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by rbanffy 812 days ago
And, yet, every Mac these days runs a direct descendant of NeXT's OS.
3 comments

Such a shame we didn't get BeOS but Jobs and Gassee did NOT get along.
Jobs wasn't in charge at that point; Gassee wanted too much money for too little OS. BeOS was missing a lot of features.

If BeOS had the ability to output graphics to printers at the time, we'd be in a very different world today.

Indeed, first of all Apple might not be around any longer, without the reverse acquisition played by Jobs, who knows how well BeOS inspired Mac OS would turn out.

There would be no iPod taking Apple out of red zone.

There wouldn't be FOSS devs flocking into Apple hardware as replacement to sponsor Linux OEMs instead.

And it would be yet another C++ focused desktop operating system, assuming Apple would survive the transition in this alternative reality.

Due to a serious of steps where Copland failed to deliver, Gasse wanting too much money, NeXT being acquired into what turned out to be a reverse acquisition.
And every iOS device!
And every HomePod, Apple Watch, iPad and Apple Vision Pro. Plus the later Apple TVs. I think even some of their newer displays have the OS in there too.