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BeOS would not be able to run Classic MacOS PowerPC/68K apps. They'd have to use some sort of emulator if Apple went with Be. Be did have the BeBox that had a

BeOS would not be able to run Classic MacOS PowerPC/68K apps. They'd have to use some sort of emulator if Apple went with Be. Be did have the BeBox that had a Geekport that Apple could have used to better expand Macs for. There was this ARDI Exeuctor software that could run 68K Classic MacOS stuff in Linux, Windows, NextOS, and I think they were porting it to BeOS. NextOS was a much better choice due to the OpenStep librarie shared with HP, Sun, Oracle, and others. It was forked as GNUStep and ported to Linux and other operating systems. Apple has always been a hardware company that has the software integrated to the hardware. It is because they bundle both together than it works better than PCs running Windows from everyone and their brother making PC Clones. Even with the Hackintosh stuff not all drivers work and some Hackintoshes don't have things that a Mac does like OS updates, etc. BeOS was made into a multimedia OS to challenge AmigaOS that already was a multimedia OS with Video Toaster and other stuff. BSD aka NextOS was more of a workstation/server OS and clearly the better choice.

Reason077 9y ago
"BeOS would not be able to run Classic MacOS PowerPC/68K apps. They'd have to use some sort of emulator if Apple went with Be." That is exactly how Mac OS X ran classic MacOS apps in the early days. It was called "classic environment" or "blue box". It was removed after OS X 10.4, as by that point most "classic" apps had been updated to the Carbon API and recompiled as native OS X apps.
- fzzzy 9y ago
  Just a slight correction, Blue Box was a version of the classic environment that only ran full screen. It only made it as far as some of the developer previews. When Aqua was announced, it became the classic environment, where classic apps could be run along side modern cocoa apps without having to switch full screen between the blue box and the NeXT-derived OS.
- mikeash 9y ago
  10.4 also marked the Intel transition. Classic was a virtual machine, so making it work on x86 would have been a huge undertaking. 10.5 still supported PowerPC, but by then it was obviously not the future.
feelin_googley 9y ago
"... not all drivers work..." The question I have always had is what would happen if BSD project committers were allowed and enabled to write drivers for Apple hardware. There must be many reasons why Apple cannot sell hardware with full specs to enable open source developers to write drivers, but being an idiot I could not tell you what those are. As I see it, any value Apple adds to the hardware is in how they select components and build the computer. I fail to see how controlling who can write drivers adds value for the user. The "hardware/software integration" is great. Up until the company starts using their position as exclusive "integrator" to lock down products and dictate how those products can be used after they have been sold. Hackintosh is a noble effort but it differs from what I want. I do not want an Apple BSD-like OS to run on any non-Apple hardware. I want a non-Apple BSD OS to run on any Apple hardware. This will not happen, but I still think about it and wonder.
- ianai 9y ago
  They really want you to buy into their ecosystem. They want your Mac and iPhone pulling you into their iCloud/etc services - not unlike Amazon's Kindle hardware in that respect. Of course, it's my understanding that Amazon's hardware/os are more commoditized (since they run a modified Android, iirc).
verstaen 9y ago
A MacOS emulator was already available for BeOS and able to run any MacOS 9 application on BeOS. If I remember correctly the code name was "sheep shaver"...
- escap 9y ago
  https://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ https://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ ?
  - verstaen 9y ago
    Yep. It was amazingly smooth. I remember seeing Photoshop running, and crashing, without bringing the whole OS, which at the time was amazing.
- fractallyte 9y ago
  I ran Mac OS 8 in an emulator on my Amiga, just so I could access CompuServe email. MacOS actually ran faster on the Amiga hardware than on Apple's!
- memsom 9y ago
  Yep, but it would only run up to 8.x. I think, 8.5, but it could have been 8.1. They Mac OS after 8.5 changed a lot, and I think the BeOS version of sheepshaver stopped being able to load the OS. It worked with no extra files on a Mac running BeOS, on a BeBox it required a dump of the toolbox ROM.

Reason077 9y ago

"BeOS would not be able to run Classic MacOS PowerPC/68K apps. They'd have to use some sort of emulator if Apple went with Be." That is exactly how Mac OS X ran classic MacOS apps in the early days. It was called "classic environment" or "blue box". It was removed after OS X 10.4, as by that point most "classic" apps had been updated to the Carbon API and recompiled as native OS X apps.

fzzzy 9y ago
Just a slight correction, Blue Box was a version of the classic environment that only ran full screen. It only made it as far as some of the developer previews. When Aqua was announced, it became the classic environment, where classic apps could be run along side modern cocoa apps without having to switch full screen between the blue box and the NeXT-derived OS.
mikeash 9y ago
10.4 also marked the Intel transition. Classic was a virtual machine, so making it work on x86 would have been a huge undertaking. 10.5 still supported PowerPC, but by then it was obviously not the future.

feelin_googley 9y ago

"... not all drivers work..." The question I have always had is what would happen if BSD project committers were allowed and enabled to write drivers for Apple hardware. There must be many reasons why Apple cannot sell hardware with full specs to enable open source developers to write drivers, but being an idiot I could not tell you what those are. As I see it, any value Apple adds to the hardware is in how they select components and build the computer. I fail to see how controlling who can write drivers adds value for the user. The "hardware/software integration" is great. Up until the company starts using their position as exclusive "integrator" to lock down products and dictate how those products can be used after they have been sold. Hackintosh is a noble effort but it differs from what I want. I do not want an Apple BSD-like OS to run on any non-Apple hardware. I want a non-Apple BSD OS to run on any Apple hardware. This will not happen, but I still think about it and wonder.

ianai 9y ago
They really want you to buy into their ecosystem. They want your Mac and iPhone pulling you into their iCloud/etc services - not unlike Amazon's Kindle hardware in that respect. Of course, it's my understanding that Amazon's hardware/os are more commoditized (since they run a modified Android, iirc).

verstaen 9y ago

A MacOS emulator was already available for BeOS and able to run any MacOS 9 application on BeOS. If I remember correctly the code name was "sheep shaver"...

escap 9y ago
https://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ https://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ ?
- verstaen 9y ago
  Yep. It was amazingly smooth. I remember seeing Photoshop running, and crashing, without bringing the whole OS, which at the time was amazing.
fractallyte 9y ago
I ran Mac OS 8 in an emulator on my Amiga, just so I could access CompuServe email. MacOS actually ran faster on the Amiga hardware than on Apple's!
memsom 9y ago
Yep, but it would only run up to 8.x. I think, 8.5, but it could have been 8.1. They Mac OS after 8.5 changed a lot, and I think the BeOS version of sheepshaver stopped being able to load the OS. It worked with no extra files on a Mac running BeOS, on a BeBox it required a dump of the toolbox ROM.