[zitterbewegung]

NeXT would have died and Mac OS would have been replaced by something . All macOS is is just a different window manager (to borrow a Unix term). Windows and Linux probably be more dominant . macOS is a better system than classic macOS when you realize you still have access to the NeXT internals and even many applications in utilities are really GUIs on top of command line utilities and you can roll back many features by running a command that edits a XML file that really is just a large dictionary to remove or modify features

[jorisw]

> and Mac OS would have been replaced by something

The facts are: The only other contender was BeOS, after Talligent flopped and Copland imploded.

But Louis-Gassée overplayed his hand.

Source: all of the (other) Steve Jobs books

[zitterbewegung]

To put this into more context Apple really needed a modern kernel that for some reason had been tried multiple times and failed . Microsoft succeeded with Windows NT. Practically the acquisition of any company was motivated to just move a GUI with macOS classic like design but modern features like memory protection. I never really understood why Apple had a hard time with this.

[hylaride]

Microsoft brought in an external OS designer (Dave Cutler) who had experience designing robust kernels that were actually used (most famously VMS). NT also was not required to be an instant switchover, and was "tested" first in niche (and often new) roles as a back-office server OS and NT/win2k corporate desktops for years before the general public was exposed to it via Windows XP. But Microsoft supported windows 3.11/9X/ME for more than a decade after windows NT was first released in 1993.

Apple had less resources, especially in the dark 1990s, to support such a move. It was made even worse by the fact that its leadership was probably not even aware of the difficulty in moving over, as well as the fact that 1990s Apple wasn't exactly a place people expected to "change the world?".

[jorisw]

The original Mac OS was hack on top of hack to make the GUI work on the 1984 hardware. It couldn’t be retroactively modernized the way they wanted.

[rbanffy]

> But Louis-Gassée overplayed his hand.

Hence becoming Jean-Louis Passé.

[flomo]

They did a serious technical evaluation of MS WinNT. They also obviously knew about Linux. Sources: same as yours.

[pjmlp]

To the point Apple had their own Linux distro for a little while, MkLinux.

[flomo]

Checked this on wikipedia, and MkLinux came out after they bought Next. ("The mach kernel company"). But obviously everyone in this space knew about Linux.

[pjmlp]

Yes, before they decided what "Mac OS the Copland replacement" would actually look like.

This was during the fight for survival phase.

[flomo]

Yup.

[rjrjrjrj]

> All macOS is is just a different window manager

This dramatically undersells what MacOS is and was. It was way beyond just a window manager.

From its inception in the 1980s it included a set of APIs that allowed developers to build sophisticated (and consistent) GUI applications with comparatively little effort. eg Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Photoshop, Excel, Word

By the end of the classic Mac era in the late 1990s that API set had grown to include a ton of stuff. QuickTime, ColorSync, TrueType, AppleShare, sophisticated printer support, multiple display support, etc

[pjmlp]

Like any proper desktop OS from the 16 bit days that got their inspiration out of Xerox.

It is only on UNIX land that is a mess, the only thing that people have managed to agree on are POSIX, and Khronos APIs.

[ghaff]

Yes, and although most users don't care (directly), having essentially a BSD command line available on Mac OS is pretty useful for a lot of us.

[ktallett]

A command line of any form is the biggest positive of Rhapsody and eventually Mac OS X

[ktallett]

Mac OS was a step in a different direction, however development was far less compelling for OSX than classic. Think C was far more enjoyable and created far smaller and less power hungry apps, which allowed for a greater range of possibilities on low powered chips.

Going to use alternatives like Haiku that can access many modern systems but on such low powered hardware shows what wastage we have.

[zitterbewegung]

I fail to see how this compares to iOS which runs on phones or even devices with 15 watts of tdp laptops.

[Projectiboga]

Do you realize Steve's other successful business used NeXT and then OpenStep? That little venture, Pixar, is where the cash to save Apple came from.