ex-apple (ex.delete@this.apple.com) on August 4, 2014 6:20 pm wrote:
> anon (not.delete@this.this.time) on August 3, 2014 10:29 pm wrote:
> > Keep in mind that this is the same guy who refused to sell Be to Apple for $120M.
> > We all know how that turned out (thank goodness - NeXTStep was a far better OS)
>
> I worry this is turning into one of those urban myths. "If
> only Gary Kildall hadn't been flying his plane that day..."
>
> BeOS was never in the running to replace Mac OS. To go up against Windows, Apple needed a
> gorilla-sized OS plus libraries plus tools plus language plus apps plus ecosystem. Be employed
> some good programmers with good ideas, and Apple was definitely interested in paying for that.
> But they weren't interested in BeOS.
>
> Apple had evaluated BeOS technically - I know the guys who did it. It was a nice
> kernel with some tech demos on top. And that's all it was. Apple had already developed
> a couple of those in-house by then - we knew that was only 10% of the job.
>
> NeXTStep was the obvious choice for a lot of reasons, and Apple was not stumbling
> blind into either the NeXT or Be offer. If Gassee had sold BeOS, OS X might
> have had a better kernel team, but it would still be built on NeXTStep.

Interesting. I used NeXTStep both on 68K and then on x86 in the 90s, and I've always thought that the kernel was the weak link. That approach actually would have made a lot of sense.

Speaking of urban legends, I've always liked the one about Apple's "super-secret" project to create an x86 port of OSX (hint: It was on x86 long before they bought it).