NeXT Acquisition

would anyone be willing to assist with filling out this poll for my research paper?
thank you for your consideration,Zack

I read somewhere (maybe on this forum?) that the reason why they could ask so much is because they had a healthy list of corporate customers who were using NeXT to develop rapid custom application solutions.

Webobjects and the tansition to the internet gave Next developers to build dynamic web pages for corporate customers which required to pull data from SQL based databases?

Thanks for much for this amazing answer, do you happen to know if there is any articles that backs your point, just looking to find some evidence for my paper , thank you so much!

Apple had spent way more than that on its disaster OS Copland (along with IBM). Getting NeXTstep for only 400m was a relative bargain. It's the equivalent of finding a lemonade stand in hell. Apple would be dead without it. It's now the most valuable company in history.

Quote from: zaxel on October 25, 2023, 08:24:34 PMThanks for much for this amazing answer, do you happen to know if there is any articles that backs your point, just looking to find some evidence for my paper , thank you so much!

No sorry, I don't have this so you can reference it in your paper. I think I may have read it in one of the webobjects threads? Or maybe I read it on a website on why Apple chose Next and it mentioned their coporate customer base?

Because Apple is a publicly traded company would those documents now be publicly accessible as this merger happened over 20 years ago?

When you look at early NeXT presentations they list their corporate customers, I guess it also helped convince the customers developers as it was based on BSD/Unix so if it compiled on BSD it should be able to get up and running on NeXT pretty quickly.

One thing you can look up is WebObjects was the first dynamic web engine. All the earliest online stores were made with WebObjects. Dell used WebObjects to get their first online store going.

what exactly made nextstep better than other OS apple could have purchased?
I just cant find any evidence on any of this...
do you happen to have any concrete evidence to support your claim Zombie?
Id like to believe you but Im looking for some details that can support your argument

Hello Zaxel : Have you ever actually used NeXTSTEP? What is your current Operating system Preference? What is your age please ? What level of education is your research paper targeted for is it for High School, College, Masters, PHD, other ?

 I am a guy that will really help you with all of this as I've been in the NeXT business since 1993:)   

To your point NeXTSTEP ran circles around the competition , you ask how?

.... well my personal experience , the very first time I sat down at a NeXT computer on February 9, 1993 coincidentally the same day NeXT shut down their hardware production line, I had just graduated from CSU here in Fort Collins, CO and was amazed.

I had a best of class COBOL programming 200 students in my hand and well a lot of stuff ran on COBOL at the time.
 It took thousands of hours to write or it seemed lol but it turned out incredible an indexing program for a video store.

Well the NeXT Developer Tools, me having 0 experience using them or Object Oriented Programming with project builder, interface builder allowed me to create a first draft App comparable to what I just did in Cobol taking over 6 month's in 60 minutes, wow.

 For papers at the time at CSU , remembering it was DOS and Windows 3.11 basically hell on Earth ,
I loved to push the envelope bling on papers.

If only I had a NeXT at CSU seriously , I would have had time to burn.

Comparrison you launched a word perfect file in Windows 3.11 then added a Lotus 123 spreadsheet and perhaps a graphic , it took hours of formatting to get it right, hoping it would not bomb the OS. 

On a NeXT launch work perfect, adobe illustrator and lotus Improv drag and drop a grab a corner to resize presto paper.

This NeXT has to crash right ,my first time on her,  I laughed as I had 25 apps going at once and it still worked WTF....

Windows Blue Screen of Death happened often with 1 app running on 3.11 with no explaination.

Why was NeXT stable ,preemptive multitasking and protected memory Free BSD, Berkeley Unix and a NeXTSTEP shell ,rock solid and stable some government customers had systems they never had to reboot in 7 years of running, yes 7 years 24/7...... 

Corporate Example of indexing and the brilliant use of objects..... it used to take a day and a half to turn on cell phones for MacCaw Wireless bought by ATT with NeXTSTEP tools 5 minutes.
That same NeXTSTEP Backbone ATT Wireless Used in all of there stores then made the first I phone release possible, fast years later .

Fortune 500 companies were simply not able to match the Software let alone hardware , we often silently turned the world on its head burning rubber into the future man and corporations with NeXTSTEP with mission critical custom cross platform software,  using NeXTSTEP tools kept it a secret because it gave them a competitive advantage .

NeXT Mail let you easily send email with Voice , Text, Graphics , Sound and Even Video starting in 19 friggin 88 lol .

The World Wide Web and 3d Gaming engine were developed on NeXT .

