NeXT Acquisition

[zombie]

Be wanted more than NeXT. For a far less mature, and far less capable OS. Like I said. 400M for NeXT was a 'gift' for what they got. Go see what apple and IBM wasted on trying to develop the Copland OS that was a failed disaster. It was way worse.

The initial premise of the survey is faulty as it comes in with a slanted point of view that 400M is somehow a "lot" when it was the bargain of the century. It was 400M that turned into 3+Trillion. You'd be hard pressed to ever find that kind of return on investment in the history of human commerce.

[gtnicol]

I tend to agree with that, though NeXT was suffering so I think they more or less price-matched Be... or at least that's the impression I have. Given the very rough state of BeOS and Be hardware (I mean, the quality of a BeBox vs a NeXT box...), I do tend to agree that it was actually pretty cheap.

There are lots of intangibles too: things like the expertise of the folk that produced SoftPC and which had experience porting NeXT to RISC processors etc. Without that expertise, Apple could never have been so nimble... they've essentially reused the core software over and over again.

[crispin]

things like the expertise of the folk that produced SoftPC and which had experience porting NeXT to RISC processors

 I am pretty sure the SoftPC folks didn't work at NeXT, that was Insignia.

[gtnicol]

Yes, it was developed by Insignia, but NeXT had a license and experience in how to integrate SoftPC. I doubt Rosetta etc. would have been nearly as good without that experience. With a few rare exceptions nobody else has made compatibility as easy as Apple did... and that portability and experience allowed them to move like few other hardware companies ever did.

[cuby]

Yes, it was developed by Insignia, but NeXT had a license and experience in how to integrate SoftPC. I doubt Rosetta etc. would have been nearly as good without that experience.

Rosetta was licensed by Apple from Transitive Corporation (now a part of IBM) which already had significant experience in developing CPU emulations - see also this Wikipedia article.

[zombie]

I tend to agree with that, though NeXT was suffering so I think they more or less price-matched Be... or at least that's the impression I have. Given the very rough state of BeOS and Be hardware (I mean, the quality of a BeBox vs a NeXT box...), I do tend to agree that it was actually pretty cheap.

There are lots of intangibles too: things like the expertise of the folk that produced SoftPC and which had experience porting NeXT to RISC processors etc. Without that expertise, Apple could never have been so nimble... they've essentially reused the core software over and over again.

It's in several books. I think the Issacson Steve Jobs book has some on this. Gassee thought he was the only game in town and asked a lot more for Be. He didn't expect NeXT to be in play. It was a lot cheaper.

[zaxel]

thank you so much everyone!!, i am appreciative for all of the advice

[zombie]

https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-16-from-one-ice-floe-to-the-next-3813b95ac579

The above is Gassee's version of the acquisition where he would lead you to believe they wanted the same for Be Inc as was paid for NeXT. Note his bs crafty wording where he never comes out and says it.

He's a very untrustworthy source, but that's from that horses mouth.

And even for even money, Be was garbage compared to NeXT (and dont get me wrong, I like a bunch of things Be did).

But many books have counter tales from sources I trust much more, and Be asked for much more money.

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Hello NeXT Community:  This wiki does a fine Job explaining Gassee , his role at Apple and in helping oust Steve Jobs in which Gassee took over the Macintosh project. He had some followers at Apple according to the WIKI article quotes the lone protestor with berat, coat and earing stud Gassee's signature look, others marched to keep Gassee at Apple as well,
When Gassee left Applewith a few of the engineers, they started developing a ground up hardware company with software on PPC , then canned eventually the hardware after producing 2000 BE Boxes and was assisted by Intel to make the port but sounds like Microsloth strong armed BE OS out of the intel market in the US . Be was valued at $80 million ,
Gassee was trying to bilk Apple for $275 million for an incomplete OS in which Apple pivoted as Copland OS was floundering and Apple had spent1 Billion on it . When NeXT stepped in it  blind sided BE .
They never saw it coming , I certainly did and was ridiculed for it ha and the rest is as they say history. 3 Trillion ....  as a bonus Jobs came back firing on all cylinders oh and it was personal, NeXT simply had the better tech and people . Jobbs also killed BE OS by canning all the cloned PPC hardware as Be Boxes among them we're capable of running MAC OS as well.
Another advantage for Apple was NeXTSTEP/ Openstep were already rock solid on multiple architectures 68K, Intel, HPPA Risc and Sun .
It was surreal demonstrating Openstep boxes at that first Macintosh Developer conference lol  I'm mean the AppleCopland developers we're pissed man, some 2 million lines of copland code and poof . Greg Anderson at Anderson Financial summed it up best, "We are in the land of the blind, selling working eyeballs (NeXTSTEP) and they (Copland / MAC OS dev's) are worried about what color they are" 

