
20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT - galonk
https://512pixels.net/2016/12/20-years-ago-apple-bought-next/
======
rootbear
I was working at Pixar at the time and a couple of us went out to lunch when
the news broke to figure out What It All Meant. We passed Steve's office on
the way out and one of our party, who had worked with him since early Apple
days, congratulated him. The big question was whether they would keep the Unix
plumbing visible and useful, or would it be buried under some API layer of no
use to us Unix graybeards. Fortunately, the plumbing wasn't hidden in the
walls.

~~~
jcims
Didn't Steve have an email that was in your mailbox by default when you got a
new account on a NeXT machine? It had some embedded images and an audio file
of him talking.

Anyway, I sent whoever it was, pretty sure Steve, an email with read receipt
enabled and he bitched me out for invading his privacy. This was ~93 or so.

~~~
gruturo
Honestly I find read receipt requests to be in very poor taste, if not a sign
of outright hostility, and no, having them by default is not an acceptable
excuse, no more than forgetting capslock on would.

~~~
AimHere
Those things annoy me too, but thankfully it's been years since anyone sent me
one (unless my mail clients have been silently reporting back to people other
than the NSA, of course). I assume the read receipt request button has been
made harder to find in newer versions of Outlook or something.

I reckon the correct way to handle these receipt requests is to configure the
mail client to send a modified receipt email which _also_ has a read receipt
request, and keep replying in kind until your correspondent gets the message
(or the mail servers break down due to two bots telling each other that they
read the notification that they just read each other's mail telling them they
read their mail, of course).

~~~
wj
It has been a while but with Outlook there was an option to ignore all read
receipt requests. Maybe you turned that on?

~~~
AimHere
I don't use Outlook; what I mean is that it seems that other email users
aren't sending so many read receipt requests for some reason (such as changes
to Outlook's user interface). Either that, or I correspond with a better class
of email user these days.

------
wl
The standard snark is that NeXT bought Apple for -$400 million.

~~~
chmaynard
When I joined Apple Software Engineering in 2001 as a writer, the first thing
I noticed was that former NeXT people ran the company, made the important
decisions, and believed fervently that the new Apple would be wildly
successful. Oh, how right they were.

~~~
nothis
>Oh, how right they were.

Well, there's a sentence you don't hear often, nowadays!

~~~
NEDM64
Yes, if you live in the Matrix that doesn't acknowledge Apple's victories and
praises Google and Microsoft failures.

------
beautifulfreak
In the early 90s, I remember reading in NeXTWorld Magazine many articles about
the speed of development under NeXTStep. Ten times faster, according to John
Carmack, who was creating Doom. Every developer agreed. Each issue showcased
apps with surprising and elegant capabilities, really new features available
nowhere else. The proposition was that NeXT Cubes were really worth the price,
that they enabled magical solutions, and that there was still time left to
join the other pioneers. Alas, I could only afford the magazine subscription.
(In 2016 dollars, NeXT Cubes cost from $11,000 to $17,000.) When the Apple-
NeXT merger was announced, people who had been following the NeXT saga, who
had been aware of the benefits of NeXTStep and OpenStep, could easily imagine
something great happening, and were especially glad when things worked out
well in the end. (Here’s an archive of old NeXTWorld magazines. The PDF scans
are actually easier on the eyes.
[http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Articles/NeXTWORLD/](http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Articles/NeXTWORLD/))

~~~
brians
So where's the $15k super machine for today? I'd absolutely look to pay that
for something with a similar advantage over a MacBook Pro.

~~~
cturner
Computing has changed. For CAD, games, a/v production, you still need a
workstation. But the workstation is now obsolete in major fields that it once
dominated.

Industrial simulation: these days the optimal approach is to get access to CPU
is to crunch on headless servers, ideally in the cloud. Expand and contract
computing power on a needs basis.

Front-office development: Objective C and Interface Builder was much better
for prototyping ideas than C. Modern python/perl/racket/go/c#/etc are much
further ahead. There were no mainstream dynamic programming tools more
powerful than awk when NeXT was launched. Now the most common expression of
hackers is dynamic programming on fabulously powerful free tools. High-quality
operating systems are also free. Documentation is free. And it's all far
better than what people used to pay for.

Deployment: interactive user interfaces are now delivered through the a web
browser. Previously a lot of workstations were sold to run custom internal
apps.

