Jean-Louis Gassée glad Apple chose NeXTSTEP over his BeOS

Jean-Louis Gassée now writes a weekly column about Apple, but back in the day he was head of the Macintosh division under Apple CEO John Sculley. After his removal by Sculley in 1990 following nine years of service, Gassée started Be, Inc which developed BeOS, a multithreaded, multi-CPU operating system.

Speaking at a Churchill Club event honoring Steve Jobs, Gassée told the audience he was thankful that Apple did not buy BeOS because he "hated Apple's management." Instead of BeOS, Apple decided to acquire NeXT and use its OS as the basis of Mac OS X. Gassée called this decision "Jobs's acquisition of Apple" and paved the way for him to reclaim his company.

Besides Gassée's comments, the almost two-hour-long presentation is filled with memories of Steve Jobs from his former colleagues including Jim Atkinson, Deb Stapleton, Andy Hertzfeld, Regis McKenna and Larry Tesler. There's even an unexpected appearance by Chris Espinosa who was not on the panel, but in the audience as an attendee. The program is embedded below and well worth a listen.

[Via 9to5mac]