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It's of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple and creator of BeOS.

by dlevine 10y ago

secstate 10y ago
I actually really appreciate JLG's tone when reporting on Apple. Given his history with the NeXT-BeOS debacle, I wouldn't expect him to be so charitable. Of course, time heals all wounds and I get the impression JLG is pretty well adjusted, but still. Man, BeOS was awesome.
- ndesaulniers 10y ago
  As someone who knows nothing about BeOS, what was awesome about it?
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    It was incredibly responsive, more so than current products with 10x the power.
  - ksherlock 10y ago
    We used to say: BeOS combined the UI of Macintosh, the stability of Unix, and the Minesweeper of Windows.
  - zakki 10y ago
    What I remember in the past is, using the same Windows hardware, my friend played several multi media (video) files without performance degradation
  - ashark 10y ago
    It did scheduling magic to keep the UI responsive and media from skipping even under (at the time) heavy load. This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were really lucky. The OS itself also seemed to be snappier than its competitors. Windows on the same machine? MP3 playback would stutter when you hit refresh on a webpage (bearing in mind those were one hell of a lot lighter than the ones today) or any number of other minor actions. Hourglasses constantly. Linux? Window-smearing-on-drag as far as the eye can see. Even worse media performance than Windows(!), though maybe with some ricing/tweaking it was better. Macs at the time? Oh god. I don't know how they got a reputation for being more stable than contemporary Windows machines. Fewer system crashed maybe, but apps crashed constantly. Multitasking performance mediocre. Disk swap all over the place. BeOS? Buttery smooth UI and MP3 playback while running the Teapot 3D demo and browsing the web, all at the same time. It was awesome, and had the Unixy bits coupled with a good and consistent UI that we wouldn't see again until OSX. Faster booting than the competition. Neat extras like a built in web server (Poorman, IIRC) that could be run with a few clicks, too. I think BeOS was known for having an unusually pleasant and sane API in addition to performing so well, though I never wrote any software for it personally.
    - hcarvalhoalves 10y ago
      > This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were really lucky. Actually, BeOS ran at first on proprietary hardware (BeBox), which featured dual or quad PowerPCs, and it was initially designed to make use of the multiple processors. Only later it got ported for Intel platform where single-processor was more common, but it was meant to shine on multi-processor boards.
      - acomjean 10y ago
        I had it running on a powerPC mac clone (Power computing machine) 200 mhz. Ran great but the lack of software made it hard. In historical context as Apple's internal OS upgrade program failed, and they bought Next Computer instead of Be (rumored to be an option). The rest is history.. "Power Computing, cognizant of (Apple CEO) Amelio’s attitude toward the clones, attempted to avoid keeping all its eggs in Apple’s basket. It began to actively support Jean Louis Gassée’s BeOS. Be’s first public demonstrations were on Power 120’s (upgraded versions of the Power 80), and Power Computing began selling machines outfitted with BeOS out of the box, thus bypassing Apple’s 7.25% royalty." from: http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-fighting-back-for-the-mac-or-stealing-apples-customers/ http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-fighting-back-for-...
      - ashark 10y ago
        Yeah, but I only ever ran it on Intel (mostly a Pentium 166mhz--luxury, I know!), and that's the best way to compare its performance to other consumer operating systems at the time anyway. Never had the pleasure to use a BeBox.
  - xenadu02 10y ago
    It had good multi-threading and good I/O scheduling (the thing most OSes neglect only to "discover" that one low-priority process can flood the I/O subsystem, grinding everything to a halt). The GUI toolkit was multi-threaded; the only other one I know of is Win32 but hardly anyone takes advantage of it. Less awesomely it used a C++ API which had huge fragile-base-class problems. They tried to do the custom hardware thing and it went just about as well as NeXT, Amiga, etc. It was probably too late for Be to make it the day they started but by the time the ported to x86 it was already over. We only have two historical examples but they both follow the same overall trend: Windows ate the desktop, Mac hoarded the scraps, everyone else died. Mobile repeated the pattern: iOS eats the profits, Android eats almost everything else, and there is no room in the ecosystem for a significant third competitor. At this point it's the technology equivalent of a gravity problem... there is room for two but anyone else gets ejected from the system.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  BeOS was amazing in its day. Sometimes I wish someone would just throw a lot of money towards Haiku (https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/) so we could get an open-source desktop OS that is entirely focused on desktop from the kernel on up.
  - jacquesc 10y ago
    I would have said the same thing about OSX a decade ago. I wish someone would throw a lot of money at it. Apple has money but OSX keeps getting worse.
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
The author calls Craig Federighi "Hair Force One". I'm wondering if it's a loving nickname or maybe JLG is mocking Federighi... God knows there are plenty of reasons to mock Apple's senior VP of emojis.
- comex 10y ago
  > Federighi likes to mock his thick, blown-out coiffure, referring to himself sometimes as "Hair Force One." http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/03/technology/apple-craig-federighi/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/03/technology/apple-craig-feder...

