I always had the sense that consumer focused computers should be engineered with real-time capabilities, and instead, they ended up being based on time-sharing systems which seems like it hampers UI and media processing. For decades, and especially presently, I get so frustrated with lags and hiccups no matter how fast the CPU and storage are.
The bigger obstacle is that it would not have worked at all in the short run - it was closer to a technology demonstrator than a complete OS. It's often presented as some sort of key decision between similar options, perhaps because Jean-Louis Gassée was also a former Apple exec and remains a well-known commentator. But I don't think it was anything like that, Apple already had plenty of its own half-finished OS tech.
In any case, NextStep didn't do anything in the short run for Apple -- it took dozens of engineers about four years to turn NextStep into OS X, and it's hard to believe that they couldn't have done the same thing with BeOS. Most of the reports I've read suggest BeOS was actually Apple's first choice, but Be, Inc. demanded what they considered an unreasonable price.
I think the biggest difference was vision: BeOS was shooting for the creative media market, while NeXT's biggest successes had come in very enterprise-ish verticals. BeOS was arguably a closer fit to the Mac's "prosumer and creative professional" vision; my unconfirmed, probably off-the-wall suspicion has always been that The Enterprise (tm) was closer to Gil Amelio's button-down, old school semiconductor industry heart. Buying NeXT clearly turned out to be great for Apple as a company -- just not for the reasons Amelio had in mind.
In any case, NextStep didn't do anything in the short run for Apple -- it took dozens of engineers about four years to turn NextStep into OS X, and it's hard to believe that they couldn't have done the same thing with BeOS.
I think it's very easy to believe if you compare them technically. I'm happy to get into that discussion if you're interested but it seems obvious to me a complete, mature OS that was (at the time) considered fairly advanced technologically, had a track record of being ported to every architecture available (along with a track record of running inside/alongside other environments), plus the team that built and maintained all of that was a saner choice than an unfinished OS. Finishing an OS was precisely the problem Apple had for years and was trying to buy its way out of. BeOS and NextStep were not anything close to the same starting point.
I think the biggest difference was vision: BeOS was shooting for the creative media market, while NeXT's biggest successes had come in very enterprise-ish verticals.
I think there's some truth to this, in that Apple's computers had long been pariahs in business settings and getting out of that rut was a thing Apple wanted to do. I imagine it was a factor. At the same time - there was probably way more actual prosumer and creative professional software for NextStep than there ever was for BeOS and much more importantly - Apple was looking to buy technology, not vision.
I do! Although I'm not sure how it relates to what I wrote nor am I sure why you're taking that condescending tone with me - I assume you do know it's less than constructive.
Another example open MacBook start typing account password, but 8 or so characters in, the OS wakes up and deletes everything you’ve entered already so have to start again.
On the Mac, it seems no matter what I set the priorities of the involved processes, long compiles makes it impossible to game at the same time.
iOS is still doing great. :)
- transition to x86, and Bootcamp fallback.
- iPhone, with decent touch interface and native (non Java) API and open AppStore
- iPad at right time.
Without this trifecta, Apple would be extinct like SGI, Sun, and the others.
BeOS was what the geeks wanted. It was modern, multi core, C++ based, and with the backing of a big company, would have seriously dominated the desktop computing landscape. I’d be willing to state that Apple would have had a bigger market share with BeOS rather than NeXT.
[0]: https://www.cultofmac.com/461234/today-in-apple-history-appl...
It wouldn't be a trillion-dollar business without the iPhone, sure. I've no reason to think it wouldn't still be in business, and you haven't given any.
It's certainly possible that Apple would have thrived with a next-generation Mac based on BeOS. Personally, I wouldn't have switched; I was tired of dual-booting Yggdrasil Linux and Windows, and the prospect of buying a (relatively) affordable Unix workstation was exciting to someone who cut his teeth on SparcStations.
I'm not the median customer, then or now, however. Back then she was probably in desktop publishing; BeOS would have been just fine.
The iPod + iTunes Music Store was the real turnaround. Before that in 2001 it seriously looked like Apple might not make it, Jobs or not.
So Apple was very 'lucky' for this generous investment, without it would have seen them join the local museums and nostalgia meet-ups, like Amiga, OS/2 and BeOS.
Microsoft was also doing a decent business selling Office to Mac users, which they would lose if Apple went out of business.
Last but not least, Apple stock was trading for a buck a share in August of 1997. If Microsoft held on to those shares, that $150 million investment would be worth almost 49 billion dollars today.
Not bad.
When the iTunes store opened, that was the exact moment at which Apple was clearly a different company that was going to skyrocket. I did not have or maintain faith in Jobs, unfortunately for me. But that was the moment of "take all your money and buy call options".
As evidence of my opinion, you could look at the discontinuity in the stock price and how it proceeded to break out of the cyclical range it had been in for years and years.