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One thing that often gets overlooked is how much failure and constraint shape better leadership. It seems like the NeXT years gave Jobs the space to rethink product focus in a way that likely wouldn’t have happened if Apple had kept succeeding uninterrupted.

ktallett•20m ago

They are hardly forgotten considering the OS was a key influence of Mac OS X and you can see clear features of it today. It was hugely important in the mid 90's graphics and 3d animation era too. Such a fabulous piece of design, both software and hardware. I would much have prefered a world where Next and Mac OS never combined and we had both, as the Mac O7-9 were also a real treat to use.

zitterbewegung•15m ago

NeXT would have died and Mac OS would have been replaced by something .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

dmazin•7m ago

If you want more on this, I recommend Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing by Stross. I’m not sure, but it might be the only extensive book about Next other than this new one.

Though it’s essentially a long hit piece. The author really had it out for Jobs.

In fact it’s a completely uncharitable book now that I think about it. Hopefully this new book will be a lot less biased.

cmiles8•6m ago

In many ways modern Apple is largely Next. The Apple that was dying when he returned largely faded away. Folks forget that Apple was literally days away from simply going bust. One of the most amazing comeback stories in the history of business.