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Compared to NeXTStep, BeOS was a wildly incomplete tech demo of a relatively incremental improvement to the classic MacOS formula. It was only a “serious conten

Compared to NeXTStep, BeOS was a wildly incomplete tech demo of a relatively incremental improvement to the classic MacOS formula. It was only a “serious contender” in the media and in the headcanon of Apple’s fan base.

alwillis 4y ago
Compared to NeXTStep, BeOS was a wildly incomplete tech demo So true. Even though the market share of NeXTStep never got very high, it was a robust, battle-tested operating system that ran on multiple processor architectures with real software like FreeHand and Lotus Improv, an amazing spreadsheet for the time that would hold up pretty well today. And interestingly enough, one of the main BeOS guys ended up at Apple and worked on APFS.
cbm-vic-20 4y ago
BeOS was also multi-platform (PPC and later IA-32), like NeXTStep. Anyway, yes, it was rough around the edges, but it was way more accessible; the hardware was a lot less expensive, and when sold as a standalone OS, was also reasonably priced for a hobbyist. There were a lot of great ideas in there, especially compared to the Windows, MacOS, and the various other *nixes of the time. I'm not saying Apple made the wrong choice to be reverse-acquired by NeXT, obviously, they've done pretty well. But an alternate universe where Apple acquired BeOS is well within the imagination.
- simondotau 4y ago
  In an alternate universe where Apple acquired Be, we'd see another Copland-esque slow moving catastrophe as the skeletal and unproven Be technology was cobbled together with everything needed to execute a plausible transition plan for the existing System 7 platform. This had every prospect of turning the Macintosh into another Amiga: even if a BeOS technology transition was a miraculous success, Apple's prospects as a company would be largely unchanged, because the real problems at Apple wasn't technology, it was a lack of leadership. Would a Be acquisition do anything about the hundreds of engineers fritting away at dead ends like Pippin, OpenDoc and NewtonOS? Would it have stopped Apple from selling awful flawed hardware like the Power Macintosh 5000 and 6000 series? Unlikely. It's easy to forget just how ridiculous the Apple Computer of 1996 was. It was a company destined to — and deserved to — be consigned to the history books. As valuable as the NeXT technology was to Apple, its importance is utterly dwarfed by the actions of Steve Jobs to rip away at the junk and rebuild the company in every sense of the word.
usefulcat 4y ago
I tried both back in the day, and tech demo is exactly right (a really cool tech demo, to be sure! but still). The OS came with a simple task manager-type app that had two buttons on it that could be used to disable either processor (to demonstrate how it affected system performance, I guess?). Thought I, "Hmm, surely they wouldn't let you turn off both.." But nope; everything immediately halted. By comparison, NeXTStep was quite polished, certainly by the time it was available for x86, which is when I used it.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  I now want to install BeOS and halt each processor core until the machine halts. Or at least see a video.
vetinari 4y ago
Agree; while they had some very nice ideas (like taking their filesystem capabilities and tracker and make it into basic email), they did some things that would be fatal: like locking their ABI into gcc 2.95 C++ ABI. Which was immediately a problem, when gcc 3.0 came out. Ugh.

alwillis 4y ago

Compared to NeXTStep, BeOS was a wildly incomplete tech demo So true. Even though the market share of NeXTStep never got very high, it was a robust, battle-tested operating system that ran on multiple processor architectures with real software like FreeHand and Lotus Improv, an amazing spreadsheet for the time that would hold up pretty well today. And interestingly enough, one of the main BeOS guys ended up at Apple and worked on APFS.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

BeOS was also multi-platform (PPC and later IA-32), like NeXTStep. Anyway, yes, it was rough around the edges, but it was way more accessible; the hardware was a lot less expensive, and when sold as a standalone OS, was also reasonably priced for a hobbyist. There were a lot of great ideas in there, especially compared to the Windows, MacOS, and the various other *nixes of the time. I'm not saying Apple made the wrong choice to be reverse-acquired by NeXT, obviously, they've done pretty well. But an alternate universe where Apple acquired BeOS is well within the imagination.

simondotau 4y ago
In an alternate universe where Apple acquired Be, we'd see another Copland-esque slow moving catastrophe as the skeletal and unproven Be technology was cobbled together with everything needed to execute a plausible transition plan for the existing System 7 platform. This had every prospect of turning the Macintosh into another Amiga: even if a BeOS technology transition was a miraculous success, Apple's prospects as a company would be largely unchanged, because the real problems at Apple wasn't technology, it was a lack of leadership. Would a Be acquisition do anything about the hundreds of engineers fritting away at dead ends like Pippin, OpenDoc and NewtonOS? Would it have stopped Apple from selling awful flawed hardware like the Power Macintosh 5000 and 6000 series? Unlikely. It's easy to forget just how ridiculous the Apple Computer of 1996 was. It was a company destined to — and deserved to — be consigned to the history books. As valuable as the NeXT technology was to Apple, its importance is utterly dwarfed by the actions of Steve Jobs to rip away at the junk and rebuild the company in every sense of the word.

usefulcat 4y ago

I tried both back in the day, and tech demo is exactly right (a really cool tech demo, to be sure! but still). The OS came with a simple task manager-type app that had two buttons on it that could be used to disable either processor (to demonstrate how it affected system performance, I guess?). Thought I, "Hmm, surely they wouldn't let you turn off both.." But nope; everything immediately halted. By comparison, NeXTStep was quite polished, certainly by the time it was available for x86, which is when I used it.

alexvoda 4y ago
I now want to install BeOS and halt each processor core until the machine halts. Or at least see a video.

vetinari 4y ago

Agree; while they had some very nice ideas (like taking their filesystem capabilities and tracker and make it into basic email), they did some things that would be fatal: like locking their ABI into gcc 2.95 C++ ABI. Which was immediately a problem, when gcc 3.0 came out. Ugh.