Jean-Louis Gassée
Encyclopedia
Jean-Louis Gassée is a former executive at Apple Computer
, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He is most famous for founding Be Inc.
, creators of the BeOS
computer operating system. After leaving Be, he became Chairman of PalmSource, Inc.
in November, 2004.
personally appointed Gassée to Steve Jobs
's old position as head of Macintosh development. Gassée introduced several Macintosh products on-stage in the late 80s including the Macintosh Portable
in 1989, and also the Macintosh IIfx
. In his product introductions, he was often very comical. Gassée was less formal than many executives. He wore tailored suits when necessary, but he often addressed employees wearing a black (lambskin) leather jacket and a single diamond-stud earring.
When the idea of licensing the Mac OS for other companies use was brought up by various members of Apple, Jean-Louis refused to give in to the idea, maintaining that the Macintosh was more powerful than any other computer at the present, and had a superior architectural roadmap for future expansion than any other computer. Although many of the companies were interested (such as AT&T, for the use of the OS in their own equipment—they were so interested in this idea that the then-CEO of AT&T made a personal phone call to Sculley), Gassée would have none of it, and so the idea of licensing the Mac OS was shelved.
In the mid-80s, Gassée started the skunkworks project
to create what eventually became the Newton MessagePad.
In 1987, Apple CEO John Sculley published his memoir Odyssey. In the hope of inspiring "excellence," he ordered a hardback copy for each Apple employee, at Apple's expense. Shortly afterward, Gassée ordered a paperback copy of Fred Brooks
's The Mythical Man-Month
for all product-development employees, in the hope of inspiring good sense in project management. Brooks gave a lecture at nearby De Anza College: the room was filled with Apple employees with copies of his book, who told him stories that confirmed his conclusions.
In 1988, Gassée became head of Apple's advanced product development and worldwide marketing, and rumors of his taking over as president of Apple from Sculley were circling. Other rumors concerning Michael Spindler
were also circulating. At one point in 1990, a number of Apple employees held a demonstration, marching around in circles, carrying signs, on the lawn in front of one Apple building, to petition Apple management to retain Gassée. A USA Today
reporter saw the demonstration and asked an employee what it was about. The employee, well aware of Apple's rules on divulging trade secrets to the press, succinctly explained the issues. The next day USA Today reported that Apple employees, many wearing black leather jackets and berets in honor of Gassée, had demonstrated to persuade management to keep him at Apple. In fact, the only person wearing a leather jacket (a brown goatskin A-2
) and a beret had been the person whom she had asked to explain the purpose of the demonstration.
In 1989, Gassée successfully killed a Claris
project, 'Drama', which aimed to start a new brand to sell low-end Macintosh computers. Gassée argued that consumers would continue to be willing to pay the price premium for a full Macintosh experience.
Despite Gassée's efforts and those of his supporters, in 1990 he left Apple, forced out by Sculley and Apple board members dissatisfied with his performance in delivering new products. Spindler got the top job.
, the developer of the Apple Newton
. Be developed a new operating system
, optimized for multiple CPU
s and multithreaded
applications, which became known simply as "the Be Operating System," or BeOS
.
BeOS was written for Be's own dual-processor machine, the BeBox
; later development releases of BeOS were ported to run on the Macintosh, and Macintosh clone makers, including Power Computing and Motorola, signed deals to ship BeOS with their hardware when the OS was finalized. In light of this, Be stopped production on the BeBox after selling only around 2000 units, and focused entirely on development of BeOS.
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, 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. NeXTSTEP
was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X
.
After the return of Jobs, Apple withdrew the license to make Macintosh clone
s. With Intel's assistance, BeOS moved to "Plan B", a port to the x86 platform. While it arguably never grew past a cult following, it sold enough copies to have a nascent development and user community, and had several thousand programs available for it, including several dozen commercial products. BeOS was also used as an embedded operating system in multimedia production systems from Edirol, TEAC and Level Control Systems. However, partially due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Microsoft, Be was not successful in getting top-tier OEMs to bundle BeOS with their hardware - only Hitachi
and AST
(who were major in Europe at the time) did so - which Gassée saw as fundamental to their success.
At the end of 1999, Be had a "focus shift," giving their desktop OS away for free (with commercial distributions sold by third-party vendors, similar to Linux distributions) to focus on BeIA
, a build of BeOS specifically targeted to internet appliance
s. The company lost several employees who disagreed with this strategy and who had no desire to work on an appliance OS. While there was vendor interest in BeIA and at least one shipping product based on it (the Sony eVilla
), the market for internet appliances proved to be nearly non-existent, and Be laid off most of its employees in 2001, with its assets and the remaining engineers being bought by Palm, Inc.
for $11 million that August. Gassée stayed on through that transition, but left in January 2002.
, where he is still in position.