The NeXT developer tools we're cross platform NT , Mach and Solaris , Apple brought back Rubenstein former NeXT hardware GURU from Firepower and the NeXT 3rd party developers we're porting the seasoned NeXT 3rd party apps to Rhapsody. Rhapsody was the first blush of the hybrid NeXT/ Mac OS future OS with Blue box app letting legacy Mac apps run Rhapsody as well.
NeXT even made an app that let the Apple devs run their code legacy , diagnosed the barnacles and provide a road map template of how to port the apps to OSX  and continued to update MAC OS to 9,1 so it wasn't as harsh of a transition 
Apple kept the Openstep Intel port alive under code name Marklar, as the writing was on the wall that PPC had no well thought out plan for the future.
Also as a bonus NeXT Apple got Web Objects , PDO and EOF software and a catalog of customs Object Oriented Projects from 3rd party vendors and a list of high end clients and seasoned developers. 
And a few legends in their own mind like me lol, Apple called me to take over all of the Openstep and NeXTSTEP software sales on Day 1 of my being laid off for 4 hours from Optimal Obects as Optical called and asked if I wanted to take over everything else an hour earlier,
I thought what the heck I'll do it, first calls in we're from MIT, John's Hopkins, Stanford , UCLA , Nations Bank, First Chicago , Bank of America and even Cannon so I hit the ground running . I was already selling NeXT 68K hardware and had a couple hench men my buddy Larry from Yale , Jace from CU  and my guru tech Max , a room I rented for $300 a block away .... it was better from me to work from home as Larry and Jace rivaled cheech andchong only with brains lol.
Apple with NeXTSTEP and Openstep but they cranked out some Y2K patches as they realized the liability cluster **** of Y2K so things we're real sporty in the trenches once again for me but I pulled a thorn out of the big lions paw help cover the Y2K flood of calls. emails , doing Apples solids left, right and center . Hello NeXT Community:  This wiki does a fine Job explaining Gassee , his role at Apple and in helping oust Steve Jobs in which Gassee took over the Macintosh project. He had some followers at Apple according to the WIKI article quotes the lone protestor with berat, coat and earing stud Gassee's signature look, others marched to keep Gassee at Apple as well,

When Gassee left Applewith a few of the engineers, they started developing a ground up hardware company with software on PPC , then canned eventually the hardware after producing 2000 BE Boxes and was assisted by Intel to make the port but sounds like Microsloth strong armed BE OS out of the intel market in the US . Be was valued at $80 million ,

Gassee was trying to bilk Apple for $275 million for an incomplete OS in which Apple pivoted as Copland OS was floundering and Apple had spent1 Billion on it . When NeXT stepped in it  blind sided BE .

They never saw it coming , I certainly did and was ridiculed for it ha and the rest is as they say history. 3 Trillion ....  as a bonus Jobs came back firing on all cylinders oh and it was personal, NeXT simply had the better tech and people . Jobbs also killed BE OS by canning all the cloned PPC hardware as Be Boxes among them we're capable of running MAC OS as well.

Another advantage for Apple was NeXTSTEP/ Openstep were already rock solid on multiple architectures 68K, Intel, HPPA Risc and Sun .
It was surreal demonstrating Openstep boxes at that first Macintosh Developer conference lol  I'm mean the AppleCopland developers we're pissed man, some 2 million lines of copland code and poof . Greg Anderson at Anderson Financial summed it up best, "We are in the land of the blind, selling working eyeballs (NeXTSTEP) and they (Copland / MAC OS dev's) are worried about what color they are" 

The NeXT developer tools we're cross platform NT , Mach and Solaris , Apple brought back Rubenstein former NeXT hardware GURU from Firepower and the NeXT 3rd party developers we're porting the seasoned NeXT 3rd party apps to Rhapsody. Rhapsody was the first blush of the hybrid NeXT/ Mac OS future OS with Blue box app letting legacy Mac apps run Rhapsody as well.
NeXT even made an app that let the Apple devs run their code legacy , diagnosed the barnacles and provide a road map template of how to port the apps to OSX  and continued to update MAC OS to 9,1 so it wasn't as harsh of a transition 

Apple kept the Openstep Intel port alive under code name Marklar, as the writing was on the wall that PPC had no well thought out plan for the future.
Also as a bonus NeXT Apple got Web Objects , PDO and EOF software and a catalog of customs Object Oriented Projects from 3rd party vendors and a list of high end clients and seasoned developers. 

