this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Apple
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Look at Apple’s software history.
The Mac came out in 1984 with a beta-level OS that was a re-packaging of LisaOS. It took them two years to get things stabilized,, but then they had a decent OS that conformed to a set of interface guidelines and enforced that on the app ecosystem.
Within a year, they knew they needed to migrate to a better core OS model though. So they bought a Unix license and hired a third party to develop A/UX. Meanwhile, they worked in parallel to build out the existing OS architecture to handle more capable hardware and some improved design principles.
By 1994, they knew A/UX was unmaintainable and they needed to start from scratch, so projects Copland and Gershwin were born, along with a completely new hardware strategy that would have the entire industry working off a single core platform. That ended up a complete disaster on both the hardware and software fronts.
In fact, things were bad enough on the software side back in 1990 that Jean Louis Gassé left Apple with some other design talent and started Be, and by 1996 Apple needed bail out money from Microsoft to stay solvent.
Apple used some of that money in 1997 to buy NeXT (and bring back Steve) after considering buying Be. This brought about Project Rhapsody which finally replaced A/UX with a proper POSIX compliant, maintainable, multitasking OS based on NeXTStep and BSD with the core internals of Mac OS sitting on top.
But it took until 2001 for them to actually deliver a functional product, and until 2002 for it to be fully stabilized. This, despite the fact that they actually charged for each OS version released.
From 2002 to 2011 Apple worked at refining the OS.
And then in 2011 they switched to a service model, and QA and functionality took a back seat to sales and marketing. They’ve been losing more of the plot ever since.