Avie Tevanian: CMU math whiz goes from Mach to NeXT to Apple Software Chief | Oral History Part 1

Avie Tevanian recounts his work on the Mach microkernel at CMU, leading NEXTSTEP development, and the acquisition by Apple.

Avie Tevanian recounts his early talent for mathematics, his pioneering work on the Mach microkernel at Carnegie Mellon, and his recruitment to NeXT after Steve Jobs discovered the project. He reflects on leading NeXT’s operating system team, guiding NEXTSTEP’s evolution, and the company’s path up to Apple’s 1996 acquisition. Interviewed by David Brock, Hansen Hsu and John Markoff on 2017-02-21 in Mountain View CA, X8111.2017 © Computer History Museum Born of Armenian parents in 1961, into a working class, entrepreneurial family, Avadis "Avie" Tevanian grew up in New England, the oldest of four boys. His dad a machinist, from a young age, Avie and his brothers were into building things, but Avie alone showed a particular aptitude for mathematics. Having been introduced to a PDP-8 in high school, Avie enrolled at the University of Rochester after discovering they had a lab of Xerox Altos, on which he wrote several games and contributed to research. Avie continued on to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University. Working under Professor Rick Rashid, another Rochester graduate, Avie started the Mach microkernel project, which quickly grew to over a dozen people. Based on concepts from Rashid's Accent operating system, Mach was to be an improvement on Accent by targeting parallel processors, be highly portable, and be able to run BSD Unix programs. Engineers at Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer decided they wanted to use Mach for NeXT’s operating system after they saw the work presented at a UNIX conference in 1986. Avie later attended a dinner in Palo Alto where Steve first relayed that interest. After finishing his dissertation, Avie joined NeXT, turning down an offer from Microsoft. After only a year leading the core OS team, Avie became the manager of the entire OS group, and eventually took over as Vice President of Software after the departure of Bud Tribble. Under Avie's watch, NeXT completed its transition to the enterprise software business, porting the NEXTSTEP OS to Intel and various Unix RISC workstations, and coming out with WebObjects, the first object-oriented web application server, which could have become the basis for a NeXT IPO. These plans were scuttled upon Apple's acquisition of NeXT in late 1996, where Avie became Senior Vice President of Software. * Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102706885 Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection. Lot Number: X8111.2017 Catalog Number: 102706886