9 ms·

I keep hearing that Apple acquired NeXT over Be because of every reason aside from quality of the technology. Was BeOS worse than NeXTSTEP?

by mcritz 15y ago

spooneybarger 15y ago
Worse is subjective. It was 'less ready for prime time'. It was amazing technology. It is still the most reliable desktop I ever had. It could play more videos/music etc at once with my 32 megs on a dual 66 ppc than my macbook pro w/ 4 gigs on memory and some 2.8ish dual core processor does today. Anecdote- I used to blow people ( including myself away ) by downloading large video and music files from the internet and then launching them and playing on a loop. I got up to play in the 20-30 range at once without any lack of responsiveness and with no stutter etc.
- 4ad 15y ago
  BeOS was a real time OS, all other client operating systems were not, and still aren't, real time. The responsiveness of BeOS and its multimedia capabilities were due to this design choice. It felt better when you were using the GUI, and maybe this is all that matters to most users, but the implementation was significantly poorer compared to NeXTSTEP. A real time OS has some advantages as a desktop OS, everything is instant and without lag, but the total throughput of the system is significantly lower. To make a stupid car analogy, a RTOS is a Ferrari while a conventional OS is a massive off-road vehicle. Personally I think a RTOS is the way to go for a desktop OS.
  - sharmajai 15y ago
    Good points. No wonder QNX feels so snappy on the playbook. I sometimes don't understand people's hate for the playbook, it is a wonderful tablet. IMHO it is a much better tablet than kindle fire (which is inspired heavily by the playbook btw), with TAT integration and two extra cameras and an active bezel. I time and time again feel that Google should buy rim and integrate QNX and Android.
  - artmageddon 15y ago
    Do you have any recommendations for a current real-time OS to use? I'd like to try one out on a desktop...
    - BerislavLopac 15y ago
      Windows CE, apparently... ;) But there seem to be some other interesting examples, like QNX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_sys...
    - zokier 15y ago
      Linux can be configured as RTOS too, but I doubt that it would improve desktop responsiveness.
      - 4ad 15y ago
        RTAI and Xenomai can be considered real time Linux and both require application support. Applications don't just become real time, they must be programmed that way. Common Linux desktop application are not programmed this way. RTLinux is more widely used than RTAI or Xenomai, but it's a completely different model, it's more like a hypervisor. Again, it doesn't help. While the OS provides the serivices, applications must be programmed specifically to use it.
    - luriel 15y ago
      "Real time" can mean many different things. And how "fast" and "real time" a desktop feels usually has little to do with the technically real time (or lack of thereof) of the kernel. That said, Plan 9 has an interesting implementation of real time capabilities: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/real_time/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/real_time/
  - jonhohle 15y ago
    BeOS is not a realtime OS. It's scheduler is just optimized for multimedia tasks and GUI responsiveness. The popular realtime OS from the BeOS glory days days was QNX (and it's Photon graphical interface), but it certainly never "felt" faster than BeOS on the same hardware.
    - 4ad 15y ago
      BeOS was definitely a real time OS. BeOS had two scheduling classes, threads with a priority level between 1-99 were time shared threads where the quantum was proportional with 2^priority_level, threads with a priority level between 100 and 120 were real time threads, they could preempt any other thread, including any kernel thread, they were locked to a CPU and never preempted. And when a real time thread was created, it preempted any time shared thread immediately, the scheduler run at creation, it wasn't only added to a scheduling queue like time shared threads. QNX is a still very popular realtime OS in the embedded world today. Btw, the OS run by the BlackBerry devices is QNX. Usually you'll find QNX in control systems like avionics.
      - jonhohle 15y ago
        From what I've read, "realtime" threads with higher priority could preempt other realtime threads, meaning they could be pre-empted.
        4ad 15y ago
        That's true of every other RTOS out there, in fact, it's required to be this way in order to provide deterministic latency.
cubicle67 15y ago