Save your money! Get a digital ocean account, and run your macbook until the
power supply dies. Perhaps in another ten years google-style web-browser
laptops will be ubiquitous.

~~~
scott_karana
I was agreeing until this point:

> There were no mainstream dynamic programming tools more powerful than _awk_
> when NeXT was launched

Maybe I'm missing something, but:

1950s: Lisp and Fortran

1972: Prolog

1977: Bourne shell and Icon

1978: C shell

1979: REXX

1980: Smalltalk-80 (on Macs, even!)

1983: Korn shell

1983: C++

1987: Perl 1.0

1988: Modula-3, and NeXT computer is launched

~~~
jandrese
Having dug around a bit with Awk that might be a true statement. Awk has an
entire ocean of features that mere mortals are completely unaware of hidden
behind the 1960s teletype optimized interface. So the statement that there
were no tools more powerful than Awk might be true, but only because we don't
know if there is a full fledged AI hidden under the layers of impenetrable
interface.

------
msimpson
"I’d argue that this is probably the single most important tech acquisition of
all time."

However, it was not Apple's first choice. They first attempted to acquire Be
Inc. (BeOS) but Jean-Louis Gassée held out for $275 million and lost the deal
in a surprise move when Apple, instead, bought NeXT.

~~~
nateguchi
Now that would be an interesting alternate timeline!

/ MacBook Pro with Blinkenlights bar /

~~~
hasenj
The Mac would not have been a huge success probably in that scenario.

~~~
jandrese
I don't know. A BeOS foundation for MacOS would have made it even better at
multimedia production. The tradeoff of course is that it probably would have
been late to the whole Internet thing that was becoming something of a big
deal around that point. BeOS's network stack was different enough from
Berkeley sockets that porting network apps was a challenge. It lacked a
version of Netscape at a time when even FreeBSD had a native version for
example. In the late 90s this was not acceptable. Apple's engineering culture
wasn't one of embracing open standards either, they could have very well stuck
with the Be network paradigm and made it a headache to port any POSIX
application.

Be's heavily multitasking kernel would have been quite a boon for Apple when
off the shelf processors started going wide though. They could have been
really reaping the benefits from C2Ds and beyond.

------
pfarnsworth
I was applying for jobs back in 1997, and during that time they had a huge
career fair called the Brass Ring fair. Employers from around Silicon Valley
would have booths and hire people on the spot. I distinctly remember Apple's
booth being completely barren, they were practically dead to most engineers.
How the tables have turned since then. The big question is, Apple's path
appears to be following the path after Steve Jobs left the first time, with
the muddied product picture, no innovation, etc. I hope history doesn't repeat
itself twice.

~~~
PacketPaul
It will. No company remains dominant forever.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Exactly. Some people never imagined Apple being more successful than MS.

------
Apocryphon
It would be great if someone wrote an article about the alternate histories
where Apple chose other strategies. For instance, what an Apple-Be merge would
have resulted in, what kind of products and tech. And how NeXT would have
lasted without Apple.

~~~
iblaine
Wow, I haven't heard someone mention BeOs in over a decade. That was a pretty
OS, but I'd take that black NeXT case any day. Those NeXT boxes were so cool.

~~~
Apocryphon
There's stories on HN about Haiku from time to time. That project's still
going on in the background.

~~~
Esau
Just a few days ago, in fact:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200633)

------
m_mueller
I copy from a comment of mine from last week. In case you wanna procrastinate
on a fascinating story about how Apple transitioned to NextStep's stack
without completely annihilating their already weak developer base, here's a
few links:

You get a corporate drama, a human drama and a tech drama all wrapped up in
one series of presentations:

Jobs' return (as a consultant) 1997, promoting technologies from NeXT. Watch
basically everyone asleep at the wheel except Jobs, the man with a plan.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrX047-v-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrX047-v-s)

WWDC Q&A - 'the art of saying no'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iACK-
LNnzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iACK-LNnzM)

Jobs' hostile takeover in July by doing a (probably illegal?) stock dump

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Amelio#Apple_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Amelio#Apple_Computer)

Announcing a Deal with Microsoft as de facto CEO in August, booed by the crowd

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOs6hnTI4lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOs6hnTI4lw)

Internal meeting in September 1997

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GMQhOm-
Dqo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GMQhOm-Dqo)

iMac introduction 1998 - Apple is back

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwmF0OJ0vg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwmF0OJ0vg)

Macworld 1998 - Apple is essentially saved as a company

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdYiqVzPjAc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdYiqVzPjAc)

OSX Strategy reveal

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dWDg6f9eo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dWDg6f9eo)

1999 - OSX Server launch

[https://youtu.be/NuCYHrSig94?t=48m40s](https://youtu.be/NuCYHrSig94?t=48m40s)

2000 - OSX launch

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko4V3G4NqII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko4V3G4NqII)

