[bluejekyll]

As I recall, BeOS was asking on the order of $80 million, NeXT was acquired for $400 million.

I found this reference, so 80 valuation, Be wanted upwards of 200, “In 1996, Apple Computer decided to abandon Copland, the project to rewrite and modernize the Macintosh operating system. BeOS had many of the features Apple sought, and around Christmas time they offered to buy Be for $120 million, later raising their bid to $200 million. However, despite estimates of Be's total worth at approximately $80 million,[citation needed] Gassée held out for $275 million, and Apple balked. In a surprise move, Apple went on to purchase NeXT, the company their former co-founder Steve Jobs had earlier left Apple to found, for $429 million, with the high price justified by Apple getting Jobs and his NeXT engineers in tow. NeXTSTEP was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e

[KerrAvon]

I don’t remember the exact number, but BeOS was too incomplete at the time to spend what they were asking, and maybe to purchase at all. There was no way to print documents, which still mattered a lot for a desktop OS in 1996. It needed a lot of work.

Now, in retrospect, Apple had time; Mac OS X wasn’t ready for the mainstream until 2003-2004.

[bombcar]

To be fair, printing in 1995-6 was a huge can of worms and hell on earth.

[WoodenChair]

The high price was also justified by the success of WebObjects at the time, which was seen as a potential fuel for an IPO for NeXT, even though WebObjects was not what Apple was buying it for. This Computer History Museum article goes into that angle in detail: https://computerhistory.org/blog/next-steve-jobs-dot-com-ipo...

[stergios]

“BeOS did not have printing” was the insult thrown around at the time.