Memory's pretty hazy here, so someone correct me where I'm wrong One of the major deficiencies in Apple's OS at the time was lack of real multi user capabilities; like Windows pre XP. NeXT, coming from BSD, had this built in but BeOS was pretty much a single user OS
- i386 15y ago
  No the problem wasn't multiuser support it was multitasking (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking).
  - kls 15y ago
    As well as Multiprocessor support, cooperative memory management AKA lack of OS controlled memory management and a host of other issues. Remember OS7 shared lineage from the original OS1, some sins that they hacked to make it work back then, where hard to remove after the fact. While they where technical marvels at the time (1984) they became handcuffs later on.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      I have (fond?) memories of using Get Info on various applications and setting how much memory they would take from the OS, and then going to About This Macintosh to check how much memory I had left over. Incidentally, up until version 7.6, the Mac OS was simply called "System", as in "System 6" and "System 7". (Systems 1-5 were rapidly iterated through and forgotten--even System 6 still ran on a Mac Plus). Mac OS 7.6 was the first version that was designed to run on clones, hence the change from generic "System" to "Mac OS".
kls 15y ago
Most people at the time felt that BeOS was the better choice. BeOS was ready and could have replaced MacOS the next day, it was already being marketed as a replacement for MacOS and I think that is why Gassée tried to kill the deal, I think he truly thought that people where going to buy a Mac and switch to BeOS. The only thing that BeOS was missing was apps, had he been able to convince more flagship app makers like Photoshop to develop their apps for BeOS he may have succeeded, it really was the only thing that was missing. Meanwhile NeXT was reworked over the next couple of years just to get it running on the hardware and then the first versions of OSX where horribly slow. So Apple spent lost 2 years and had a slower product by going with NeXT when BeOS was ready to go, most people at the time did not see the logic. Today history has plaid out and the truth is they where not just buying an OS they needed much more.
- lobster_johnson 15y ago
  > BeOS was ready BeOS was arguably less ready than NeXTSTEP, lacking a network stack and printing (as has been pointed out elsewhere), and had very few apps and very few users, whereas NeXT was already deployed and in use by a lot of people. > and could have replaced MacOS the next day Not at all. One of the main points that MacOS had to support Mac application. There is no way that Apple ever would have released a Mac operating system (be it Copland, Rhapsody or MacOS X) without a "yellow box" MacOS System 8 layer. Didn't happen with NeXTSTEP either -- a lot of stuff, like QuickTime and Finder, had to be ported over first.
  - microtherion 15y ago
    "yellow box" was more or less the NeXTStep stuff, the Classic emulation was the "blue box". http://lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml http://lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml Originally, Carbon was not in the plans at all (the yellow box corresponded to what is nowadays referred to as Cocoa). Adding that was a substantial additional task, but probably well worth it.
    - lobster_johnson 15y ago
      Yeah, sorry, I meant blue box.
Nelson69 15y ago
There is a lot of emotion people have in a question like this. I think the best answer is BeOS wasn't as complete as NeXT. Specifically it had a fairly poor network stack (it was being retooled around the time BeOS became part of palm, no idea if it was finished) It lacked the kind of print support MacOS and NeXT had. It lacked the same caliber of internationalization. All fixable stuff but also all stuff requiring some investment. It also remains to be seen how well BeOS would actually scale, it was an RTOS with a UI, it could absolutely do sexy stuff on low powered machines of the day, that doesn't mean it could run a 12core dual i7 machine well. Maybe it could, we really don't know.
- lcargill99 15y ago
  iZ Corporation's RADAR runs on BeOS. It's a DAW system of exceedingly high quality. We can only guess how well it'd scale, but Be looks to me not to be the sort of software that helps sell hardware.
- tambourine_man 15y ago
  Almost nothing runs great on that many cores. Certainly not Xnu.
RexRollman 15y ago
The one thing I seem to recall, and this is fuzzy, is that BeOS had issues with large applications, like Firefox. I don't know if that was true or not.

