At one time, tech pundits wondered what company should buy Apple, and it’s true that, in the 1990s before Steve Jobs returned, that was not beyond the realm of possibility. In early 1996, Apple evidently negotiated with Sun Microsystems — do you remember them? — to sell itself. This came in the wake of the […]

In Microsoft’s vision of an ideal world, Windows would have fully supplanted the original Mac OS 20 years ago. For a while in the mid-1990s, it appeared that Apple might allow that to happen by default. But when Apple’s executives made a final, desperate move — to acquire Steve Jobs’ NeXT in late 1996 — the future […]

Some time before the acquisition sayf NeXT returned Steve Jobs to Apple in 1996, he was asked to comment on the state of the company. He mentioned something about milking the Mac for all its worth until it was time to move on the next great thing. I can’t cite the article so many years later, but […]

The launch of Mac OS X as a Public Beta in the fall of 2000 signified a sea change for Mac users. Coming four years after the purchase of NeXT, it represented the vindication of that deal, which also meant the return of Steve Jobs to Apple. Here it was, the long-delayed industrial strength replacement for the […]