~~~
yuhong
I was for a while thinking of the case where Apple bought NeXT but Gil Amelio
and later Ellen Hancock stayed as CEO, and CHRP actually happened. While PC
margins was declining, I was thinking that Apple could mostly focus on the
higher-end PC and workstation markets, especially as OpenStep/Rhapsody was a
UNIX.

~~~
m_mueller
According to Jobs they were at times 90 days away from bankruptcy. If that's
true I'm thinking nothing but Jobs' full steam turnaround, including getting
Microsofts' investor money could have saved the company. Doesn't seem to me
like Armelio had either the energy nor the connections to do that.

------
generj
My father's most regretted financial move is ignoring his weird thought to buy
10 shares of Apple stock at this time.

~~~
sbov
Whenever I start to think like this, I remind myself that it's about as
useless as thinking "if only I bet it all on 00" at the roulette table.

Crystal balls that see the future are certainly in short supply. But if I had
one there's a lot better ways to make money than using it to buy 10 shares of
Apple 20 years ago.

~~~
njharman
That's an utterly ridiculous comparison. Companies / stock prices are not a
normal, random distribution like roulette results.

There are masses of information available on companies / stock market.
Assuming roulette wheel is fair, there is none other than 1/32 chance known.

~~~
function_seven
Please tell me what ticker symbol I should buy today, that will rise in value
over 10,000% over the next two decades.

Nobody can. Over a 20 year timeline, it’s essentially the same as a roulette
wheel.

~~~
njharman
That is disingenuously retarded and trollish.

You seriously can't fathom that knowing financials, track record, ceo,
products, pending deals, etc. etc. gives you more information than random
chance? How do you make any informed choice about anything at all then?

~~~
function_seven
I can fathom it, but not on a 20-year timeline. The market prices stocks with
all the information available. It's not perfect obviously, but it's better
than any other price-generation algorithm that lacks a crystal ball. I you
happen to have a unique perspective that the rest of the market lacks, then
you can invest in that stock and make a good return.

But 20 years out, the hypothetical "I wish I had bought AAPL in 1996" is just
as useless as the "I wish I had bet on green" comparison. In this scenario,
it's an apt comparison.

Anyone making an informed choice in 1996, knowing financials, track record,
ceo, products, pending deals, etc. etc. would have stayed the hell away from
AAPL

------
EliRivers
"I’d argue that this is probably the single most important tech acquisition of
all time."

Microsoft buys the pieces that eventually become MS-DOS?

Going back further, pharma companies buying tech that they turned into mass
produced antibiotics and gave us the sulfa drug revolution?

Apple buying NeXT hardly compares to the acquisition of steel smelting.

~~~
pedalpete
I'd suggest the author's definition of 'tech' meant 'computers'.

I don't believe Microsoft acquired QDOS, just the IP.

Furthermore, bringing Jobs back to Apple resulted in Apple going from nearly
bankrupt a top 5 Market Cap Company in the world
([http://dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-
cap.htm](http://dogsofthedow.com/largest-companies-by-market-cap.htm))

~~~
EliRivers
_I 'd suggest the author's definition of 'tech' meant 'computers'._

I wouldn't be surprised. It's a common affliction around here.

------
hota_mazi
> What came out of this deal not only saved Apple and the Mac,

Er... interesting revisionism, here. That acquisition didn't do much to save
Apple from the financial hole it had dug for itself.

Bill Gates is really what saved Apple back then.

~~~
itomato
> I called up Bill and said, “I’m going to turn this thing around.” Bill
> always had a soft spot for Apple. We got him into the application software
> business. The first Microsoft apps were Excel and Word for the Mac. So I
> called him and said, “I need help.” Microsoft was walking over Apple’s
> patents. I said, “If we kept up our lawsuits, a few years from now we could
> win a billion-dollar patent suit. You know it, and I know it. But Apple’s
> not going to survive that long if we’re at war. I know that. So let’s figure
> out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft
> will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so
> it has a stake in our success."