In November 2004, Gassée became chairman of PalmSource, Inc., where several former Be executives and engineers still worked. BeOS technology was being worked on for use in Palm OS
"Cobalt" (Version 6), but as of February 2006, there were no major customers—including Palm, Inc. itself—who have committed to using the Cobalt release.
In March 2006, he started writing a blog
(in French) called Le blog de Jean-Louis Gassée (or, in English: Jean-Louis Gassée's Blog). The blog was active for a month and contains only four entries.
He was recently seen at a Google Tech Talk in February 2007.
In 2009, he started contributing regularly to the Monday Note blog, a newsletter covering the intersection of media and technology.
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He is most famous for founding Be Inc.
Be Inc.
Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray....
, creators of the BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
computer operating system. After leaving Be, he became Chairman of PalmSource, Inc.
PalmSource
ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS...
in November, 2004.
1980s: Apple Computer
Gassée worked for Hewlett Packard before becoming head of Apple France. Later, Apple's CEO John SculleyJohn Sculley
John Sculley is an American businessman. Sculley was vice-president and president of PepsiCo , until he became CEO of Apple on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993...
personally appointed Gassée to Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
's old position as head of Macintosh development. Gassée introduced several Macintosh products on-stage in the late 80s including the Macintosh Portable
Macintosh Portable
The Macintosh Portable was Apple Inc.'s first attempt at making a battery-powered portable Macintosh personal computer that held the power of a desktop Macintosh...
in 1989, and also the Macintosh IIfx
Macintosh IIfx
The Macintosh IIfx was a model of Apple Macintosh computer, introduced in 1990 and discontinued in 1992. At introduction it cost from US $9,000 to US $12,000, depending on configuration, and was the fastest Mac...
. In his product introductions, he was often very comical. Gassée was less formal than many executives. He wore tailored suits when necessary, but he often addressed employees wearing a black (lambskin) leather jacket and a single diamond-stud earring.
When the idea of licensing the Mac OS for other companies use was brought up by various members of Apple, Jean-Louis refused to give in to the idea, maintaining that the Macintosh was more powerful than any other computer at the present, and had a superior architectural roadmap for future expansion than any other computer. Although many of the companies were interested (such as AT&T, for the use of the OS in their own equipment—they were so interested in this idea that the then-CEO of AT&T made a personal phone call to Sculley), Gassée would have none of it, and so the idea of licensing the Mac OS was shelved.
In the mid-80s, Gassée started the skunkworks project
Skunkworks project
A skunkworks project is one typically developed by a small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation. The term typically refers to technology projects, and originated with Skunk Works, an official alias for the Lockheed...
to create what eventually became the Newton MessagePad.
In 1987, Apple CEO John Sculley published his memoir Odyssey. In the hope of inspiring "excellence," he ordered a hardback copy for each Apple employee, at Apple's expense. Shortly afterward, Gassée ordered a paperback copy of Fred Brooks
Fred Brooks
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. is a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month...
's The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"...
for all product-development employees, in the hope of inspiring good sense in project management. Brooks gave a lecture at nearby De Anza College: the room was filled with Apple employees with copies of his book, who told him stories that confirmed his conclusions.
In 1988, Gassée became head of Apple's advanced product development and worldwide marketing, and rumors of his taking over as president of Apple from Sculley were circling. Other rumors concerning Michael Spindler
Michael Spindler
Michael Spindler , nicknamed "the Diesel" for his reputed around-the-clock work habits, was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996....
were also circulating. At one point in 1990, a number of Apple employees held a demonstration, marching around in circles, carrying signs, on the lawn in front of one Apple building, to petition Apple management to retain Gassée. A USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
reporter saw the demonstration and asked an employee what it was about. The employee, well aware of Apple's rules on divulging trade secrets to the press, succinctly explained the issues. The next day USA Today reported that Apple employees, many wearing black leather jackets and berets in honor of Gassée, had demonstrated to persuade management to keep him at Apple. In fact, the only person wearing a leather jacket (a brown goatskin A-2
A-2 jacket
The Type A-2 leather flight jacket is a military flight jacket closely associated with World War II U.S. Army Air Forces pilots, navigators and bombardiers, who often decorated their jackets with squadron patches and elaborate artwork painted on the back...
) and a beret had been the person whom she had asked to explain the purpose of the demonstration.
In 1989, Gassée successfully killed a Claris
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
project, 'Drama', which aimed to start a new brand to sell low-end Macintosh computers. Gassée argued that consumers would continue to be willing to pay the price premium for a full Macintosh experience.
Despite Gassée's efforts and those of his supporters, in 1990 he left Apple, forced out by Sculley and Apple board members dissatisfied with his performance in delivering new products. Spindler got the top job.
1991—2002: Be Incorporated
In 1991 Gassée started a new venture, Be Inc., with the ambitious goal of creating an entire new computer platform, hardware and software, from the ground up. A number of Apple employees left with him, including Steve SakomanSteve Sakoman
Steve Sakoman is an American computing executive. He retired from Apple Computer in 2005 and is now software project leader at Gumstix, a maker of very small computers based on the ARM architecture running Linux....
