'Steve Jobs In Exile' Remembers the Birth of the Web and 'Making Unix Taste Sweet' (arstechnica.com)
(Sunday June 07, 2026 @03:34AM (EditorDavid)
from the think-different dept.)
- Reference: 0183627020
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/06/07/0533251/steve-jobs-in-exile-remembers-the-birth-of-the-web-and-making-unix-taste-sweet
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2026/06/steve-jobs-in-exile-is-a-fine-profile-of-jobs-years-at-next/
Ars Technica shares some anecdotes from [1] Steve Jobs in Exile , a new book released last month:
> [Author Geoffrey] Cain reminds us, in stunning detail, that Jobs' "exile" era at NeXT was not only critical to his evolution as a man and an entrepreneur, but that it mattered for the rest of us, too. The technological innovations that came out of NeXT — notably, the NeXTSTEP OS — [2]continue to live on in what we now call both macOS and iOS. As Cain puts it, "NeXTSTEP was Steve's attempt to make Unix taste sweet...."
>
> [W]hile many tech nerds know that Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server on a NeXT machine while working in Switzerland in 1990, few know that NeXT employees were wary of bringing the news to Jobs. Why? They feared his wrath "and that he would dismiss [the web] as 'shit.'" (In another timeline, NeXT might itself have capitalized on this world-changing innovation....)
>
> Perhaps one of the wildest anecdotes that Cain uncovered was how one voicemail changed computer history forever. In 1996, when Apple was solidly in its mediocre Performa era — and considering buying BeOS as the basis for its new operating system — a mid-level NeXT product manager asked aloud, "Why don't we just frickin' call Apple?" (NeXT was also struggling during this period.) And so someone did. As Cain writes:
>
> Garrett left the group of managers, walked back to his office, and took a risk. He picked up his designer phone and called the head of software at Apple. He left what he described as "one of my more inspired sales pitches" on the man's voicemail, explaining why Apple should be looking at NeXT instead of Be... In any other universe, Garrett's call might have gotten him fired. But in this timeline, it worked out. And thanks to him, Steve [Jobs] was about to enter Apple's airspace once again.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [3]destinyland for sharing the article.
[1] https://amzn.to/4oaqnD4
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-lives-on-in-os-x/
[3] https://slashdot.org/~destinyland
> [Author Geoffrey] Cain reminds us, in stunning detail, that Jobs' "exile" era at NeXT was not only critical to his evolution as a man and an entrepreneur, but that it mattered for the rest of us, too. The technological innovations that came out of NeXT — notably, the NeXTSTEP OS — [2]continue to live on in what we now call both macOS and iOS. As Cain puts it, "NeXTSTEP was Steve's attempt to make Unix taste sweet...."
>
> [W]hile many tech nerds know that Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server on a NeXT machine while working in Switzerland in 1990, few know that NeXT employees were wary of bringing the news to Jobs. Why? They feared his wrath "and that he would dismiss [the web] as 'shit.'" (In another timeline, NeXT might itself have capitalized on this world-changing innovation....)
>
> Perhaps one of the wildest anecdotes that Cain uncovered was how one voicemail changed computer history forever. In 1996, when Apple was solidly in its mediocre Performa era — and considering buying BeOS as the basis for its new operating system — a mid-level NeXT product manager asked aloud, "Why don't we just frickin' call Apple?" (NeXT was also struggling during this period.) And so someone did. As Cain writes:
>
> Garrett left the group of managers, walked back to his office, and took a risk. He picked up his designer phone and called the head of software at Apple. He left what he described as "one of my more inspired sales pitches" on the man's voicemail, explaining why Apple should be looking at NeXT instead of Be... In any other universe, Garrett's call might have gotten him fired. But in this timeline, it worked out. And thanks to him, Steve [Jobs] was about to enter Apple's airspace once again.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [3]destinyland for sharing the article.
[1] https://amzn.to/4oaqnD4
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-lives-on-in-os-x/
[3] https://slashdot.org/~destinyland
BeOS was actually pretty decent (Score:2)
by jd ( 1658 )
Steve Jobs had too much ego to consider anything outside of the stuff he did (hence the panic over the web) but Apple learning from BeOS (and possibly Plan9 as well) would probably not have hurt.
Erm no (Score:2)
NeXTSTEP was Jobs attempt to sell $10k workstations to education.
And yes, money talks. Nothing to do with sales pitches or technical prowess of any kind. Let's not forget ObjC and the sheer amount of stress and madness it caused. BeBOX was waaay ahead of NeXTCUBE (in fact it was up there with alphas of the same era) and BeOS was waaay ahead of NeXTSTEP.
Re: Erm no (Score:2)
Ugh why the ObjC hate. As someone who has had to use about a dozen languages for work and always thought C++ is a demented way to expand C to to OO (although I am fine with a subset if C++), I found ObjC a delight to use. Yes, the syntax may seem a bit silly/verbose and compiler people tend to dislike it, but many developers love it and I don't remember anyone in my ObjC teams being "stressed" about it. I am old school of course, so I am very comfortable with C and find it being a clean C superset an advant