If you were to build a system with no requirement for backward compatibility with cocoa or macOS, or even knowledge from such a thing existing, we have still moved forward three decades from not just NeXT, but the computing industry that NeXT was built to serve.
I'd assume their requirements would be drastically different, and the system they created would be drastically different as a result. The requirements aren't even easy to hypothesize, since iOS would never have existed.
Yes, I would imagine so. I don't think the result would look exactly like what it does now since needs have changed, but I can imagine that they could do it.
This type of story about management getting rid of the old guard is so common and typical, it remains one of the most frustrating aspects of this industry.
In the “enterprise scene”, this sort of purge strategy is likely linked to a big percentage of money wasted and sometimes total failure.
Why do managers keep making this mistake? “Legacy” is only a bad word in IT.
:-(
He left after the Apple acquisition in 1999, then came back around 2009. During the time he was gone was when Apple did their best work (Snow Leopard and iPhone).
Apple got rid of all the NeXT people long ago, with Tim Cook stabbing Scott Forstall in the back, so the answer is No.