Part 9: The man who made the decision to buy NeXT was Gil Amelio, CEO of Apple at the time and former CEO of National Semiconductor. He wrote a book about how he saved Apple. He agreed to speak at a bookstore in San Jose that I owned.
He only took one question at the end. He called on John Markoff, the famous New York Times tech journalist. “Gil,” John asked, “why did you end up buying NeXT instead of Be?”
Be OS, like NeXTstep, was very respected and the man who ran Be was Jean-Louis Gassée, former high-profile Apple exec. Steve told Walter Isaacson that Gassée was "one of the few people who I'd say is truly horrible. He knifed me in the back."
Here’s how I’ve remembered Gil’s answer over the years: “Great question, we had big internal debates about that. A lot of people at Apple were afraid of Steve and Jean-Louis had many supporters. Be OS was very respected. In the end it came down to NeXT already supporting Intel and that was important to us.”
I remember thinking, oh my God. Steve, you owe me.