5 ms·

Oh BeOS. One of the best promises that failed to succeed.

djsumdog 10y ago
BeOS was really amazing. You could encode video from two video capture cards at the same time on a 600Mhz P3. You could turn off a processor in a multi-cpu system. Be realized they couldn't compete with Windows, so they wanted to sell dual-boot boxes. But the Microsoft EULA for OEMs banned that (similar to OHA and Google not allowing Google-Android manufactures to create Amazon-Fire products).
- baldfat 10y ago
  > Be realized they couldn't compete with Windows Crazy as it sounds BeOS wouldn't run on X86 for the first few years. They were trying to capture away Apple people. Also it was close to being the OS X successor, but Apple walked away when BeOS upped the price. https://www.wired.com/2015/05/os-almost-made-apple-entirely-different-company/ https://www.wired.com/2015/05/os-almost-made-apple-entirely-... PS The only desktop OS that could pull off this stunt. Play a bunch of videos and music files and unplug the computer. Boot back up and everything is playing again just as you left it.
  - acveilleux 10y ago
    I always thought of BeOS as basically a reboot of the NeXT. Same niche, same promise, same flop ;-(. BeOS was later so they avoided the H/W side-road. A good thing.
    - philjohn 10y ago
      They didn't - BEOS was first launched only for their own line of hardware, the BeBox - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox
      - acveilleux 10y ago
        Didn't know that. The numbers sold are tiny.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      Technologically it didn't flop, nor did Amiga. Inferior technology won in the 90s.
    - huxley 10y ago
      No, it was a different niche, different promise and only one of them flopped (after all NeXTSTEP lives on as macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, etc) NeXTSTEP was Steve Jobs' attempt to build an OS that fulfilled the promise of what he saw during his visit to PARC (as opposed to just the graphical interface which is what was implemented with the Mac). It was a true-multi-user Unix with a beautiful UI and an object-oriented framework that was far more influential than its marketshare would have suggested (it led to Microsoft starting Cairo, IBM building WorkplaceOS, and Apple/IBM sinking fortunes and thousands of man-hours into Taligent/Pink). BeOS was Jean-Louis Gasse's attempt to build a successor to the Mac (including Quicktime which came after Jobs) but built to be multiprocessor and SMT (symmetric multitasking) friendly from the start. It was --like the Mac-- a single-user OS but intended to extract all the performance possible from "modern hardware" ACCESS Co. the current owner of the PalmOS and BeOS assets basically frittered away whatever potential BeOS had. So it definitely flopped.
  - huxley 10y ago
    Interestingly it wasn't initially targeted at the PowerPC (let alone the PowerMac), the original BeBox prototypes used 2 AT&T ATT92010 Hobbit processors and 3 AT&T DSP3210 DSPs. https://web.archive.org/web/20110806044928/http://www.bebox.nu/images.php?s=images/hobbit https://web.archive.org/web/20110806044928/http://www.bebox....
- cpeterso 10y ago
  > You could turn off a processor in a multi-cpu system. I saw a BeOS demo of turning off processors. The GUI allowed you to uncheck all the processor checkboxes and the machine goes dead. :)
  - avisser 10y ago
    I loved the sense of humor in the API as well. int32 is_computer_on(); //Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined. double is_computer_on_fire(); //Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  It really was. IIRC, I remember installing it from a floppy (was there a CD too? My memory is fuzzy) on a Pentium based computer in the late 90s (R4 maybe... I think the floppy is buried in a box in my basement). I was amazed that back then I could have four (!) windows open playing videos (albeit at low res) at the same time without hiccups -- doing it Windows 95 on the same box would choke it up.
code_chimp 10y ago
But some are still trying to keep it alive: https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
youdontknowtho 10y ago
I know. So brilliant. Still remember the first demo I saw. Just floored me.

BeOS was really amazing. You could encode video from two video capture cards at the same time on a 600Mhz P3. You could turn off a processor in a multi-cpu system. Be realized they couldn't compete with Windows, so they wanted to sell dual-boot boxes. But the Microsoft EULA for OEMs banned that (similar to OHA and Google not allowing Google-Android manufactures to create Amazon-Fire products).

baldfat 10y ago
> Be realized they couldn't compete with Windows Crazy as it sounds BeOS wouldn't run on X86 for the first few years. They were trying to capture away Apple people. Also it was close to being the OS X successor, but Apple walked away when BeOS upped the price. https://www.wired.com/2015/05/os-almost-made-apple-entirely-different-company/ https://www.wired.com/2015/05/os-almost-made-apple-entirely-... PS The only desktop OS that could pull off this stunt. Play a bunch of videos and music files and unplug the computer. Boot back up and everything is playing again just as you left it.
- acveilleux 10y ago
  I always thought of BeOS as basically a reboot of the NeXT. Same niche, same promise, same flop ;-(. BeOS was later so they avoided the H/W side-road. A good thing.
  - philjohn 10y ago
    They didn't - BEOS was first launched only for their own line of hardware, the BeBox - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox
    - acveilleux 10y ago
      Didn't know that. The numbers sold are tiny.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    Technologically it didn't flop, nor did Amiga. Inferior technology won in the 90s.
  - huxley 10y ago
    No, it was a different niche, different promise and only one of them flopped (after all NeXTSTEP lives on as macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, etc) NeXTSTEP was Steve Jobs' attempt to build an OS that fulfilled the promise of what he saw during his visit to PARC (as opposed to just the graphical interface which is what was implemented with the Mac). It was a true-multi-user Unix with a beautiful UI and an object-oriented framework that was far more influential than its marketshare would have suggested (it led to Microsoft starting Cairo, IBM building WorkplaceOS, and Apple/IBM sinking fortunes and thousands of man-hours into Taligent/Pink). BeOS was Jean-Louis Gasse's attempt to build a successor to the Mac (including Quicktime which came after Jobs) but built to be multiprocessor and SMT (symmetric multitasking) friendly from the start. It was --like the Mac-- a single-user OS but intended to extract all the performance possible from "modern hardware" ACCESS Co. the current owner of the PalmOS and BeOS assets basically frittered away whatever potential BeOS had. So it definitely flopped.
- huxley 10y ago
  Interestingly it wasn't initially targeted at the PowerPC (let alone the PowerMac), the original BeBox prototypes used 2 AT&T ATT92010 Hobbit processors and 3 AT&T DSP3210 DSPs. https://web.archive.org/web/20110806044928/http://www.bebox.nu/images.php?s=images/hobbit https://web.archive.org/web/20110806044928/http://www.bebox....
cpeterso 10y ago
> You could turn off a processor in a multi-cpu system. I saw a BeOS demo of turning off processors. The GUI allowed you to uncheck all the processor checkboxes and the machine goes dead. :)
- avisser 10y ago
  I loved the sense of humor in the API as well. int32 is_computer_on(); //Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined. double is_computer_on_fire(); //Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
slantyyz 10y ago
It really was. IIRC, I remember installing it from a floppy (was there a CD too? My memory is fuzzy) on a Pentium based computer in the late 90s (R4 maybe... I think the floppy is buried in a box in my basement). I was amazed that back then I could have four (!) windows open playing videos (albeit at low res) at the same time without hiccups -- doing it Windows 95 on the same box would choke it up.

code_chimp 10y ago

But some are still trying to keep it alive: https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/

youdontknowtho 10y ago

I know. So brilliant. Still remember the first demo I saw. Just floored me.