It's of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple and creator of BeOS.

by dlevine 10y ago

It's of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple and creator of BeOS.

I actually really appreciate JLG's tone when reporting on Apple. Given his history with the NeXT-BeOS debacle, I wouldn't expect him to be so charitable. Of course, time heals all wounds and I get the impression JLG is pretty well adjusted, but still. Man, BeOS was awesome.

ndesaulniers 10y ago
As someone who knows nothing about BeOS, what was awesome about it?
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  It was incredibly responsive, more so than current products with 10x the power.
- ksherlock 10y ago
  We used to say: BeOS combined the UI of Macintosh, the stability of Unix, and the Minesweeper of Windows.
- zakki 10y ago
  What I remember in the past is, using the same Windows hardware, my friend played several multi media (video) files without performance degradation
- ashark 10y ago
  It did scheduling magic to keep the UI responsive and media from skipping even under (at the time) heavy load. This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were really lucky. The OS itself also seemed to be snappier than its competitors. Windows on the same machine? MP3 playback would stutter when you hit refresh on a webpage (bearing in mind those were one hell of a lot lighter than the ones today) or any number of other minor actions. Hourglasses constantly. Linux? Window-smearing-on-drag as far as the eye can see. Even worse media performance than Windows(!), though maybe with some ricing/tweaking it was better. Macs at the time? Oh god. I don't know how they got a reputation for being more stable than contemporary Windows machines. Fewer system crashed maybe, but apps crashed constantly. Multitasking performance mediocre. Disk swap all over the place. BeOS? Buttery smooth UI and MP3 playback while running the Teapot 3D demo and browsing the web, all at the same time. It was awesome, and had the Unixy bits coupled with a good and consistent UI that we wouldn't see again until OSX. Faster booting than the competition. Neat extras like a built in web server (Poorman, IIRC) that could be run with a few clicks, too. I think BeOS was known for having an unusually pleasant and sane API in addition to performing so well, though I never wrote any software for it personally.
  - hcarvalhoalves 10y ago
    > This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were really lucky. Actually, BeOS ran at first on proprietary hardware (BeBox), which featured dual or quad PowerPCs, and it was initially designed to make use of the multiple processors. Only later it got ported for Intel platform where single-processor was more common, but it was meant to shine on multi-processor boards.
    - acomjean 10y ago
      I had it running on a powerPC mac clone (Power computing machine) 200 mhz. Ran great but the lack of software made it hard. In historical context as Apple's internal OS upgrade program failed, and they bought Next Computer instead of Be (rumored to be an option). The rest is history.. "Power Computing, cognizant of (Apple CEO) Amelio’s attitude toward the clones, attempted to avoid keeping all its eggs in Apple’s basket. It began to actively support Jean Louis Gassée’s BeOS. Be’s first public demonstrations were on Power 120’s (upgraded versions of the Power 80), and Power Computing began selling machines outfitted with BeOS out of the box, thus bypassing Apple’s 7.25% royalty." from: http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-fighting-back-for-the-mac-or-stealing-apples-customers/ http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-fighting-back-for-...
    - ashark 10y ago
      Yeah, but I only ever ran it on Intel (mostly a Pentium 166mhz--luxury, I know!), and that's the best way to compare its performance to other consumer operating systems at the time anyway. Never had the pleasure to use a BeBox.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  It had good multi-threading and good I/O scheduling (the thing most OSes neglect only to "discover" that one low-priority process can flood the I/O subsystem, grinding everything to a halt). The GUI toolkit was multi-threaded; the only other one I know of is Win32 but hardly anyone takes advantage of it. Less awesomely it used a C++ API which had huge fragile-base-class problems. They tried to do the custom hardware thing and it went just about as well as NeXT, Amiga, etc. It was probably too late for Be to make it the day they started but by the time the ported to x86 it was already over. We only have two historical examples but they both follow the same overall trend: Windows ate the desktop, Mac hoarded the scraps, everyone else died. Mobile repeated the pattern: iOS eats the profits, Android eats almost everything else, and there is no room in the ecosystem for a significant third competitor. At this point it's the technology equivalent of a gravity problem... there is room for two but anyone else gets ejected from the system.
agildehaus 10y ago
BeOS was amazing in its day. Sometimes I wish someone would just throw a lot of money towards Haiku (https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/) so we could get an open-source desktop OS that is entirely focused on desktop from the kernel on up.
- jacquesc 10y ago
  I would have said the same thing about OSX a decade ago. I wish someone would throw a lot of money at it. Apple has money but OSX keeps getting worse.

KKKKkkkk1 10y ago

The author calls Craig Federighi "Hair Force One". I'm wondering if it's a loving nickname or maybe JLG is mocking Federighi... God knows there are plenty of reasons to mock Apple's senior VP of emojis.

comex 10y ago
> Federighi likes to mock his thick, blown-out coiffure, referring to himself sometimes as "Hair Force One." http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/03/technology/apple-craig-federighi/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/03/technology/apple-craig-feder...