Its kind of crazy, I have no idea why anybody would think NeXT was worth $400 million. Who except Apple was gone buy them?
A user focused OS that is mostly costume is more of a liability then anything else. Keeping that maintained and up to date with technological progress is a huge effort.
And all the big companies already had their own. The up and coming companies all didn't need user first OSs.
It’s about how much money did it take for them to want to sell instead of continue as an independent business. In 1996 WebObjects was starting to get traction. After a decade it seemed like there was perhaps a viable future for the company.
There is a difference between a 'viable future' and 400 million $.
The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. Specially companies with their own programming, language, compilers and so on.
First a devastating economic crisis and then the rise of open source.
So maybe they could have survived, but likely nowhere close to that value.
> The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make.
You're using 20/20 hindsight instead of putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1996. The term "open source" was not even in wide use in 1996.
But actually even with hindsight your analysis is flawed. 1996 is right at the start of the .com bubble. A company whose software (WebOjects) was being used to power real world .coms (it was even being used by large companies like UPS and Dell) almost certainly would have risen tremendously in value (even as a private company). Now, if they would have been acquired before the 2000 crash is another discussion.
No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role.
They valued the OS and Jobs. The reality is Apple had spent 10 years trying to make an OS and failed. Next was only really had one potential buyers and they had been losing value and losing money for a long time. So their value shouldn't have been so high.
That said, one could make the argument in the other direction, Apple needed an OS. BeOS was much, much cheaper but also less complete. Arguable just in terms of OS still the better value. Switching to something Solaris is what they arguable what they could have done instead for far less money.
In the end they had to put huge amount of work in anyway, so its not even really clear what Next really added that they couldn't have done based on Be, Copland or Solaris.
And in terms of WebObjects, the problem with the whole 'WebObjects' is gone drive value is that literally everybody was trying to sell some something like that. Every company and many knew ones were getting into that game and few of them were successful. And even those that were successful aren't worth 400 million $.
A company starting to use some Web framework stuff in 1996 doesn't necessarily stick to it forever. In fact historically many didn't.
Let's not forget that the World Wide Web, as it was known at the time, was developed on NeXT machines. For the record, I was on my 12th year of my career in 1996 - so I know this time well. Like you say, 'WebObjects' was called 'programmer's heroin' at the time. GUI development on NeXT was lightyears ahead of Windows and OS/2. Oh, I hope you hadn't forgotten about OS/2!
Also, I think everyone is forgetting about a certain client NeXT had that then became Apple's client and gave Apple considerable cachet, especially in the late 90's. Do you remember the entertainment company Steve Jobs started when he started NeXT and who famously used NeXT computers in making their blockbuster animated films? A company so big that Disney bought them in 2006? Of course I'm talking about Pixar. Don't forget Apple was also buying Pixar's business and the public perception that went with that.
There's a reason Apple went from a stumbling, bumbling company that was all but forgotten to being one of the most valuable companies in the world and one of the most recognized brands in the world. They bought NeXT.
In case you thought the reason was because Steve Jobs came back, consider that Jobs has been out of the picture at Apple for 14 years now. Hindsight informs us it was their acquisition of NeXT that made all the difference. Well, that and Apple's involvement in creating ARM, but that's a tale for another day!
> Let's not forget that the World Wide Web, as it was known at the time, was developed on NeXT machines.
Pretty irrelevant. The same could have been done on any Unix Workstation from the time period. NeXT machines weren't magic.
> Like you say, 'WebObjects' was called 'programmer's heroin' at the time.
That's a waste overestimation.
> I hope you hadn't forgotten about OS/2
Not sure how that's relevant. Just another example of an OS that by itself wasn't all that valuable. In fact it was a money loser.
> Also, I think everyone is forgetting
Non of the things you say are relevant to the discussion. NeXT wasn't making hardware anymore and Pixar also used other Unix workstations as well.
> Hindsight informs us it was their acquisition of NeXT that made all the difference.
Yes 'hinsight'. What we are talking about is if NeXT was worth 400 million $ at the time.
To say 'the bought Next and then 20 years later they are super valuable' isn't an argument about if NeXT was worth 400 million $ back then.
They were lucky that Jobs despite not being that successful for the last 20 years had the right combination of ideas and luck to save Apple. This was very unlikely to happen based on Jobs record.
Were you even working in technology in the early 90's? Your comments are off. Also, what you dismiss as "irrelevant" are things businesses pay attention to, which is relevant to this discussion. Your final remark "They were lucky that Jobs despite not being that successful for the last 20 years had the right combination of ideas and luck to save Apple" is laughably ignorant, and as such, I'm not going to put much stock in anything else you've said.
