Way back in 1988 Compaq, Dell, and IBM approached Steve Jobs and asked him if they could license his object oriented NeXTSTEP operating system. NeXT was a company that Steve Jobs personally started. They did not see a future in DOS and did not like the Microsoft operating system. Gates reached an agreement with IBM and did get some money to work on and sell the OS. Bill Gates personally got irate at this news and told everyone he could at IBM and other places that the NeXT OS was bad and was not compatible with anything. After IBM hired a new chief of strategy the relationship with Jobs cooled down. IBM eventually turned to the development of OS2 with Microsoft and Steve Jobs folded neXT into Apple after it failed. What long ago stared out as NeXTSTEP has since transformed into Mac OS X.
It is very interesting how if one man really bought into NeXT and not OS2 we could have a completely different computer landscape. Just think of a world where Mac OS is on almost everyone's personal computer and Windows is just a small speck on the windshield. Imagine the world for the computer technician. That might have been a spooky place for him indeed.
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