Hah... I remember I went to a tradeshow - I think it was the CeBit and can't remember the year, must've been before '93.<p>NeXT had a booth there and I remember asking the folks if it ran on Intel processors.<p>I distinctly the remember all the folks there laughing at me as if that was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard and asking me to move right along.<p>Edit: Spelling.
According to the article, Apple's CEO said they chose NeXT over Be because "In the end it came down to NeXT already supporting Intel and that was important to us".<p>Why was running on Intel important to Apple? Apple didn't use Intel at that time (Dec 1996), and didn't decide to use Intel until much later (announced 2005)? Whereas BeOS already did run on the CPU platform that Apple did use at that time?
Great story. All too often - and particularly when it comes to Apple - there is a mythology that a company grows based solely on the decisions and leadership of one individual. The reality is that the vast majority of critical decisions are rooted in stories like this. Apple, Dell, MS, Sun, Oracle, etc.
The funny thing is I remember BeOS running on x86. Wikipedia says the first release containing that was 1998, which puts it a year or two after the NeXT acquisition. I wonder if these two facts have something to do with each other.
I can't imagine "doing the right thing" would not end up with immediate termination in the current "top" corporations running internal surveillance 24/7... Will there be ever a good time for accidental inventions again?
If anyone else doesn't recognize the author, here's a CV:<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=229844" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp...</a>
I've read a few of these articles from Cake now and I like how it looks but I find using CTRL+F doesn't work correctly. On this article it doesn't seem to pick up anything past the second post unless you go to that post, click on it, and then type in your search.
So now we've seen a few Steve Jobs stores like this, including the one from John Carmack. A recurring theme is that Steve is such a bonehead that his underlings have to do things to "manage him." Whether that be doing things behind his back, withholding information from him, controlling who he meets and talks to. You also read about people working insane hours to complete things which probably didn't merit it, just to please steve's whims.<p>Since there's a cult-of-personality around the guy, I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that.<p>Not saying Steve Jobs didn't do great things. But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them.
Huh.. is that title linkbait? Other than the photo of Andy Grove, I don't see anything about a call with Andy? (Or I'm really slow today)<p>(edit: oh I <i>am</i> slow today. Its told in story form, the meeting with Andy Grove is several posts down on the page).