Back in the day, Apple was beleaguered, and made the decision to acquire an OS from outside the company to come in and save the day, pave a new path for Apple.

The choice was narrowed down to, of course, Steve Jobs and NeXT, and a little known company called Be, Inc, with an OS called BeOS. The company was founded by long-time Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée.

The linked article tells a bit of the Be side of the story.