> The 100x more value is only in hindsight, no?
Well, honestly, in hindsight, let me correct to 10000x! But seriously, this is a discussion about a historical event, and that is what my comment expressed.
> If this had been known by Apple beforehand, then wouldn't Be have been worth $0, and the sale price irrelevant?
I don't really understand this comment. I mean, Be actually ended up being worth about 11 million as a result (the Palm acquisition). Apple, meaning Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock and the other business and technical people who met with us at Be, and our counterparts at NeXT, had to to an analysis and predict the future as to which technology would replace the current Macintosh OS and eliminate the failing Taligent, Pink and whatever else efforts were going on. And even then it wasn't easy; there was infighting between the Apple teams and the NeXT teams that didn't get resolved until Steve came out of limbo during the 18 months he was acting as a advisor to Gil Amelio.
What isn't commonly discussed, is there was an option for both acquisitions to happen, but a combination of JLG, the Be board and shareholders and Steve made that not happen. Instead, Be went into making internet appliances, audio hardware and the company and its stock price slid into decline. Be did get one additional windfall of 23 million in 2003 which was the result of lawsuit settlement, so I guess the overall company value ended up being 34 million.
Most of us would have preferred to work with the NeXT people at Apple and convert our Be shares into Apple shares, instead of seeing the stock price fall and the code become irrelevant.
Well, honestly, in hindsight, let me correct to 10000x! But seriously, this is a discussion about a historical event, and that is what my comment expressed.
> If this had been known by Apple beforehand, then wouldn't Be have been worth $0, and the sale price irrelevant?
I don't really understand this comment. I mean, Be actually ended up being worth about 11 million as a result (the Palm acquisition). Apple, meaning Gil Amelio, Ellen Hancock and the other business and technical people who met with us at Be, and our counterparts at NeXT, had to to an analysis and predict the future as to which technology would replace the current Macintosh OS and eliminate the failing Taligent, Pink and whatever else efforts were going on. And even then it wasn't easy; there was infighting between the Apple teams and the NeXT teams that didn't get resolved until Steve came out of limbo during the 18 months he was acting as a advisor to Gil Amelio.
What isn't commonly discussed, is there was an option for both acquisitions to happen, but a combination of JLG, the Be board and shareholders and Steve made that not happen. Instead, Be went into making internet appliances, audio hardware and the company and its stock price slid into decline. Be did get one additional windfall of 23 million in 2003 which was the result of lawsuit settlement, so I guess the overall company value ended up being 34 million.
Most of us would have preferred to work with the NeXT people at Apple and convert our Be shares into Apple shares, instead of seeing the stock price fall and the code become irrelevant.