5 ms·

I loved BeOS, I bought a copy in 1999 or thereabouts. I would have loved BeOS to succeed, but perhaps that memo shows a lot about why Be failed. That note doe

I loved BeOS, I bought a copy in 1999 or thereabouts. I would have loved BeOS to succeed, but perhaps that memo shows a lot about why Be failed. That note does seem totally cool on a technical level, but I wonder, was the thing that Be needed (as a company) most, at the time that memo was written, the things in that memo? I mean having "live drag" of folders is nice, but is that the sort of reason someone choose an OS or a computer? I mean, I reckon, when developing a product, you need to focus on the "critical path" from where you are now to having a product everyone wants to buy. Live folder dragging, while nice, isn't on it I reckon. Maybe MIME content-types instead of file extensions isn't either. And while your developers are working on things that aren't on the critical path, you have the opportunity cost that they could have been working on something that was on the critical path. What do you think?

dnautics 8y ago
Be fell victim to anticompetitive practices by Microsoft. There was a PC made by Hitachi that dual booted beos, and the deal was that the user was supposed to be able to choose windows or beos. Microsoft then forced Hitachi to single boot windows and the user effectively wound up with a hard drive that was literally half inaccessible to the OS because beos was there - it was difficult to activate the beos partition. Honestly my feeling as a developer is that go to market is really hard. I know how to solve technical problems. I don't know that there is a consistent and reliable way to get customers. Be's problem was that, plus more, because of Microsoft. Microsoft is very much a different company now.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I wonder how much of the world comes back to this. The winner is the one who is willing to cross the line just enough to do so.
  - watersb 8y ago
    A potential winner can't cross the line successfully unless they have leverage. Microsoft had a heavy hammer: put up with us or lose access to the mainstream market. Disrupting such a market is of course the goal of any small innovator who needs cooperation from the other market participants. Hmm. Not sure this comment of mine advamces the conversation here. But anyway "willingness to be a thug" is perhaps necessary to create a singularity like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, but not sufficient. And I'm not sure it's even necessary.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      You're right, at least partially, they did so when in position of power. But even then, their IBM deal was almost a scam (exagerating of course). They sold something they didn't even have at the time.. high risk gambling mentality. It's a bit similar to roughing competition up.
- wmf 8y ago
  It's not like there's nothing Be could have done; they could have sold and marketed their own PCs but they didn't. They thought they could draft off the Wintel PC market without doing their own marketing and it didn't work. It's a dirty market and if you want to succeed you need serious money which they didn't have.

dnautics 8y ago

Be fell victim to anticompetitive practices by Microsoft. There was a PC made by Hitachi that dual booted beos, and the deal was that the user was supposed to be able to choose windows or beos. Microsoft then forced Hitachi to single boot windows and the user effectively wound up with a hard drive that was literally half inaccessible to the OS because beos was there - it was difficult to activate the beos partition. Honestly my feeling as a developer is that go to market is really hard. I know how to solve technical problems. I don't know that there is a consistent and reliable way to get customers. Be's problem was that, plus more, because of Microsoft. Microsoft is very much a different company now.

agumonkey 8y ago
I wonder how much of the world comes back to this. The winner is the one who is willing to cross the line just enough to do so.
- watersb 8y ago
  A potential winner can't cross the line successfully unless they have leverage. Microsoft had a heavy hammer: put up with us or lose access to the mainstream market. Disrupting such a market is of course the goal of any small innovator who needs cooperation from the other market participants. Hmm. Not sure this comment of mine advamces the conversation here. But anyway "willingness to be a thug" is perhaps necessary to create a singularity like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, but not sufficient. And I'm not sure it's even necessary.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    You're right, at least partially, they did so when in position of power. But even then, their IBM deal was almost a scam (exagerating of course). They sold something they didn't even have at the time.. high risk gambling mentality. It's a bit similar to roughing competition up.
wmf 8y ago
It's not like there's nothing Be could have done; they could have sold and marketed their own PCs but they didn't. They thought they could draft off the Wintel PC market without doing their own marketing and it didn't work. It's a dirty market and if you want to succeed you need serious money which they didn't have.