobs. The reality is Apple had spent 10 years trying to make an OS and failed. Next was only really had one potential buyers and they had been losing value and losing money for a long time. So their value shouldn't have been so high. That said, one could make the argument in the other direction, Apple needed an OS. BeOS was much, much cheaper but also less complete. Arguable just in terms of OS still the better value. Switching to something Solaris is what they arguable what they could have done instead for far less money. In the end they had to put huge amount of work in anyway, so its not even really clear what Next really added that they couldn't have done based on Be, Copland or Solaris. And in terms of WebObjects, the problem with the whole 'WebObjects' is gone drive value is that literally everybody was trying to sell some something like that. Every company and many knew ones were getting into that game and few of them were successful. And even those that were successful aren't worth 400 million $. A company starting to use some Web framework stuff in 1996 doesn't necessarily stick to it forever. In fact historically many didn't.
  - WoodenChair 2y ago
    > No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role. I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction. In fact, NeXT was planning to IPO into the .com craze on the strength of WebObjects. Here's a whole Computer History Museum article about that: https://computerhistory.org/blog/next-steve-jobs-dot-com-ipo-that-never-happened/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/next-steve-jobs-dot-com-ipo...
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      My point was that Apple paid to much, and I do stand by that. Yes during the biggest bubble in computing history they might have been able to IPO and that might have given them enough money to survive. Sure, great, but that doesn't mean there is inherent long term value in a web framework that made the company worth almost 900 million $ in today's money.