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I still remember this time quite vividly. Apple had fired Jobs years earlier and knew that MacOS was not a modern enough operating system to make them competit

I still remember this time quite vividly. Apple had fired Jobs years earlier and knew that MacOS was not a modern enough operating system to make them competitive. BeOS and NeXT were competing for Apple's partnership to make the next Mac operating system. At the time I had an Intel pII Xeon desktop from Dell that had a nvidia monster video card and turtle beach sound card. Oddly enough, the processor, video card, and sound card were all compatible with BeOS so I had an unofficia x86 BeBox. The official BeBox was a PPC box. BeOS was chosen to be the successor to MacOS 9 until the 11th hour, when a meeting with Jobs and the board of Apple met. BeOS was dumped almost immediately for NeXT that night. BeOS was a completely new operating system while NeXT was based on a Mach OS BSD base (later to become Darwin BSD). Be Inc fell apart and sold to 3Com, which sold to HP eventually and there it was neglected and mothballed. Haiku came out later to try and bring the project back, but at the time of Haiku's release Be was already over a decade old and the code had not kept up. There was so much momentum in the BeOS world before the 3com acquisition that was stifled and killed. Now this period of time is often referred to as "When NeXT bought Apple with Apple's money."

coldcode 5y ago
I left Apple almost exactly a year before this, but I remember how totally horrific the Copland dev was, hundreds of engineers writing crap with hardly any coordination. It was pretty depressing to come to work because we had almost no money for anything, and no real hope for a future. I assumed Apple was doomed if they continued as they were so I left. If I had only known what was going to happen I would have stayed. Oopsy.
- superdug 5y ago
  At the time, it was a sport of sorts to predict when Apple would fold entirely. It was always imminent. Then came Mac OS X, iMac, iBook, and iPod ... and the rest is history
  - macintux 5y ago
    I don’t think the word “beleaguered” fully abandoned Apple headlines until after 2010.
    - MBCook 5y ago
      Oh no. They were doomed to fail. Any day now. The original iMac was a joke. At least 20 different iPod killers came out every year and the media rooted for them. Then the iPhone came out and was a joke. Any minute now blackberry will release their new touchscreen model and wipe Apple off the map. Then Android was going to eat Apple‘s lunch. Then the iPad was announced and was a joke. Then android tablets were going to kill that market. At every step Apple was a few months from being bankrupt and useless. Because Dell/Google/HP/RIM/Sony/whoever would undercut their CLEARLY overpriced product and their sales would evaporate. At some point in the last five to seven years you started to see if you were in fewer of those takes. In 2018 Apple became the first trillion dollar company and somewhere along the line the “Apple‘s going to fail any day now“ meme died. It’s very clear Apple is here to stay. But don’t worry. Every product is a failure. After all Steve Jobs died and the company can’t work without him. The iPad was going to be a failure. The Apple Watch was going to be a failure. The AirPods were going to be a failure. So don’t worry. There’s still tons of Apple pessimism available. It just changed targets.
      - macintux 5y ago
        They hit trillion dollar market cap in 2018, not 2008. In 08-10 the accounting for iPhone sales (GAAP? I don't recall the details, just regurgitating what I read at the time, had something to do with the way the devices were subsidized) seems to have not yet made it obvious how much money Apple was printing. I knew from following people much smarter than me that I should be investing all my money in Apple stocks, I just didn't have any to invest.
        MBCook 5y ago
        You are 100% right. I had to look up when Apple became $1 trillion company and yet somehow I typed the wrong number. The iPhone 3GS took off quite well, but I’m not sure it was really clear to people just how big of a juggernaut it was until the iPhone 4, especially when it came to Verizon.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  Did they do RSUs back then?
ksec 5y ago
> nvidia monster video card Is that the Diamond Monster 3D? I thought those were 3Dfx Voodoo only?
- superdug 5y ago
  It was indeed. I forgot that 3dfx was the official owner when the card was bought, it was the geforce drivers that were made for it that I remember came after Nvidia bought 3dfx.
icelancer 5y ago
> BeOS was chosen to be the successor to MacOS 9 until the 11th hour, when a meeting with Jobs and the board of Apple met. BeOS was dumped almost immediately for NeXT that night. Somewhat. Be's CEO way overplayed their hand and left the door open for Jobs (or anyone else) to come in and steal their opportunity. Which is exactly what happened. The internal valuation Be had of themselves was completely delusional, as just a few years after the Apple-NeXT merger showed. It's too bad. BeOS was a thing of beauty. I still have fond memories of it.
- superdug 5y ago
  The BeOS bootloader was my favorite part of BeOS. It was more than happy to work alongside other operating systems and made sure if you had other ones installed that you could still get to them after install. Something Windows absolutely refused to do automatically and would wreck your MBR as would some "helpful" linux distributions at the time. Linux alongside Be was amazing, but BeOS didn't have a decent browser or office suite to keep them in the market after getting dumped by apple. After apple they tried to make a mobile operating system, but there wasn't any momentum for that and Symbian was pretty much accepted as the standard.
DerekL 5y ago
> Be Inc fell apart and sold to 3Com, which sold to HP eventually and there it was neglected and mothballed. No. 3Com spun off Palm in 2000. Palm bought Be in 2001. Palm then spun off its software division as PalmSource, which was later purchased by ACCESS. So ACCESS owns BeOS, not HP.

