They were never committed to it with A/UX and for NeXT it was just a way to bring in software from the blooming UNIX workstations market.
I remember back in the early 2003, they came to CERN trying to promote the idea of using Mac OS X for research because of the UNIX compatibility.
In both cases, NeXT (aka Apple) needed the developers to help grow their diminishing market.
Now they have the upper hand and don't need UNIX compatibility more than they already offer, and the non-UNIX layers is what matters.
They are not alone, just look at Google efforts with Brillo, Fuchsia and removal of insecure UNIX V APIs in Android.
Microsoft more or less did the same thing with OpenBSD and NT kernel. Several kernel sections started out as BSD code (the networking stack for example).
Don't forget Jobs attempted to steal NeXt's fork of the GCC with Obj-C extensions. The FSF had to sue NeXt to get them to release their modifications.
Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective.
Actually there was no lawsuit. NeXT released the patches after a warning: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/talks/LinuxTag-2011/compliance.html
> Stealing Free Software is cheap from a business perspective.
This is why I recommend everyone use AGPLv3 whenever possible (and consider changing the license on your old Free Software - you can do this if all of the contributors consent). Apple has been removing all GPLv3 software from Mac OS X over the past several years because v3 is incompatible with their goals of totalitarian computing: http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/
Brillo and Fuchsia have almost no GPL or LGPL licensed code.
They also are in the process of kicking GCC out of the Android NDK. Only a few feature parity issues are preventing it for the time being.
When Apple tried A/UX he was on his way out and it was never an attempt to replace Mac OS.
Regarding NeXT, the company was targeting the new workstation market, which was moving away from Lisp and Ada Machines into UNIX ones, thanks to UNIX code being freely available, as AT&T was not allowed to charge for it.
NeXT main competition were Sun and Irix workstations, so a certain compatibility with UNIX was desired.
However the whole Mach stack was very UNIX-unlike. Many naysayers regarding Objective-C use for systems programming aren't aware that even NextSTEP drivers were written in it.
So it was all about business, Steve was always keen on how Xerox PARC OSes used to work.
Why should they care about it as a platform if its impact is negligible. Wouldn't one prefer to focus on the next non-negligible thing?
Apple should care for multiple reasons:
- reputation matters
- not acting like it's abandoned its roots is a positive in image building
- not being shamed repeatedly, with good reason, about its attitude as well as seeming ineptitude
- recruiting talent becomes easier since it's likely more people may see Apple as a decent place to work at (considering this alone in this context, for the sake of simplicity)
- making the platform used to build apps for its best selling platform a lot better ought to be a no-brainer
- …and many more that don't occur to me right now
As I said, I don't think Apple would have to blow a significant amount of money with its finances and budgets to make this better. In my view, with the reasons stated above, Apple has more to lose with this lackadaisical attitude toward macOS/OS X and the Mac platform than just saving some money because the revenue potential is lower. I can't imagine how it'd be to be in a company that gets shamed so much and doesn't seem to want to respond or do much to alleviate matters.
On a related note, Xcode also gets a lot of flak, despite the fact that it's what helps Apple make money from apps. I repeat, something seems seriously missing.
Apple's long term strategy absolutely relies on OSX, if current management are taking a short term view, well it wouldn't be the first time. Only there is now now Jobs to come riding to the rescue.
In last quarter Apple had revenue of $42B.
$24B in phone sales compared to $5B in Mac sales. iPad revenue roughly same as Mac sales. Services made up the bulk of the remaining revenue.
This gives you an idea of how unimportant Mac sales are to Apple. They just need Macs for the sake of the iOS ecosystem.
I think problems with macOS are often magnified on discussion forums. Partially, because there is a subset of the community that heavily dislikes Apple (for ideological or other reasons). Some macOS updates introduced minor bugs for my daily use, but it is an incredibly smooth ride compared to most other systems (I have used Linux on the desktop from 1994-2007 and still have a Linux machine at home for porting software, etc.).
It's very clear from Apple's action, or rather, inaction and silence, over several years, that Apple doesn't "need" the Mac for any specific reason. It's one of those things that's there because it's there.
If it were true that Apple needs the Mac, we would've seen a lot more attention paid to the platform, not just neglect that has been shamed online repeatedly for a long time. The situation is quite unfortunate, in my view.