Editing Taligent (section)

==Reception==
By 1993, one year after incorporation and two years before shipping its first product, Taligent was nonetheless seen as a significant competitor in the industry. ''UnixWorld'' said that "NeXT needs to increase its volume three-fold [over its existing 50,000 installations] in order to build enough momentum to forestall Microsoft and Taligent in the object-oriented software business."<ref name="Unixworld April 1993">{{cite magazine |magazine=UnixWorld |publisher=McGraw-Hill |date=April 1993 |page=44 |title=Steve's Gone Soft |quote=In its existence, Next has sold a total of 50,000 copies of Nextstep, says Jobs. It's not much of an installed base, so he predicts the company will ship 50,000 Nextstep packages in 1993. But Next needs to increase its volume three-fold in order to build enough momentum to forestall Microsoft and Taligent in the object-oriented software business.}}</ref>

In 1994, several PEEK beta test sites were impressed with CommonPoint, including one production success story at [[American Express]] which replaced its existing six month legacy application in only six weeks. At first in 1994, they had said "We are almost overwhelmed by the complexity of [CommonPoint]. I don't know if the typical corporate developer is going to be able to assimilate this in their shop."<ref name="Taligent first PEEK"/> but in 1995 they concluded the project with, "The CommonPoint frameworks{{mdash}}and I'm not exaggerating{{mdash}}are brilliant in the way they cover the technical issues [of that project]."<ref name="IBM to release"/> Others were disappointed in the marked lack of crossplatform presence on HP/UX, Mac OS, and Windows NT which strictly limited any adoption of CommonPoint even among enthusiasts.<ref name="Taligent show"/><ref name="IBM to release"/><ref name="IEEE Software March 1995"/>

{{quote box |text=In a survey we conducted, learnability was mentioned as a main inhibitor to framework use by developers familiar with frameworks, and early developers with Taligent experienced "a stiff learning curve" even for experienced C++ programmers. ... The time it takes to become a productive developer with Taligent frameworks is long (at least three months until you can approach your first application)." |source=''A Beginner's Guide to Developing with the Taligent Application Frameworks'', Hewlett-Packard, 1995<ref name="A Beginner's Guide">{{cite book |title=A Beginner's Guide to Developing with the Taligent Application Frameworks |date=September 6, 1995 |first=Joachim |last=Laubsch |publisher=Hewlett-Packard Laboratories |url=http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/95/HPL-95-106.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/95/HPL-95-106.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |access-date=October 3, 2017}}</ref>
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{{quote box |text=Once you learn CommonPoint and Taligent's system you will be [an] expert C++ programmer, whether you want to or not. ... Basing apps on CommonPoint results in programs that are more consistent internally, cleaner, and allows the framework to do significant grunt work in cooperation with the Taligent environment. ... Taligent's frameworks are all coordinated much better than others I've seen. They're designed to work together with the underlying kernel, in a fashion similar to the Mac's ROM Toolbox calls, but on a supremely more advanced level. Nextstep is the closest thing to Taligent but it's already old and not nearly as advanced—despite the fact that until now it's been ''the'' fastest development platform, bar none. We have spoken with people who have used Nextstep and we considered it, but it's clear to us that CommonPoint is the next Nextstep, if you will. |author=Nisus Software, March 1995, after three months of Taligent training and three of coding<ref name="IEEE Software March 1995">{{cite journal |title=Taligent Readies a New Development Paradigm |journal=IEEE Software |publisher=[[IEEE]] |first=Rich |last=Santalesa |date=March 1995 |url=https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/so/1995/02/s2103.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/so/1995/02/s2103.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |doi=10.1109/MS.1995.10019 |pages=103–109 |volume=12 |access-date=March 15, 2019}}</ref>
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In March 1995, ''IEEE Software'' magazine said "Taligent's very nature could change the contour of the application landscape. ... [I]t's clear that Taligent is sitting on, using, and refining what is ostensibly the world's best developed, comprehensive, object-oriented development and system environment." The system was described as virtually "a whole OS of nothing but hooks"{{mdash}}which rests upon, integrates deeply with, and "replaces the host's original operating system", leaving "no lowest common denominator". Therefore, any Taligent native application is expected to run just the same on any supported host OS. Any degree of clean portability, especially with native integration, in the software industry was described as a [[holy grail]] to which many aspire and few deliver, citing the fact that Microsoft Word 6.0 for Macintosh still works like a foreign Windows application because the foundation was redundantly ported with each application.<ref name="IEEE Software March 1995"/> In February 1997, at the first comprehensive mass release of Taligent technology in the form of VisualAge C++ 4.0, ''PC Magazine'' said "Now, the best of the CommonPoint technology is being channeled into Open Class for VisualAge. ... Although the technology was lauded by many, the size and complexity of the CommonPoint frameworks proved too daunting for practical purposes. ... For sheer breadth of features, the Taligent frameworks are unmatched. An all-encompassing OOP framework has always proved a difficult ideal to realize, but VisualAge's Open Class Technology Preview is by far the most credible attempt we've seen.".<ref name="Previewing Taligent"/>

In 2008, ''PCWorld'' named the native Taligent OS as number 4 of the 15 top vaporware products of all time.<ref name="Top 15 Vaporware">{{cite magazine |title=The Top 15 Vaporware Products of All Time |first=Emru |last=Townsend |date=May 4, 2008 |magazine=PC World |url=https://www.pcworld.com/article/145351/article.html?page=4 |access-date=February 11, 2019 |archive-date=October 10, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181010013035/https://www.pcworld.com/article/145351/article.html?page=4 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Due to the [[second-system effect]] and [[Corporate immune system|corporate immune response]], ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]'' writer Fred Davis compared Taligent's relationship with Apple and IBM to a classic Greek tragedy: "A child is born, destined to kill its father and commit even more unspeakable acts against its mother. The parents love their child and are unwilling to kill it, so they imprison it in a secret dungeon. Despite its mistreatment, the child grows stronger, even more intent on committing its destined crimes."<ref name="Surrender the Pink!"/>

In 1995, IT journalist Don Tennant asked [[Bill Gates]] to reflect upon "what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise". Gates responded with what Tennant described as biting, deadpan sarcasm: "Kaleida and Taligent had less impact than we expected." Tennant believed the explanation to be that "Microsoft's worst nightmare is a conjoined Apple and IBM. No other single change in the dynamics of the IT industry could possibly do as much to emasculate Windows."<ref name="Emasculating Windows">{{cite web |work=ComputerWorld |publisher=IDG |title=Emasculating Windows |first=Don |last=Tennant |date=March 3, 2008 |url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551843/it-management/emasculating-windows.html |access-date=February 23, 2019}}</ref>