And a few legends in their own mind like me lol, Apple called me to take over all of the Openstep and NeXTSTEP software sales on Day 1 of my being laid off for 4 hours from Optimal Obects as Optical called and asked if I wanted to take over everything else an hour earlier,

I thought what the heck I'll do it, first calls in we're from MIT, John's Hopkins, Stanford , UCLA , Nations Bank, First Chicago , Bank of America and even Cannon so I hit the ground running . I was already selling NeXT 68K hardware and had a couple hench men my buddy Larry from Yale , Jace from CU  and my guru tech Max , a room I rented for $300 a block away .... it was better from me to work from home as Larry and Jace rivaled cheech andchong only with brains lol.

Apple with NeXTSTEP and Openstep but they cranked out some Y2K patches as they realized the liability cluster **** of Y2K so things we're real sporty in the trenches once again for me but I pulled a thorn out of the big lions paw help cover the Y2K flood of calls. emails , doing Apples solids left, right and center .

I can go on and on to prior art patent litigation cases we're we (Apple)n crushed greedy patent trolls .... the NeXT tech demos were like Bambi (trolls) verse Godzilla lol in court. Here is that Gassee flatulence rat bro Wiki sense of humor required , mic drop.   

#####  My current status , while I've been going through a bit of hell , the MRSA trashed my left hip so I've on my 3 and 4th orthopedic Dr as to who will be doing my risky hip replacement surgery.   I had evicted Lisa for good reason, while I was in the hospital ,he let her back in their volatile relationship . He is close to having all of his stuff moved out of here finally but as parting gift , he took a different girl to guns and roses lol on Firday. I'm working on a Laser Printer watching the World Series and hear banging coming from upstairs ,the crazy chick has a sledge hammer breaks down his bedroom door . I found the protective order and eviction paper work ,can't make this stuff up , hobbled by narrowly escaping the sledge hammer hitting the door damn near fell down my stairs on the way out to my car, I'm on the phone with 911 .  Explaining yes this is real , Halloween and all , she is schizophrenic . Cops arrive and I'm up the block , she totaled his room and hauled her off thank god . I guess one good thing is he is now moving the rest of his stuff out with the quickness , it is so quiet I'm sleeping well the last few nights
No NeXT equipment was damaged , an example of Lisa  screaming at women on TV  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmnEdOf7jiU

[pTeK]

And a few legends in their own mind like me lol, Apple called me to take over all of the Openstep and NeXTSTEP software sales on Day 1 of my being laid off for 4 hours from Optimal Obects as Optical called and asked if I wanted to take over everything else an hour earlier,

I thought what the heck I'll do it, first calls in we're from MIT, John's Hopkins, Stanford , UCLA , Nations Bank, First Chicago , Bank of America and even Cannon so I hit the ground running . I was already selling NeXT 68K hardware and had a couple hench men my buddy Larry from Yale , Jace from CU  and my guru tech Max , a room I rented for $300 a block away .... it was better from me to work from home as Larry and Jace rivaled cheech andchong only with brains lol.

Apple with NeXTSTEP and Openstep but they cranked out some Y2K patches as they realized the liability cluster **** of Y2K so things we're real sporty in the trenches once again for me but I pulled a thorn out of the big lions paw help cover the Y2K flood of calls. emails , doing Apples solids left, right and center .

I can go on and on to prior art patent litigation cases we're we (Apple)n crushed greedy patent trolls .... the NeXT tech demos were like Bambi (trolls) verse Godzilla lol in court. Here is that Gassee flatulence rat bro Wiki sense of humor required , mic drop.   

Like I write Rob, You always have great stories .

Once you took over as the main support for NextStep/OpenStep did you have to keep in touch with Apple to tell them what customers contacted you and for what so that Apple could update their OSX to make it more appealing and enticing to their current corporate customers? i.e. Standford contacted me about this custom in-house scientific application linking to this type of hardware, John Hopkins with their custom patient application linking to the SQL database over the network pulling in the MRI scans, this custom app has allowed the doctors to be more productive and see more patients so could be a market in it.

Rob when did Apple call you to take over support for NextStep/OpenStep was it pre or post 2000?