~~~
scholia
_> The first Microsoft apps were Excel and Word for the Mac._

Nice quote otherwise, but this bit is not actually true. Microsoft got into
apps via Word and Multiplan on DOS.

Excel and Word for the Mac were its first _graphical_ applications.

~~~
eschaton
Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed. Microsoft applications
like Multiplan were available for a variety of platforms, running CP/M and a
variety of other operating systems. You could get Multiplan for systems as
small as the TI-99/4 and as large as Xenix!

~~~
scholia
_> Microsoft got into applications before DOS existed._

Not actually true. DOS was already done when Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi
from Xerox Parc to start its application division in 1981.

Multiplan and Word were the first results, released in 1983, by which time it
was obvious that Lotus 1-2-3 was going to win.

Simonyi had big ideas about "metaprogramming" and using what was basically a
VM to make applications portable. (I ran Multiplan on a Tandy 100-style
portable, where the program came on a chip!)

In an interview, Simonyi said:

QUOTE

"Multiplan was done on a byte-coded interpreting system, much like Java. It
was probably the most ported system ever deployed. We thought that the market
would be fractured for a long time and that we would be on all of those
machines -- which we were. "Interestingly enough, MS-DOS changed that and
created a unified market. And, of course, Lotus 1-2-3 made their bet on
creating a single, optimized, direct implementation for MS-DOS, and they
cleaned up. We learned a lot from that failure. And then of course, when the
next shift came to GUIs [graphical user interfaces], we cleaned their clock
with Excel."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080905231519/http://www.comput...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080905231519/http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0,10801,76413,00.html)

~~~
flomo
Supposedly, Microsoft Office used a bytecode language for a long time
afterward, at least into the 1990s. Old time Mac users probably remember MS
Office 4.2, which was an identical clone of the Windows version and ran like
molasses.

------
nullnilvoid
You mean Apple bought back Steve Jobs, right?

~~~
ebbv
Considering the contributions NeXT technology has made to OS X and iOS, no
that's an oversimplification.

~~~
rvense
Jobs brought in a great team from NeXT - like Jon Rubinstein, who oversaw the
development of the iMac and the iPod, and later came as close to rescuing
Palm, Inc. (with the Pre) as was possible.

~~~
ebbv
Yep that's a good point as well. Jobs wasn't the only valuable person who came
from NeXT.

~~~
scholia
Another was Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, who worked on Mach at Carnegie Mellon
University before joining NeXT. He took over Apple software.

------
coldcode
Painful to me, I left Apple in May of that year, thinking them toast.

------
bluedino
>> What came out of this deal not only saved Apple and the Mac, but made the
iPhone, iPad and more possible as well.

What prevents Apple from making the iPhone and iPad? They could have bought
Palm, QNX, did something based on Linux...

What was the key? BSD? Objective-C? I don't see those being that important.

The one thing NeXT did enable them to do was the PowerPC to Intel switch.

~~~
protomyth
Steve Jobs, the team he assembled, and a willingness to cut. Apple at the time
was running the Newton which, although I loved programming it, was a totally
wrong direction. It just wasn't connected as Mr. Jobs explained in his Q&A[1].
He built a much better OS than the Mac at that time.

Palm couldn't build the iPhone with Palm and had to build WebOS. QNX is
amazing, but its UI and client developer library wasn't there or else RIM /
Blackberry would have used that. Apple had used Linux, and frankly, there was
no way Apple would have done a Linux-based system after the whole GNU thing at
NeXT.

I do think Objective-C, the developer tools, and NS class libraries don't
quite get the credit they should. They were very good (go read the Taligent
documentation). Truthfully, if Adobe and Microsoft hadn't insisted on
Carbon[2], the Mac would have been much better off.

Apple had done an Intel translation internally and had the institutional
knowledge already from the 68K to PowerPC transition.

1)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3MrpLyUOo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3MrpLyUOo8)
\- its pretty amazing some of the statements, guess the clone thing changed

2) not absent the Classic layer, just absent Carbon.

~~~
j_koreth
> GNU thing at NeXT. Can you elaborate on this?

~~~
mwfunk
There was a sort-of kerfluffle between the FSF and NeXT with regard to what
was required for NeXT to be GPL-compliant. This is RMS' account:

"I say this based on discussions I had with our lawyer long ago. The issue
first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and
let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me
at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but
since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have
to ask the lawyer.

What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such
schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them. He said a
judge would ask whether it is "really" one program, rather than how it is
labeled.

