The headline only quotes half of the money quote. The half they don't quote puts the "thank god it didn't happen" in a pretty different light: "because I hated Apple’s management."
This is either sour grapes because the deal fell through or else the deal fell through because he let personal issues get in the way of business. I lean strongly towards the latter, given Gassée history and the unreasonable price tag he put on BeOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e#1980s:_A...
It's probably not sour grapes. At the time, Apple's management was widely considered to be an incoherent mess. They'd run the company damn near into the ground, and Jobs threw most of the people Gassée would have had to deal with out when he was brought in, in favor of NeXT personnel.
This is either sour grapes because the deal fell through or else the deal fell through because he let personal issues get in the way of business. I lean strongly towards the latter, given Gassée history and the unreasonable price tag he put on BeOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e#1980s:_A...