, the developer of the Apple Newton
Apple Newton
The MessagePad was the first series of personal digital assistant devices developed by Apple for the Newton platform in 1993. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's MessagePad devices was done in Japan by the Sharp Corporation...
. Be developed a new operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, optimized for multiple CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
s and multithreaded
Thread (computer science)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...
applications, which became known simply as "the Be Operating System," or BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
.
BeOS was written for Be's own dual-processor machine, the BeBox
BeBox
The BeBox was a short-lived dual processor personal computer, offered by Be Inc. to run the company's own operating system, BeOS. Notable aspects of the system include its CPU configuration, I/O board with "GeekPort", and "Blinkenlights" on the front bezel....
; later development releases of BeOS were ported to run on the Macintosh, and Macintosh clone makers, including Power Computing and Motorola, signed deals to ship BeOS with their hardware when the OS was finalized. In light of this, Be stopped production on the BeBox after selling only around 2000 units, and focused entirely on development of BeOS.
In 1996, Apple Computer decided to abandon Copland
Copland (operating system)
Copland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
, 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, Gassée held out for $275 million, and Apple balked. In a surprise move, Apple went on to purchase NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
, the company their former co-founder Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
had earlier left Apple to found, for $429 million. NeXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
.
After the return of Jobs, Apple withdrew the license to make Macintosh clone
Macintosh clone
A Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s. With Intel's assistance, BeOS moved to "Plan B", a port to the x86 platform. While it arguably never grew past a cult following, it sold enough copies to have a nascent development and user community, and had several thousand programs available for it, including several dozen commercial products. BeOS was also used as an embedded operating system in multimedia production systems from Edirol, TEAC and Level Control Systems. However, partially due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Microsoft, Be was not successful in getting top-tier OEMs to bundle BeOS with their hardware - only Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd.
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies...
and AST
AST Research
AST Research, Inc. was a personal computer manufacturer, founded in Irvine, California in 1980 by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen. AST's original business was the manufacture and marketing of a broad range of microcomputer expansion cards, later focusing on higher-density replacements...
(who were major in Europe at the time) did so - which Gassée saw as fundamental to their success.
At the end of 1999, Be had a "focus shift," giving their desktop OS away for free (with commercial distributions sold by third-party vendors, similar to Linux distributions) to focus on BeIA
BeIA
BeIA, or BeOS for Internet Appliances, was a minimized version of Be Inc.'s BeOS operating system for embedded systems.The BeIA system presents a browser based interface to the user. The browser was based on the Opera 4.0 code base, and was named Wanger...
, a build of BeOS specifically targeted to internet appliance
Internet appliance
An Internet appliance is a consumer device whose main function is easy access to Internet services such as WWW or e-mail. The term was popularized in the 1990s, when it somewhat overlapped in meaning with an information appliance, Internet computer, network computer, or even thin client, but now it...
s. The company lost several employees who disagreed with this strategy and who had no desire to work on an appliance OS. While there was vendor interest in BeIA and at least one shipping product based on it (the Sony eVilla
Sony eVilla
The Sony eVilla is a discontinued Internet appliance from Sony. After 18 months of development, it was released to the public on June 14, 2001 for $499 USD...
), the market for internet appliances proved to be nearly non-existent, and Be laid off most of its employees in 2001, with its assets and the remaining engineers being bought by Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
for $11 million that August. Gassée stayed on through that transition, but left in January 2002.
2002—Present: After Be, Inc.
After leaving Be, Gassée served as president and CEO of Computer Access Technology Corporation (CATC), a company which made network protocol analyzers, but left within a year. (CATC was purchased in fall 2004 by LeCroy Corporation, a competitor.) Gassée resurfaced as a general partner at Allegis Capital, a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CaliforniaPalo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, where he is still in position.
In November 2004, Gassée became chairman of PalmSource, Inc., where several former Be executives and engineers still worked. BeOS technology was being worked on for use in Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
"Cobalt" (Version 6), but as of February 2006, there were no major customers—including Palm, Inc. itself—who have committed to using the Cobalt release.
In March 2006, he started writing a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
(in French) called Le blog de Jean-Louis Gassée (or, in English: Jean-Louis Gassée's Blog). The blog was active for a month and contains only four entries.
He was recently seen at a Google Tech Talk in February 2007.
In 2009, he started contributing regularly to the Monday Note blog, a newsletter covering the intersection of media and technology.
External links
- Monday Note
- Le blog de Jean-Louis Gassée
- Jean-Louis Gassée General Partner of Allegis Capital
- How Jean Louis Gassée Changed the Mac's Direction by Tom Hormby
- Interview with Jean Louis Gassée, President and Founder of Be, Inc. (Dec 1995)
- Jean-Louis Gassée on why PC manufacturers don't sell non MS products