So I went back to Jobs and said we believed his plan was not allowed by the
GPL.

The direct result of this is that we now have an Objective C front end. They
had wanted to distribute the Objective C parser as a separate proprietary
package to link with the GCC back end, but since I didn't agree this was
allowed, they made it free."

(from
[http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-...](http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-
CLISP-is-under-GPL))

I'd be curious to hear more firsthand details from any parties involved.
There's a widely held perception that this was a really divisive and drawn-out
fight that left a lot of bad blood on both sides, but based on RMS' account,
it wasn't. RMS' account just sounds like Jobs contacted him about it, said "is
it OK if we ship it this way?", RMS checked with his lawyer and responded,
"no, you need to ship it this other way to comply with the GPL", to which
Jobs' replied, "OK, we'll do it that way then".

~~~
mikekchar
I'm not a first hand observer, but I was certainly around and following the
issue at the time. My impression was that a lot of people _watching_ the issue
got upset. I never saw anyone from NeXT or the FSF complain about anything.
Just like today, there are people who think that Apple are evil because they
don't embrace software freedom. Similarly there are people who think that the
FSF are evil for not letting people do whatever they want. To be honest, the
acceptance for software freedom as a legitimate idea is far more advanced
today than it was back then, and you see how much vitriol is spewed about
'zealots' and whatnot.

To be fair, I don't think Apple was ever interested in software freedom. This
is pretty obvious from their actions since that time (moving away from
utilising software under the GPL). But I've never heard anyone other than
developers complain about it. From a business perspective, it makes sense -- a
license is a license. You don't want to pay the price, you don't get the
license. I got the sense that Apple's management understood this principle
completely.

From the FSF's perspective, they got an Objective-C front end for GCC and they
were particularly happy about that. It was a kind of triumph because the GPL
did its job. Objective-C programmers had a free platform to work with, which
never would have happened if GCC had not existed and was not GPLed. One can
argue that these days more and more companies understand the benefits of open
source development and might contribute large pieces of code willingly, but
that certainly wasn't the case in those times.

I would also be interested in first hand views, but from my perspective, it
was always a non-issue.

------
hyperpallium
If only Scott Forstall had started a visionary company, that could be acquired
revitalize Apple.

~~~
Apocryphon
"Forstall is reportedly working as an advisor with Snapchat."

------
shams93
If only I had had money to buy Apple stock in 98 lol, be well retired now,
instead of going to graduate school taking out a loan to buy tons of Apple
stock would have been a far smarter move

------
jlebrech
and this guy missed out [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Louis_Gass%C3%A9e#1991.E2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Louis_Gass%C3%A9e#1991.E2.80.932002:_Be_Incorporated)

------
mandeepj
> 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT

Some say 'Next bought Apple'

------
therealmarv
Only wished they did not adopted Finder.

~~~
rahoulb
NeXT didn't have a Finder; the current Finder is a NeXT style file browser and
nothing like the Finder on classic MacOS.

------
rbanffy
I like the narrative NeXT bought Apple for one Steve Jobs and got back 400
million in change

------
wineisfine
I read that the NeXT, let's call it, "adventure", is the reason Apple went
with a Linux distribution as basis for their new OS and thus, we're all using
OSX now?

~~~
FreeFull
As far as I know, Apple has never used Linux for anything in any capacity.
OSX's kernel is XNU, and it's a hybrid of BSD code and Mach.

~~~
wineisfine
So OSX has nothing to do with unix/linux?

~~~
dglancy
macOS (and older OSX releases) are UNIX (see
[http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm](http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm)
for certifications). Linux is not UNIX (its not certified - not many are - see
[http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/index.html](http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/index.html))
and could best be described as POSIX like.

~~~
wineisfine
Thanks for the explanation. I thought Unix and Linux had something to do with
eachother, but looking at the downvotes, I was wrong :D

~~~
flomo
UNIX is an open standard with a certification program, and Linux certainly
tries to follow the standard.

The only real reason that a Linux distribution hasn't been UNIX-certified is
because RedHat and IBM found there was very little marketing value in calling
it UNIX, that is, Linux is a stronger brand.

And I suspect the only reason MacOS is UNIX-certified is because they
advertised it as "UNIX" and were sued by The Open Group, who owns the
trademark. [1]

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-in-court-dispute-over-
unix/](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-in-court-dispute-over-unix/)

~~~
tim--
K-UX is Linux. It is certified. It's based on Red Hat.

