A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems - Mac OS X Internals

Mac OS X Internals (www.osxbook.com) 91
Be would eventually fail as a company—its technological assets were acquired
by Palm, Inc. in 2001.
1.6.8. Plan A
Unlike Be, NeXT’s operating systems had at least been proven in the market, de-
spite NeXT not having any resounding successes. In particular, OPENSTEP had
been well received in the enterprise market. Moreover, Steve Jobs pitched NeXT’s
technology strongly to Apple, asserting that OPENSTEP was many years ahead of
the market. The deal with NeXT did go through: Apple acquired NeXT in February
1997 for over $400 million. Amelio later quipped, "We choose plan A instead of
Plan Be."
NeXT’s acquisition would prove pivotal to Apple, as NeXT’s operating system
technology would be the basis for what would become Mac OS X. Let us now look
at the background of NeXT’s systems.
1.7. THE NEXT CHAPTER
All of Steve Jobs’ operational responsibilities at Apple were “taken away” on May
31, 1985. Around this time, Jobs had come up with an idea for a startup for which
he pulled in five other Apple employees. The idea was to create the perfect research
computer for universities, colleges, and research labs. Jobs had even attempted to
seek the opinion of Nobel laureate biochemist Paul Berg on using such a computer
for simulations. Although interested in investing in Jobs’ startup, Apple sued Jobs
upon finding out about the Apple employees joining him. After some mutual
agreements, Apple dropped the suit the year after. The startup was NeXT Computer,
Inc.