Takeover for me means change of hands of ownership and power of decision in the company, and whatever your technical or managerial arguments are I think the resulting company was owned by Apple's stockholders, Steve Jobs probably among then after the acquisition, not by NeXT investors.
For the 2 people that downvoted I would love to know what you consider a takeover. I'm pretty sure that in financial term takeover means change of ownership.
BTW, I'm quit, HN is just becoming a place where Steve Jobs and Rails must not be criticized, even when they must be. I will put some random string as my password and never return here, it was a good time but I think the community lost something in these years.