Guys, BIG BIG BIG news! In a very late press release on Friday evening, Gil Amelio and Steven Jobs made a press release that Apple will be buying NeXT, inc. for about $400 million. Apple will use NeXTStep as part of the foundation of the new OS, and Steven Jobs will return to Apple as a direct consultant to Amelio. All of NeXT's employees will join Apple. As the majority of these employees were involved in developing NeXTStep/OpenStep, they will mostly be in the OS development area (where Apple most needs help). These are some pretty talented folks. There are a ton of stories on the Web about NeXT now, so you can read more about the OS and it's capabilities. Here are some highlites:
1. It is component-based (kinda like OpenDoc, but the whole OS is component-based, and developers like it better than OpenDoc). 2. There are active ports to several architectures: Intel x86, HP-paRISC, Sun, 680x0, and I think the Alpha. They apparently did most of the port to PowerPC, but never released the product. 3. The GUI is driven by Display Postscript. It's the only OS which has even better WYSIWYG than the MacOS. It requires pretty hefty CPU resources, tho. 4. NeXTStep and OpenStep run on the MACH microkernel and use BSD Unix as its underpinnings (these are already ported to the Mac and PowerMac). 5. Some of the major software firms are coming out strongly supportive of this move. Adobe's CEO, as well as others, made very positive comments. This somewhat suggests that this new direction for the OS may well serve to keep developers in the Apple bandwagon.
Interesting how this turned out. I felt certain that BeOS was the next big thing. I don't mind being suprised if the alternative is just as good or better. I guess for the same $400 million Be wanted, Apple will be getting a MUCH more mature and well respected OS running on a variety of platforms, WAY more advanced OS programmers (Be only has 10 employees, 11 if you include Gassee), a number of technologies that complement Apple well, and a great deal of excitement. Jobs always has a way of getting people motivated and the media likes him.