The Gold mine of information you seek is hiding in plane site right under your nose on our archives site here https://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/

a couple threads you will enjoy ....https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=3671.msg20906#msg20906   

and check out my youtube.com/robblessin site for hundreds of NeXT projects .

I have nothing but love and respect for you brothers and  sisters and will help you get an A+++ on your paper ,

I'm also the guy that sold NeXTSTEP academic bundles for NeXT and Apple nationwide so I have a love for education at heart :)

and finally an article in Forbes about a project I helped with for a customer Tim Berners Lee https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/08/10/steve-jobs-computer-cameos-at-the-london-olympics/?sh=2c41a7d9631e .

That A Plus I would suggest setting up and trying NeXTSTEP 3.3 on your modern computer using our homebrew free app Previous in the archive link , https://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/Previous68Kemulator/

with in NeXTSTEP you can set it up to run Mac OS 7.1 and Windows 3.11 and you will be able to judge for yourself perhaps even demo your research

via a YOUTUBE Video attachment broadcasting in your class room on your custom research webpage

in an Apples to Apples comparison of vintage operating systems on perhaps  a laptop and let your fellow students be the judge as well lol.

It may now be considered a form of torture what we went through paying $6 a hour for compuserve at one point to get online BBS at 300 baud dial up modem with rumor of 600 baud a coming oh and faxes being a thing.

Heck NeXT introduced the word to CD quality sound via Sony sound cards, laser disc's and the worlds first NeXTSTEP  software on cdrom support well it only took 2 system administrators to handle Chrysler Financials  2500 next systems, war stories, I have stories and time travel http://www.blackholeinc.com/about/page14.html . Peace and Best Regards Rob Blessin

Quote from: zombie on October 26, 2023, 07:07:04 PMOne thing you can look up is WebObjects was the first dynamic web engine. All the earliest online stores were made with WebObjects. Dell used WebObjects to get their first online store going.

Being able to show a coporate CEO how webobjects can access their backend database list of products to show the customers and the ease of use for designing a dynamic page of each product to their customer would have been a game changer.

The hardest part would have been trying to convince the early adapters.

It was also multiplatform, Intel x86, Motorola 680x0, Sun Sparc, HP-RISC.

Quote from: zaxel on October 26, 2023, 09:41:41 PMwhat exactly made nextstep better than other OS apple could have purchased?
I just cant find any evidence on any of this...
do you happen to have any concrete evidence to support your claim Zombie?
Id like to believe you but Im looking for some details that can support your argument

It had preemptive multitasking because of BSD, (Amiga had it in 1985 as well). The presentation was very stylish, you look at NeXTSTEP 2.0 (http://toastytech.com/guis/ns20.html) from the 80s then look at Windows 95 (http://toastytech.com/guis/win952.html). Look at photo 08 the scheme changer, it looks similar to NextStep Interface Builder with the Helvetica font and the 3D Rectangle buttons.

Now lets be realistic. NeXT was expensive not only the OS but the hardware as well. The fact that the machine was released in the late 80s with 8MB RAM tells you this. RAM was expensive, Atari released the 1040ST in 1985 with 1MB RAM for under $1000USD at the time.

NextSTep 3.3intel Required 8MB RAM minimum and a 486DX minimum CPU (With built in MMU, FPU) It did not support the 386. The 8MB of RAM only allowed a 4 colour GreyScale display but it still looks very polished. NeXTSTEP 3.3 cost $900USD in 95 and the Developer Kit cost $2500USD which was expensive compared to a Windows 95 PC at the time. Windows 95 on a 486DX-66 with 8MB RAM which my father had at the time crawled. I had to have a plane black background for speed (No desktop picture so redrawing would be faster) and other hacks.

Quote from: zaxel on October 26, 2023, 09:41:41 PMI just cant find any evidence on any of this...
do you happen to have any concrete evidence to support your claim Zombie?
Id like to believe you but Im looking for some details that can support your argument

This is the problem with conspiracy sites, they talk about Tesla super weapons but they never have any references so you know the site is full of $h!t

User @wizard is building a database of apps so he should be able to give you information on the apps that were available on NeXT.

