Copland/Gershwin vs. NeXT

Etcetera writes "David K. Every (of MacKiDo fame) has written an interesting article at iGeek about Copland vs. NeXT and the decisions that Apple made back in '95-96. Although most agree that bringing Steve Jobs back was a Good Thing, a lot of cool Apple-invented technologies got left by the wayside without a fair shot at proving themselves once NeXT came in. Was it always the right call? Functions as a cautionary tale about management vs. engineering as well."

Comments

OpenDoc

[georgewad]

I worked with a Software Engineer who worked on OpenDoc, which was about the only good thing aside from QuickTime that Apple had put out in that era. Some of you might remember the demo of an ActiveX control running inside an OpenDoc container. When NeXT took over, they hacked OpenDoc to run within NeXT's ojbect model. The Steve (himself) just said no, NeXT's object model is better. That's when my friend left Apple. Can't say that I blame him. OpenDoc had a lot going for it.

it was a sad day when copeland died

[talisia]

As I remember the events of the summer of 1997, Apple would have fallen apart if Steve Jobs had not come on board. At the time, people were leaving Apple left and right. Scott McNealy suggested that Apple should abandon MacOS and start selling java based network computers. The pundits were suggesting that Apple should abandon all things Mac and sell PC clones. I like OS X. I use it every day, but I have to wonder if Apple hadn't abandoned Copeland, if today I would be using an operating system more in the spirit of the original Macintosh. OS X feels like Unix with a bunch of pancake makeup on top. Instead of being simple like pre-X MacOS or BeOS, it hides its complexity from most of its users. For all the strength that OS X brings to the Mac platform, it brings along a fair amount of baggage too. It just doesn't feel quite right. There is something disharmonious about it. I'm having a bit of trouble explaining it, but I wonder if an OS built from the ground up for the Mac wouldn't have been better,

Too much conjecture, speculation

[Steve Cowan]

A lot of the linked essay is pure opinion on the part of the writer. It is decently written, and raises some good points however.

Most frustrating part:

In truth, at the time of the buyout, Apple was closer to delivering something usable than NeXT was, but Apple management was too stupid to realize it.

Apparently the author is too stupid to realize Apple was sinking. Fast. It took a major acquisition to prove to the board and shareholders that positive steps were being taken towards updating what was then a very unstable, inefficient Mac OS.

As a Mac user since the early 1990's, I can honestly say that the 2nd-generation Power Macs (the PCI ones like the 7200/7500/8500), in the System 7.5.2 - to 8.0 era, were horrendously crashy and pricey. (I still used them because the Windows UI pissed me off, but I was beginning to envy my Wintel friends every time my 7200/75 locked up)

OS 9, the iMac, the legacy-free towers were all great products which had little to do with the NeXT team. While it's likely true that Apple's own engineers bailed themselves out of the mess they had gotten into under Sculley's leadership, it was too little too late in the eyes of shareholders and consumers.

In short: if they couldn't demonstrate that they were going to leapfrog Windows in terms of stability, Apple was dead in the water. Apple's own engineers likely had lots of credibility with Apple management, but that was not enough. Even if Copland was only 6 months from completion, Apple was in grave danger, and was wise to purchase a proven technology. It may be unfortunate that business success is a necessary evil in the development of software, but I wouldn't go calling Apple's management stupid. They bit down and did what had to be done.

Re:Is the OpenDoc spec available?

[KurtP]

Well, I did a lot of the OpenDoc design work, and yes we did file some patents. They were mostly about UI issues, particularly how the composition & layout model and event handling was done.

The spec mentioned above was the official stuff. Looking back from a vantage of ten years or so, there are a lot of things I would change, but the basic design is still sound.

Actually, my current favorite in the space of such things is KParts, which does a lot of the same sorts of things OpenDoc was meant to do.

It wasn't just the software

[automandc]

I worked for Apple in the mid-nineties, when the PPC was new. I watched the entire (almost) death-spiral with particular interest.

I think the article is good, but it is only half the story. Apple is, and always has been, a hardware company. The thing that really screwed Apple during the Gil Amelio years was a total lack of hardware engineering. Apple tried to become a "beige box" company, and tried to have a solution for every problem. It just wouldn't work.

When Steve Jobs came back to the company, there was something like 85 SKUs for hardware systems. For those who aren't familar with marketing/retail, that's a lot. It wasn't like "You can have a 7200 with X Y or Z memory", it was "You can have a 7200 with 16MB, or you can have a 7200 with 32MB or you can have a 7200 with 64MB" and the vendor would have to stock all three. Impossible.

Plus, none of the hardware was exciting. People just plain didn't want to own it. It was like, sure, I can get a beige box that runs 7.5.2, crashes all the time, and has only Word 6 (god, what an abomination), or I can spend half as much, build my own Wintel, and get the newest Office.

The main thing the reintroduction of Steve Jobs did for Apple was put a single vision back in charge of both hardware and software. Even if Copland was further along than NeXT, it was hopelessly mired in a hardware development cycle that was just flawed. One of the main problems Copland faced was not only the need for backward compatibility of software, but the need to support 85 different configurations of non-industry-standard hardware. Impossible. Anyone remember the "Enablers"? God, what a mess.

One of Job's most controversial moves, and perhaps his smartest, was to draw a hard line in the sand at the G3, a processor that was barely even shipping when he announced the spec. Thus, he promised hardware compatibility only back to the currently brand-spanking new machines, guaranteeing that, at the end of a 3-5 year development cycle, the OS would only have to support hardware 3-5 years old. Man, did people scream and moan ("But I just bought an 8600/120!"), but now Apple is back where it needs to be. One of the biggest complaints over Win2K was its trouble with older hardware. MS was able to make Win2K fly by (1) not pitching it to home users, who were more likely to have funky sound cards, and (2) providing a lot of expensive support to hardware manufacturers to write compatible drivers in time for XP.

One pre-Jobs hardware move that Apple took that is now reaping benefits was to eschew its own good but expensive standards for adequate but cheap industry standard. Internal SCSI 4X CD Roms gave way to ATAPI; NuBUS gave way to PCI; etc. This made it even easier for the OS developers to support hardware.

Anyway, in order to understand the whole Apple picture, you have to consider the wretched state the hardware side was in in 1996, and realize that, even if no one bought the cube, they have come a really long way - and that is what made OSX possible.