coldcode 5y ago

I left Apple almost exactly a year before this, but I remember how totally horrific the Copland dev was, hundreds of engineers writing crap with hardly any coordination. It was pretty depressing to come to work because we had almost no money for anything, and no real hope for a future. I assumed Apple was doomed if they continued as they were so I left. If I had only known what was going to happen I would have stayed. Oopsy.

superdug 5y ago
At the time, it was a sport of sorts to predict when Apple would fold entirely. It was always imminent. Then came Mac OS X, iMac, iBook, and iPod ... and the rest is history
- macintux 5y ago
  I don’t think the word “beleaguered” fully abandoned Apple headlines until after 2010.
  - MBCook 5y ago
    Oh no. They were doomed to fail. Any day now. The original iMac was a joke. At least 20 different iPod killers came out every year and the media rooted for them. Then the iPhone came out and was a joke. Any minute now blackberry will release their new touchscreen model and wipe Apple off the map. Then Android was going to eat Apple‘s lunch. Then the iPad was announced and was a joke. Then android tablets were going to kill that market. At every step Apple was a few months from being bankrupt and useless. Because Dell/Google/HP/RIM/Sony/whoever would undercut their CLEARLY overpriced product and their sales would evaporate. At some point in the last five to seven years you started to see if you were in fewer of those takes. In 2018 Apple became the first trillion dollar company and somewhere along the line the “Apple‘s going to fail any day now“ meme died. It’s very clear Apple is here to stay. But don’t worry. Every product is a failure. After all Steve Jobs died and the company can’t work without him. The iPad was going to be a failure. The Apple Watch was going to be a failure. The AirPods were going to be a failure. So don’t worry. There’s still tons of Apple pessimism available. It just changed targets.
    - macintux 5y ago
      They hit trillion dollar market cap in 2018, not 2008. In 08-10 the accounting for iPhone sales (GAAP? I don't recall the details, just regurgitating what I read at the time, had something to do with the way the devices were subsidized) seems to have not yet made it obvious how much money Apple was printing. I knew from following people much smarter than me that I should be investing all my money in Apple stocks, I just didn't have any to invest.
      - MBCook 5y ago
        You are 100% right. I had to look up when Apple became $1 trillion company and yet somehow I typed the wrong number. The iPhone 3GS took off quite well, but I’m not sure it was really clear to people just how big of a juggernaut it was until the iPhone 4, especially when it came to Verizon.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Did they do RSUs back then?

ksec 5y ago

> nvidia monster video card Is that the Diamond Monster 3D? I thought those were 3Dfx Voodoo only?

superdug 5y ago
It was indeed. I forgot that 3dfx was the official owner when the card was bought, it was the geforce drivers that were made for it that I remember came after Nvidia bought 3dfx.

icelancer 5y ago

> BeOS was chosen to be the successor to MacOS 9 until the 11th hour, when a meeting with Jobs and the board of Apple met. BeOS was dumped almost immediately for NeXT that night. Somewhat. Be's CEO way overplayed their hand and left the door open for Jobs (or anyone else) to come in and steal their opportunity. Which is exactly what happened. The internal valuation Be had of themselves was completely delusional, as just a few years after the Apple-NeXT merger showed. It's too bad. BeOS was a thing of beauty. I still have fond memories of it.

superdug 5y ago
The BeOS bootloader was my favorite part of BeOS. It was more than happy to work alongside other operating systems and made sure if you had other ones installed that you could still get to them after install. Something Windows absolutely refused to do automatically and would wreck your MBR as would some "helpful" linux distributions at the time. Linux alongside Be was amazing, but BeOS didn't have a decent browser or office suite to keep them in the market after getting dumped by apple. After apple they tried to make a mobile operating system, but there wasn't any momentum for that and Symbian was pretty much accepted as the standard.

DerekL 5y ago

> Be Inc fell apart and sold to 3Com, which sold to HP eventually and there it was neglected and mothballed. No. 3Com spun off Palm in 2000. Palm bought Be in 2001. Palm then spun off its software division as PalmSource, which was later purchased by ACCESS. So ACCESS owns BeOS, not HP.