Steve Jobs to Next would also be worth a fair bit because he would have had CEO connections with corporate CEOs, 3D Graphics and networking experience (Early cloud for storage for Toy Story movie, and Rendering 3D frames over multiple machines) with Pixar. And Networking with CEOs and being in Silicon Valley he would know what other industries are doing and how and where they are moving. Also having the first web browser available he and Next would be in a advantageous position to see where the technology is moving and if possible shape it to a certain direction.

wow this is an incredible post Rob Blessin Black Hole, thank you , it is a paper for my masters in computer science ...
I have never actually used NeXTstep...my current OS is MacOS, Im 28 years old

Are you able to explain to me why Apple paid 427M$ exactly for NeXT-do you have any concrete evidence also to support this; is there a reason they viewed NeXT as being worth $427M? Why exactly was the OS so advanced compared to its competitors>? was the NeXTSTEP OS really so much better than the competitors?  Could it just partially have been that it was a Steve Jobs company and Jobs was a celebrity, also, How did Sun, the competitor to NeXT compare with NeXT with regards to their Operating System?; what made NeXTstep so advanced exactly and was it better than Suns OS?  im just trying to understand why Apple decided to pay $427M exactly-because my research informed me that Bud Tribble VP of software at NeXT left the company ...Im confused why Tribble would leave NeXT for Sun if the OS was so good? thank you very much for your willingness to help! Zack

Quote from: zaxel on October 27, 2023, 07:47:38 PMwow this is an incredible post Rob Blessin Black Hole, thank you , it is a paper for my masters in computer science ...
I have never actually used NeXTstep...my current OS is MacOS, Im 28 years old

Are you able to explain to me why Apple paid 427M$ exactly for NeXT-do you have any concrete evidence also to support this; is there a reason they viewed NeXT as being worth $427M? Why exactly was the OS so advanced compared to its competitors>? was the NeXTSTEP OS really so much better than the competitors?  Could it just partially have been that it was a Steve Jobs company and Jobs was a celebrity, also, How did Sun, the competitor to NeXT compare with NeXT with regards to their Operating System?; what made NeXTstep so advanced exactly and was it better than Suns OS?  im just trying to understand why Apple decided to pay $427M exactly-because my research informed me that Bud Tribble VP of software at NeXT left the company ...Im confused why Tribble would leave NeXT for Sun if the OS was so good? thank you very much for your willingness to help! Zack

Ok so here are two things you should read/watch.

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/03/business/company-news-key-engineer-leaving-next-computer-for-sun.html

And

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg

The video is from late 1991 and shows what state of the art software development looked like on both platforms. This was 5 years before the acquisition by Apple and the engineering coming out of NeXT did not stop.

Besides NeXTSTEP/ Openstep a buzzword compliant OS
It ran in production on 4 different architectures 68K, i486, Sparc and HP-PA-RISC.
Then there was the Distributed Objects products PDO
Then there was WebObjects

At the time the only other real option for Apple was Be.  From what I understand the X-apple CEO of BE was asking way to much for his company and that was one of the reasons BE was not selected. While it did have very good OS tech I even had a BeBox for a while... I think their approach was just too different and had little support outside of their development community. But that is just my opinion.

I will try and see what else I can post to help explain the value of NeXT, but 400mil was a bargain

thank you very much

Quote from: zaxel on October 28, 2023, 03:19:05 PMthank you very much

Also if you take a look at this....
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102724825

There were plans to take NeXT public. Looking over the numbers NeXT could have easily been worth more than 500 million if it went public.

Quote from: zaxel on October 27, 2023, 07:47:38 PMwow this is an incredible post Rob Blessin Black Hole, thank you , it is a paper for my masters in computer science ...
I have never actually used NeXTstep...my current OS is MacOS, Im 28 years old

#### Reality , It would be difficult to write about on operating system or systems IMHO you have not used then compare it to competitive operating systems for the time,  and for a Master level Research Paper on NeXTSTEP, my advice just install it. I'm guessing you are savy with CS....
 
Do you happen to have mid to late 90's Dell Pentium , the reason I ask is you would be able to install NeXTSTEP 3.3 or Openstep 4.2 on it and also install potentially BE O/S, Windows NT and Linux or Solaris in separate partitions. Or using Modern hardware Install all of the above provided they are supported by Parallels, VMware or Virtual Box in emulation.
If you need advice an which model just ask :) How to video https://youtu.be/dj8Hyz-7arU?si=Z4hhSoIL9h2vNUKZ   with software you need https://winworldpc.com/product/nextstep/3x

#### I'll pitch you a few slow pitch softball meatballs to make short work of this  videos yay.

Are you able to explain to me why Apple paid 427M$ exactly for NeXT-do you have any concrete evidence also to support this; is there a reason they viewed NeXT as being worth $427M?