I keep hearing that Apple acquired NeXT over Be because of every reason aside from quality of the technology. Was BeOS worse than NeXTSTEP?

by mcritz 15y ago

I keep hearing that Apple acquired NeXT over Be because of every reason aside from quality of the technology. Was BeOS worse than NeXTSTEP?

spooneybarger 15y ago

Worse is subjective. It was 'less ready for prime time'. It was amazing technology. It is still the most reliable desktop I ever had. It could play more videos/music etc at once with my 32 megs on a dual 66 ppc than my macbook pro w/ 4 gigs on memory and some 2.8ish dual core processor does today. Anecdote- I used to blow people ( including myself away ) by downloading large video and music files from the internet and then launching them and playing on a loop. I got up to play in the 20-30 range at once without any lack of responsiveness and with no stutter etc.

4ad 15y ago
BeOS was a real time OS, all other client operating systems were not, and still aren't, real time. The responsiveness of BeOS and its multimedia capabilities were due to this design choice. It felt better when you were using the GUI, and maybe this is all that matters to most users, but the implementation was significantly poorer compared to NeXTSTEP. A real time OS has some advantages as a desktop OS, everything is instant and without lag, but the total throughput of the system is significantly lower. To make a stupid car analogy, a RTOS is a Ferrari while a conventional OS is a massive off-road vehicle. Personally I think a RTOS is the way to go for a desktop OS.
- sharmajai 15y ago
  Good points. No wonder QNX feels so snappy on the playbook. I sometimes don't understand people's hate for the playbook, it is a wonderful tablet. IMHO it is a much better tablet than kindle fire (which is inspired heavily by the playbook btw), with TAT integration and two extra cameras and an active bezel. I time and time again feel that Google should buy rim and integrate QNX and Android.
- artmageddon 15y ago
  Do you have any recommendations for a current real-time OS to use? I'd like to try one out on a desktop...
  - BerislavLopac 15y ago
    Windows CE, apparently... ;) But there seem to be some other interesting examples, like QNX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_sys...
  - zokier 15y ago
    Linux can be configured as RTOS too, but I doubt that it would improve desktop responsiveness.
    - 4ad 15y ago
      RTAI and Xenomai can be considered real time Linux and both require application support. Applications don't just become real time, they must be programmed that way. Common Linux desktop application are not programmed this way. RTLinux is more widely used than RTAI or Xenomai, but it's a completely different model, it's more like a hypervisor. Again, it doesn't help. While the OS provides the serivices, applications must be programmed specifically to use it.
  - luriel 15y ago
    "Real time" can mean many different things. And how "fast" and "real time" a desktop feels usually has little to do with the technically real time (or lack of thereof) of the kernel. That said, Plan 9 has an interesting implementation of real time capabilities: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/real_time/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/real_time/
- jonhohle 15y ago
  BeOS is not a realtime OS. It's scheduler is just optimized for multimedia tasks and GUI responsiveness. The popular realtime OS from the BeOS glory days days was QNX (and it's Photon graphical interface), but it certainly never "felt" faster than BeOS on the same hardware.
  - 4ad 15y ago
    BeOS was definitely a real time OS. BeOS had two scheduling classes, threads with a priority level between 1-99 were time shared threads where the quantum was proportional with 2^priority_level, threads with a priority level between 100 and 120 were real time threads, they could preempt any other thread, including any kernel thread, they were locked to a CPU and never preempted. And when a real time thread was created, it preempted any time shared thread immediately, the scheduler run at creation, it wasn't only added to a scheduling queue like time shared threads. QNX is a still very popular realtime OS in the embedded world today. Btw, the OS run by the BlackBerry devices is QNX. Usually you'll find QNX in control systems like avionics.
    - jonhohle 15y ago
      From what I've read, "realtime" threads with higher priority could preempt other realtime threads, meaning they could be pre-empted.
      - 4ad 15y ago
        That's true of every other RTOS out there, in fact, it's required to be this way in order to provide deterministic latency.

