have browser, will travel

Dave Winer, on Scripting News: BTW, at the intro of Darwin I asked Avi Tevanian why they weren't building on Linux at Apple. I still don't understand why they aren't.

Where was Linux on Dec 20th, 1996, when NeXT was purchased by Apple? (nowhere) Where was Linux in Dec 1997 when Apple was working on Rhapsody? (still pretty much nowhere) Where was Linux in Dec 1998 when they were still working on Rhapsody? :-) (getting closer, still too early) Where was Linux in December 1999, 8 months after shipping MacOS X Server on the Mach/BSD core? Uh-oh, Linux showed up!

Well, it's too late. As much as I liked Linux back then, it wasn't on the map back when work began, and it's quality wasn't nearly good enough to base something like Rhapsody on. It's too easy to ask these kinds of questions now like they're obvious, and Apple's stupid... but it's not fair to them. It hardly matters anyway, most of the Linux stuff will easily port over to MacOS X. And Linux isn't "all that and a bag of chips" anyway.

PS to Dave: I love mainResponder's new HTML editor! Thanks!

Written on February 16, 2000