#######Here is why it was worth every penny:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhhFQ-3w5tE&t=2266s

#####
How about Steve Jobs explaining NeXTSTEP himself here https://youtu.be/rf5o5liZxnA?si=auboqeByOlVDl35B


 Why exactly was the OS so advanced compared to its competitors>? ###
Steve talks about his love for Microsoft lol https://youtu.be/bVu9-6rc3H8?si=HZnwRDtFjlrQj1VX

was the NeXTSTEP OS really so much better than the competitors?  ###
Steve Jobs Talking at MIT about exactly this https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?si=b0c143kVkqDkmUAU

Could it just partially have been that it was a Steve Jobs company and Jobs was a celebrity, also,
#### Best of Steve Jobs as a bonus to the merger https://youtu.be/PYlqJ5fk-Zg?si=DwLOU8IMkWX4RyzD

 How did Sun, the competitor to NeXT compare with NeXT with regards to their Operating System?; ###
Here is exactly this NeXT Developer verse Sun Developer developing an application https://youtu.be/UGhfB-NICzg?si=9CRPa5Uj4HPZuUcC
NeXT ported to Sun by the way collaberating with Sun, the operating system and the developer tools


what made NeXTstep so advanced exactly and was it better than Suns OS?  im just trying to understand why Apple decided to pay $427M exactly-because my research informed me that Bud Tribble VP of software at NeXT left the company ...Im confused why Tribble would leave NeXT for Sun if the OS was so good? Bud Tribble was one incredible guy but most of the software engineers went to Appe and they brought back NeXT hardware engineers like Jon Rubenstein

You need to know Avie Tevanian ....
https://youtu.be/vwCdKU9uYnE?si=p49chAea60i14Abl

thank you very much for your willingness to help! Zack

Anytime, the Videos above will help tremendously, happy to help ,  guess I would probably slam dunk an Honorary Masters or PHD anywhere on the subject lol but I'm way to old now at age 60 !

I was supposed to do mentoring  , teaching here at CSU when working towards a Masters but I guess CSU lost interest in following up and they had me doing Basic Programming to start ,

I wanted to walk in Cave man attire with a sledge hammer and smash the laptop to start and say look at these NeXTSTEP developer tools instead the work is done fast,

OMG oh well I tried, anyway I took an incomplete in the calss and realized I was old for this shit and seriously my work projects at the time were a high profile prior art patent litigation case for Apple via Kenyon and Kenyon at 1 Broadway NY, NY 
and reverse engineering and upgrading the NeXTSTEP Intel ABA systems that controlled dialing in the optics for the Hubble,
The Intel boxes still work by the way and were used recently for the James Webb Telescope.

 Best Regards Rob Blessin   
In case you are wondering here is basic lol  oooog
INPUT "Enter your name: "; Name$
INPUT "Enter your address: "; Address$
INPUT "Enter your phone number: "; PhoneNumber$

PRINT "Hello, "; Name$
PRINT "You live at "; Address$
PRINT "Your phone number is "; PhoneNumber$

I should have brought in Steve as back up, he would have scoffed at the crappy projection system and basic , how easy is it.... Steve shows how. Of course it would have been whatever carnation hybrid of the Apple/ NeXT Developer tools we're at the time.

In NeXTSTEP it was simply drag and drop onto the palet and link well here is Steve https://youtu.be/dl0CbKYUFTY?si=ma6NPtzH49hSANwY

One thing to consider is that Apple was also looking at purchasing BeOS, and I believe the number there was pretty high as well.

https://9to5mac.com/2011/11/11/gassee-thank-god-apple-chose-steve-jobss-next-over-my-beos/
https://www.howtogeek.com/698532/before-mac-os-x-what-was-nextstep-and-why-did-people-love-it/
https://www.quora.com/Which-OS-was-better-BeOS-or-NeXTSTEP#:~:text=Nextstep%20was%20mature%2C%20working%2C%20had,so%20for%20a%20long%20time.

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.

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.

Quote from: gtnicol on October 30, 2023, 03:02:51 PMthings 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.

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.

Quote from: gtnicol on October 30, 2023, 03:19:54 PMYes, 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit).

Quote from: gtnicol on October 30, 2023, 03:02:51 PMI 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.

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

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.

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

Quote from: Rob Blessin Black Hole on November 02, 2023, 03:08:38 PMAnd 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?

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.

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

QuoteIn 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.

Quote from: bkmoore on November 16, 2023, 12:51:03 AMFor 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.

6 years after purchase MacOS X made the super computer list in 2003 with the System X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(supercomputer)). 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.