cubicle67 15y ago

Memory's pretty hazy here, so someone correct me where I'm wrong One of the major deficiencies in Apple's OS at the time was lack of real multi user capabilities; like Windows pre XP. NeXT, coming from BSD, had this built in but BeOS was pretty much a single user OS

i386 15y ago
No the problem wasn't multiuser support it was multitasking (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking).
- kls 15y ago
  As well as Multiprocessor support, cooperative memory management AKA lack of OS controlled memory management and a host of other issues. Remember OS7 shared lineage from the original OS1, some sins that they hacked to make it work back then, where hard to remove after the fact. While they where technical marvels at the time (1984) they became handcuffs later on.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I have (fond?) memories of using Get Info on various applications and setting how much memory they would take from the OS, and then going to About This Macintosh to check how much memory I had left over. Incidentally, up until version 7.6, the Mac OS was simply called "System", as in "System 6" and "System 7". (Systems 1-5 were rapidly iterated through and forgotten--even System 6 still ran on a Mac Plus). Mac OS 7.6 was the first version that was designed to run on clones, hence the change from generic "System" to "Mac OS".

kls 15y ago

Most people at the time felt that BeOS was the better choice. BeOS was ready and could have replaced MacOS the next day, it was already being marketed as a replacement for MacOS and I think that is why Gassée tried to kill the deal, I think he truly thought that people where going to buy a Mac and switch to BeOS. The only thing that BeOS was missing was apps, had he been able to convince more flagship app makers like Photoshop to develop their apps for BeOS he may have succeeded, it really was the only thing that was missing. Meanwhile NeXT was reworked over the next couple of years just to get it running on the hardware and then the first versions of OSX where horribly slow. So Apple spent lost 2 years and had a slower product by going with NeXT when BeOS was ready to go, most people at the time did not see the logic. Today history has plaid out and the truth is they where not just buying an OS they needed much more.

lobster_johnson 15y ago
> BeOS was ready BeOS was arguably less ready than NeXTSTEP, lacking a network stack and printing (as has been pointed out elsewhere), and had very few apps and very few users, whereas NeXT was already deployed and in use by a lot of people. > and could have replaced MacOS the next day Not at all. One of the main points that MacOS had to support Mac application. There is no way that Apple ever would have released a Mac operating system (be it Copland, Rhapsody or MacOS X) without a "yellow box" MacOS System 8 layer. Didn't happen with NeXTSTEP either -- a lot of stuff, like QuickTime and Finder, had to be ported over first.
- microtherion 15y ago
  "yellow box" was more or less the NeXTStep stuff, the Classic emulation was the "blue box". http://lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml http://lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml Originally, Carbon was not in the plans at all (the yellow box corresponded to what is nowadays referred to as Cocoa). Adding that was a substantial additional task, but probably well worth it.
  - lobster_johnson 15y ago
    Yeah, sorry, I meant blue box.

Nelson69 15y ago

There is a lot of emotion people have in a question like this. I think the best answer is BeOS wasn't as complete as NeXT. Specifically it had a fairly poor network stack (it was being retooled around the time BeOS became part of palm, no idea if it was finished) It lacked the kind of print support MacOS and NeXT had. It lacked the same caliber of internationalization. All fixable stuff but also all stuff requiring some investment. It also remains to be seen how well BeOS would actually scale, it was an RTOS with a UI, it could absolutely do sexy stuff on low powered machines of the day, that doesn't mean it could run a 12core dual i7 machine well. Maybe it could, we really don't know.

lcargill99 15y ago
iZ Corporation's RADAR runs on BeOS. It's a DAW system of exceedingly high quality. We can only guess how well it'd scale, but Be looks to me not to be the sort of software that helps sell hardware.
tambourine_man 15y ago
Almost nothing runs great on that many cores. Certainly not Xnu.

RexRollman 15y ago

The one thing I seem to recall, and this is fuzzy, is that BeOS had issues with large applications, like Firefox. I don't know if that was true or not.