Call it the return of the prodigal founder. Eleven years after John Sculley forced his departure from the company he founded, Steve Jobs rejoined Apple late Friday night when CEO Gil Amelio announced Apple would pay $400 million to buy Jobs's current company NeXT and its object-oriented operating system. At the festive announcement to reporters and Apple and NeXT employees - marked by waves of applause as well as the bawling and squealing of children - an elated Amelio said the decision to make the deal rested on the "complementary technology" of the two companies.
In veiled references to reports of Apple's talks to buy Be Inc., also run by a former Apple employee, Jobs said of NeXT's software, "It's not a pipedream," which prompted Amelio to add, "I can boil it down: We picked plan A rather than plan B."
Both CEOs referred repeatedly to Apple's past reputation as an innovator. The more prosaic Amelio predicting the merger "will launch a new round of innovation in the industry." Jobs reinforced that comment with references to his earlier tenure at Apple, when the company played a central role in the PC industry's development with the Apple II and the Macintosh.
Jobs and Amelio were only occasionally challenged by questioners during the event. Referring to his comments in the cover story of the February, 1996 issue of Wired magazine, where he declared that "the desktop computer is dead," Jobs joked, "It's always dangerous to give interviews," before admitting that there had been "dry years at Apple. What's happened is that we have the chance to create real innovation."
Amelio deflected direct questions about the integration of the two companies' software and the platforms it would run on. Instead, he promised to address them in his keynote address at the MacWorld conference starting 7 January, 1997 in San Francisco. Amelio did predict that a software product using both companies' technologies would ship in 1997.
While dancing away from his previously critical remarks about Apple, the mercurial Jobs couldn't resist the opportunity to lob a few new grenades elsewhere. In a clear swipe at Microsoft, Jobs decried the lack of innovation in operating systems in recent years.
"Others have found it easy to copy things, including the Macintosh, instead of inventing new things," Jobs said. A few minutes later, he noted that the integration of NeXT and Apple technology would provide "fuel for Apple, and fuel for its imitators."
