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“There are several sample applications included which demonstrate what it is capable of.” This was the mantra of BeOs. Here’s a technology preview. Watch vid

“There are several sample applications included which demonstrate what it is capable of.” This was the mantra of BeOs. Here’s a technology preview. Watch videos on a cube, now a sphere! The OS was sold as a technology preview that was easy and accessible and the users only needed to wait for developers… …that never showed up. Similar occurrence with Microsoft phones and lack of developers. Pebble watch and lack of developers… What these projects all lack are meaningful engagement instead of a few ‘oh wow’ moments.

deleted 1y ago
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cjbgkagh 1y ago
Microsoft Phone was a giant pile of unforced errors on Microsoft’s part, it wasn’t the developers fault, that thing was a POS that never got better.
Apocryphon 1y ago
Microsoft making it difficult for users to run BeOS didn’t make things easy. > The Flora Prius was preinstalled with both Microsoft Windows 98 as well as BeOS. It did not, however, have a dual-boot option as Microsoft reminded Hitachi of the terms of the Windows OEM license.[4] In effect, two thirds of the hard drive was hidden from the end-user, and a series of complicated manipulations was necessary to activate the BeOS partition.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius
chipotle_coyote 1y ago
I mean, I get that argument, but I actually ran BeOS full-time for over a year. It had a great Works-style office suite (GoBe Productive) written by the people who wrote ClarisWorks, a few good graphics programs including an amazing competitor to Macromedia Fireworks (e-Picture), a solid BBEdit-like programming editor (Pe), a few music programs that did things that I’m not sure I’ve seen other systems do to this day like SoundPlay’s wacky ability to act as a mixer, with speed control, between multiple MP3 files or ObjektSynth’s…object-oriented synthesizer (it’s very hard to describe). There was a stage control system for live performances whose name I forget now—the company is still around, as far as I know—that was used, running on BeOS, for several Broadway shows and Circue de Soleil installations. And an animation program that started on BeOS, Moho, is still around today. The engagement was certainly starting, and I think there’s a chance—a small one, to be sure, but a chance—that if Be, Inc., hadn’t clearly decided that carving out a comfortable niche just wasn’t enough, BeOS might have succeeded. (Instead they decided to go all-in on “Internet Appliances,” which ended up dealing them the death blow rather than a big success. Ironically, I think that market effectively succeeded a decade later, but in the form of the iPad.)

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cjbgkagh 1y ago

Microsoft Phone was a giant pile of unforced errors on Microsoft’s part, it wasn’t the developers fault, that thing was a POS that never got better.

Apocryphon 1y ago

Microsoft making it difficult for users to run BeOS didn’t make things easy. > The Flora Prius was preinstalled with both Microsoft Windows 98 as well as BeOS. It did not, however, have a dual-boot option as Microsoft reminded Hitachi of the terms of the Windows OEM license.[4] In effect, two thirds of the hard drive was hidden from the end-user, and a series of complicated manipulations was necessary to activate the BeOS partition.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Flora_Prius

chipotle_coyote 1y ago

I mean, I get that argument, but I actually ran BeOS full-time for over a year. It had a great Works-style office suite (GoBe Productive) written by the people who wrote ClarisWorks, a few good graphics programs including an amazing competitor to Macromedia Fireworks (e-Picture), a solid BBEdit-like programming editor (Pe), a few music programs that did things that I’m not sure I’ve seen other systems do to this day like SoundPlay’s wacky ability to act as a mixer, with speed control, between multiple MP3 files or ObjektSynth’s…object-oriented synthesizer (it’s very hard to describe). There was a stage control system for live performances whose name I forget now—the company is still around, as far as I know—that was used, running on BeOS, for several Broadway shows and Circue de Soleil installations. And an animation program that started on BeOS, Moho, is still around today. The engagement was certainly starting, and I think there’s a chance—a small one, to be sure, but a chance—that if Be, Inc., hadn’t clearly decided that carving out a comfortable niche just wasn’t enough, BeOS might have succeeded. (Instead they decided to go all-in on “Internet Appliances,” which ended up dealing them the death blow rather than a big success. Ironically, I think that market effectively succeeded a decade later, but in the form of the iPad.)