Did you know that before Apple bought NeXt in 1997, it almost acquired a different company called Be Inc.? Imagine what would could have happened.
Be Inc. was founded by Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple COO, and Steve Sakoman, former Apple director of hardware engineering. Apple wanted the BoOS, the operating system that was considered, at the time, the world’s “hottest” OS. It was fast, efficient, and could run several videos at once, which was pretty crazy at the time. According to a report by WIRED, BeOS gathered quite the following, but when Apple was looking, the owners wanted more for the company than Apple thought it was worth, so Apple bought NeXt, used it to develop OS X, and passed on Be.
If you’re wondering where Be is these days, it was sold to Palm where BeOS made the basis of PalmOS 6, and was passed on to Access which bought Palm Source in 2005.