> Were you even working in technology in the early 90's?
No as a young child I didn't work in tech. Its a matter of historical record for me. Your feelings from the time aren't relevant. Did you back in the early 90s have detailed financial insight into these matters that are better then what we have now, that books were written on these topics?
Did you work at NeXT?
> Also, what you dismiss as "irrelevant" are things businesses pay attention to, which is relevant to this discussion.
Ok. So please explain it to me, because just saying 'X happened' isn't an argument. Yes, the web was created on NeXT machine. NeXT wasn't selling many more machines because of that, apparently nobody cared. They closed their hardware operation completely.
In the years after, NeXT didn't become massively successful as a software company either. They lost more money in that time period. So apparently people didn't buy their software because of it.
So please explain, why the valuation in 1996 should be massively impacted by what Tim did years earlier. By that time browsers existed on other platforms. Nothing about NeXT specifically magically created the Web.
I get that its culturally significant, but in valuation terms I really don't see it. That's why I said 'irrelevant'. Please show me how the first broswer being written on NeXT machine made them a valuable company. Tim using a NeXT machine impacts the valuation in 1996 how exactly?
> Your final remark "They were lucky that Jobs despite not being that successful for the last 20 years had the right combination of ideas and luck to save Apple" is laughably ignorant, and as such, I'm not going to put much stock in anything else you've said.
Again, you simply make an assertion without an argument. What is your argument.
Its unquestionable that luck is involved when becoming the largest cooperating the world. Are you denying that?
Are you denying that Apple in 1996 was in a lot of trouble and it wasn't at all clear that they would continue to be a important company.
Are you denying that what really changed Apple was not the NeXT base operating system, but rather Jobs changing company strategy? In fact, the most important part making Apple work, happened before OSX was even released.
Are you really gone pretend that the NeXT operating system is what turned Apple into one of the largest companies in the world?
They weren't my feelings - they were anecdotes. Anecdotes from my experience and the experience of others who were actually there and highly engaged in the developer community at the time.
Go peddle your garbage somewhere else. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Its actually hilarious that your argument is 'its not my feelings' they are my 'anecdotes' as if that was better.
Have you actually read books about this time period? Where they actually look at these companies, and how much money they make? What the problems were that they had? Did you go back and read about the larger trends that were happening?
Because from everything you are arguing you clearly haven't. You have some memories of this time and you think all that need to understand the world.
And again, you haven't made a single argument about what that I actually said was FACTUALLY wrong. If I got any facts wrong, please tell me what I got wrong.
I even pointed out that NeXT was culturally important and how that doesn't magically result in a fantastic growth company. It seems you can't see beyond that cultural impact.
You don't appear to understand how companies are valued. And, you haven't stated what NeXT should have been worth and provided the evidence to back up your claim. You've only stated Apple paid too much. History shows they didn't. You claim that's 20/20 hindsight - but you bring nothing to the table other than an assertion that they paid too much.
Meanwhile, I don't need to read books - I was there. You have someone who was an eyewitness account at the time, deeply involved in software development and the developer community at a national level - and you cast it away as "feelings."
> No. That's what you are doing. Apple didn't buy Next for 400 million $ to get their hands on 'WebObjects'. In fact that played very little role.
I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction.
My point was that Apple paid to much, and I do stand by that.
Yes during the biggest bubble in computing history they might have been able to IPO and that might have given them enough money to survive. Sure, great, but that doesn't mean there is inherent long term value in a web framework that made the company worth almost 900 million $ in today's money.
Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. And OpenStep on PC hardware was slow, crashy, unpolished, and generally much less pleasant to use than the fastest Macs at the time. Apple bought it because it had a fully working graphics architecture (BeOS couldn’t even print!), and vastly overpaid for it because Gil Amelio was an idiot.
Irony: the graphics architecture had to be fully rewritten from scratch for Mac OS X because Adobe didn’t want to support Display PostScript anymore. Have I mentioned that Gil Amelio was an idiot?
Do you remember how unstable the original Mac OS was? I remember working with a guy doing web development work on his circa-1996 PowerPC Mac. It would crash at least daily, resulting in a reboot. Perhaps it was Netscape's fault.
> Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system.
I never said Apple bought NeXT for WebObjects. I said that NeXT had value outside of the deal in the marketplace because WebOjects was starting to get traction.
It most certainly wouldn’t. Would be a very tight window, and it’d be going against the likes of BEA and soon to be killed by open source solutions. The best bet was to vertically integrate with a large hardware manufacturer that’d bundle their OS. WebObjects was, however, doomed anyway.
And this, kids, is why everything now is a subclass of NSObject.
