Apple, NeXT, Be and Steve Jobs

It is all part of Apple's rich history, how when the chips were down Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded and help lead them from the abyss and towards where they are now: one of the biggest companies in the world. However this fascinating blog post details how that almost didn't happen.

In the mid-1990s Apple was struggling. MacOS was becoming out of date and attempts to create a new more modern version were failing hard. Apple looked to buy in an existing operating system to form the basis of the MacOS replacement. In the end they chose NeXT Computer (another company founded by Steve Jobs) and Next's operating system became the basis of Mac OSX. It nearly wasn't this way though, BeOS was also a contender and it is interesting to consider how (Apple) history and maybe the history of the world would have been different if BeOS had been the chosen system.

NeXT Cube