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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

> In 1990, Jean-Louis Gassée, who replaced Jobs in Apple as the head of Macintosh development, was also fired from the company. He then also formed his own computer company with the help of another ex-Apple employee, Steve Sakoman. They called it Be Inc, and their goal was to create a more modern operating system from scratch based on the object-oriented design of C++, using proprietary hardware that could allow for greater media capabilities unseen in personal computers at the time.

Even IBM with OS/2 couldn't surmount the juggernaut network effect of Windows. By 1990, this was apparent to many. It's odd that Gassée and company thought they could succeed where IBM had failed.

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I saw BeOS as a spiritual successor to the Amiga OS, where it might be used as a turnkey media creation system. I think Apple was the Microsoft of this market, and had enough user/developer inertia to make inroads impossible. They sold a depressing 1800 BeBoxes.

They thought they would have their chance with hardware+software combo.

Indeed, the BeBox should have looked like this to succeed: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Ap...

That computer made Apple cool again, and paved the way for their recovery way before the iPhone skyrocket.

Before the eMac, the iPod made Apple cool again, AFAIK

Sorry, I meant the iMac (G3) in 1998 - maybe it's not the best pic then since it's an eMac that came later...

The iPod was 2001, 3 years after the first iMac.

IBM also failed to lock down the IBM PC hardware standard. They tried, with the PS/2 and the Micro Channel Architecture, but it turns out clone makers were more interested in standardizing and improving the existing non-standard (retconned into being the Industry Standard Architecture, ISA) into EISA than in signing on to perpetually license MCA from IBM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture

IBM also didn't quite know what to do with OS/2 and how to sell it.

Maybe Microsoft's ties to the PC industry would have killed it anyway but IBM was kinda lost on what it meant to sell an OS to consumers.

And Jobs was celebrated for cracking 10% market share. It’s hindsight now for sure but it turns out you can do pretty well without a majority stake.

The problem I think was that Microsoft competed hardest in the enterprise space, which was supposed to be IBM’s roost. Apple went after creatives. It’s not clear what was left for a hypothetical third place contender.

IBM failed with OS/2 due to executive incompetence.

John Thompson doesn't want to be in the "kitchentop" business... Dumb ass.

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