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Like I write Rob, You always have great stories .

##### Thank you!

Once you took over as the main support for NextStep/OpenStep did you have to keep in touch with Apple to tell them what customers contacted you and for what so that Apple could update their OSX to make it more appealing and enticing to their current corporate customers?

###### To put this in context remember in 1996 and 1997 , Apple was losing 1 Billion a month so they we're bailing out water.  NeXT was no longer promoting or in effect updating Openstep as 4.2 was the last but I was not at NeXT . They had pivoted to Web Objects as their primary direction, I think I was literally the last salesman on earth lol Black Hole indeed still selling the operating system.

We have many parallels it seems, perhaps the most surreal for me was Garrett Rice , as Garrett worked at Alembic then bailed with the sales staff and shipping manager Matt Moran taking the database of customers and forming Opensource during my 9 month exodus from Alembic. Garrett was hired by NeXT when Open source closed their doors and now was our rep at NeXT. We had the discussion in person Max, Garrett and myself at Alembic as NeXT's western regional office was next door to mine in the Denver Tech Center about specifically Apple talking to BE OS. I even wrote an article NeXT and Apple a logical fit. We talked about what a different world it would be if Steve had stayed at Apple lol. Garrett called Ellen Hancock VP at Apple as he was working at NeXT with Steve Jobs.  I went into work everybody said what did you do now, lol as Apple had bought NeXT , my article was out this one https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=3671.msg20906#msg20906   and said they had enough and we're closing their doors in 2 weeks. Nobody except a few gave it a snowballs chance in hell of working , hell I actually bought AAPL stock for $15 a share lol people called me flat out crazy. I thought I was banking selling it at $120 , damn it now that $10K in stock would be worth Millions . I think my dad held on to his , we shall see.
 
i.e. Standford contacted me about this custom in-house scientific application linking to this type of hardware,

I was working with Professor Zalta in physics at Stanford integrated a few NeXT intel boxes for him, also Timothy Grey at Wolfram gave me permission to distribute Mathematica for NeXT 68K and everybody knows Fernando at CCRMA Music department at Stanford , they had the NeXT frankenstein Intel box , heck even Tim Berners Lee one of the very first web pages he made was to share phone numbers with the guys at SLAC His bosses at CERN thought the WWW was a bad idea ha.  Numerous other accounts as hey Palo Alto always has movers and shakers.


John Hopkins with their custom patient application linking to the SQL database over the network pulling in the MRI scans, this custom app has allowed the doctors to be more productive and see more patients so could be a market in it.
Yes you are probably talking about my good friend Anthony Fernandez to this day check out his latest stuff www.fernandez.com including his NeXT now Apple imaging software..... he worked at Harvard, MIT and with JHU really nice chap!

I want to say Mike Cutheral at Johns Hopkins , also had a heck of a story  regarding imaging.
 A company had hired a team of 20 Windows developers to create an app , where they had topographic maps , over layered with property lines and assets linking historic data of flood plane locations to calculate the probability of future flooding on existing and planned infrastructure . Also linking past flood payouts so they would be able to assess risk and thus calculate rates for flood insurance. $20 Million and I want to say 6 month's to a year in a lot of money in those days , the insurance company pulled the plug.

 Mike indeed housed on  them, 1 guy and may be an assistant, 2 month's time, NeXT developer tools and waving a magic wand spun up a fully functional jaw dropping working NeXT app probably still used today. 

Here at CSU in Fort Collins they used NeXT to predict and forecast  Hurricanes and it wa indeed ported over to Apple.

Rob when did Apple call you to take over support for NextStep/OpenStep was it pre or post 2000?

**** Apple called me the first day that would have been mid January 97 . I was layed off from Alembic had changed names , the last incarnation was Optimal Object Tech. Apple was already dumping most of the supports calls to me at Optimal , think about Apple is in Shambles, they went from Copland OS to having Steve Jobs back, from my understanding on a rampage lol with Openstep ,Apple employee's were deer in the headlights , I envision the post it notes with my number for any strange software calls , have them call Rob Blessin.  If Apple employee's heard Steve coming, diving under desks, into trash cans  standing behind curtains, plants or flat out sprinting with then stampeed like Paul Revere stuff, you could be fired on an elevator ride with Steve seriously. When they flew me out to Apple for a prior art case , they changed the sign on my door to Patent Office War room NDA stuff  lol I should have taking a photo of the sign lol and the NeXT set up it looked like something out of the future lol . No stress at all , Thousand dollar an hour lawyers lurking over my shoulders, hair standing up on the back of neck, me trembling what happens if I break wind south in this grind so yeah , I said please let me do this stuff at my home as they wanted version 1.0 cubes with working optical drives , I convinced them you need to use, full height hard drive and almost on cue blue smoke bellowed out of one of them . Yes of course we won and it works for me and them , working here, my God.
#####
I've never said this but I positively think one of those early tech support calls for Openstep from Apple was Steve , himself lol . The guy was asking a lot of complicated technical stuff about Openstep and I think I passed the BOZO to Hero test that day .  The Crazy ones commercial , so corporate customers , well trying to pitch them on Rhapsody , Apple Bondi Blue I-mac's was not the successful route. See most fortune 500 companies at the time bought into the Microsoft hype so on Purchase Orders for Custom Intel hardware for the Developers boooya I would sell them a dual boot system . The bean counters and corporate Ken's / Karen's in lockstep with Microsoft Would see Intel System Windows NT / Openstep 4.2 Developer Tools for Mach and NT with the all important Y2K patches I didn't venture much into the Apple Hardware side as I was surfing in the curl of my NeXT hardware niche along with a few others. They all dropped off or moved onto Apple , it became weirder working with Apple as years went by trying to explain what NeXT even was to the new Apple employee's I was contacting as my former contacts retired. I don't even know where I am any more on this in some kind of alternate universe.   ##### So I'm going back to my project of the day now repairing this NeXT laser printer, the bloody thing crumples up the paper from the brand new paper tray but when I hand feed it works perfectly. So it is an alignment issue.
What is frustrating I've noticed with SCSI2SD's and ZULU SCSI etc print jobs and printer error messages don't seem to clear so they just hang. In frustration I carefully shut down and reboot so for my sanity I'm now putting an old school hard drive in my dedicated printer test NeXTstation to see if it allows me to speed up the trouble shooting printer project. As it is jamming me up on my back ordered NeXT hardware orders. On a positive note I no longer have a sledge hammer wielding blond bashing up ,  my ex roommates stuff lol as he comes daily now at night to move more and more stuff out. Bro is dodging her for sure as she may pop out of a bush out front at him lol. If I hear his screams I will call 911 again , not my circus not my monkeys. It is 12:30 at night and I'm going to bed.

[bkmoore]

Five minutes of online research, from the 1997 Apple Annual report:

In February 1997, the Company acquired NeXT. NeXT developed, marketed and supported software that enables customers to implement business applications on the Internet/World Wide Web, intranets and enterprise-wide client/server networks. The acquisition was accounted for as a purchase and, accordingly, the operating results pertaining to NeXT subsequent to the date of acquisition have been included in the Company's consolidated operating results. The total purchase price, including the fair value of the net liabilities assumed, was $427 million of which $375 million was allocated to purchased in-process research and development and $52 million was allocated to goodwill and other intangible assets. The purchased in-process research and development was charged to operations upon acquisition, and the goodwill and other tangible assets are being amortized on a straight-line basis over two years.

In summary the price was derived based on a valuation of $375 million for the business, and $52 million for "intangible assets" aka Steve Jobs.

For those of us who were around in 1997, there just weren't any modern operating systems for Apple to choose from. These were almost pre-historic times in computing. Operating systems in 1997 lacked many of the features we consider normal today: i.e. networking, preemptive multitasking, file permissions, object-oriented API, multimedia support, multi-architecture support, etc. Most OS's at the time, you could probably pick any three out of those things. Apple almost certainly had an internal list of requirements, and only OpenSTEP met all or most of those requirements.

[cuby]

For those of us who were around in 1997, there just weren't any modern operating systems for Apple to chose from. These were almost pre-historic times in computing. Operating systems in 1997 lacked many of the features we consider normal in a modern operating system: i.e. networking, preemptive multitasking, file permissions, object-oriented API, multimedia support, multi-architecture support, etc. Most OS's at the time, you could probably pick any three out of those things.

An alternative future in which Apple bought SGI (which was not really an option in 1996, in that year SGI bought Cray for $731 million) and used IRIX as the basis for MacOS would have been interesting... of course, this would not have brought back Steve Jobs.

[pTeK]

6 years after purchase MacOS X made the super computer list in 2003 with the System X. From Wikipedia it says it cost $5.2 million USD I don't know how much of that is the cost of Apple Hardware + Software only.