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Haiku OS developer is 22!!!! I loved BeOS and had such high hopes for it. Once again superior technology losses to Apple and Microsoft. Amazing Technology that

by baldfat 13y ago

Haiku OS developer is 22!!!! I loved BeOS and had such high hopes for it. Once again superior technology losses to Apple and Microsoft. Amazing Technology that loss (By pain factor. 1) Amiga (1985- ?) (It was light year ahead of everyone especially Apple (Toaster anyone) Drama from Commodore CEO was the cause of death. 2) BeOS (1992-2001) BeOS was to be OSX but Apple refused to pay more then $125 mill and BeOS wanted $200 mill. 3) Dvorak keyboard (1936) lost to QWERTY which was designed so poorly to slow down people's typing so that mechanical typewriters wouldn't jam. Dvorak keyboard was designed for typing speed.

jacquesm 13y ago
Re. 1: At the same time we had the Acorn 'Unicorn'. Amiga was a nice machine for its day but there were other good machines besides. The biggest factor that did the Amiga in is imo 'CDTV'. Re. 2: looks like superior tech lost to greed. Re. 3: I never felt that my typing speed was the limiting factor in my productivity.
- girvo 13y ago
  Greed? *shrugs, this was in the 90's. I don't think that's greed, just a difference on what two parties believed it was worth.
  - Nelson69 13y ago
    To really compare the two is kind of revisionist in ways. BeOS didn't have a complete production grade network stack at the time (this was pre-BONE.) Or printing (and Apple made their bones on the same thing on the screen being in your printed copy.) Or Multiuser. Or internationalization. There was a lot of stuff that had to be added to BeOS to make it Apple-class. Nevermind device support and nobody knows what the power foot print was like at the time. It does seem like there is a space for it though, if it runs on ARM and has some touch, I could see a ton of Raspberry Pi type projects where something like BeOS/Haiku could be really compelling. Seems like it could conceivably be an interesting android like competitor.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ebiester 13y ago
1. While the Amiga was ahead of Apple in some ways, there was a reason people bought the Macintosh. It was a better user experience for most people. 2. NeXT would have been considered the "Fantastic technology that was never appreciated" if everyone would have went with BeOS. And do you really think that the Be experience would have been the one that survived to OSX? 3. QWERTY being designed to slow people down is a myth long since debunked. Further, as i understand it, Colemak is the way to go today. Why is everyone sticking with Dvorak? :)
- collyw 13y ago
  Does querty not make a bit of sense again, with the advent of touchscreens? If it was designed to minimize key jams, then I would assume that it leads to less ambiguity in what words are being typed. (And the Amiga was a far superior experience to a Mac. It had colour for starters. )
  - ebiester 13y ago
    QWERTY doesn't really make sense from today's standpoint -- however, most of us still use it because switching costs are high. (I think about switching every once in a while...) But however much I prefered the Amiga due to my love for Commodore and the technical advantages, the Macintosh has a friendlier design.
  - wtallis 13y ago
    It seems like QWERTY might have a bit of an advantage for touchscreen use, but the three adjacent vowels (UIO) cancels it out.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  > While the Amiga was ahead of Apple in some ways, there was a reason people bought the Macintosh. It was a better user experience for most people. Where, USA? Because in Europe it was Atari ST and Amiga everywhere. The first time I could put my eyes on a physical Mac I was already at the university. We had just one little tiny room with 10 LCs and the secretaries at CS department had 3 more. On the other hand, we had lots of PCs, UNIX Terminals, Amiga and Ataris to choose from.
gillianseed 13y ago
>It was light year ahead of everyone especially Apple (Toaster anyone) Drama from Commodore CEO was the cause of death. I have to disagree here, the cause of death for Amiga was in my opinion the PC with which Amiga could not compete performance-wise due to sticking with the Motorola 680x0 cpu's. The Amiga's bitplane based graphics didn't help either as it was slow even with the dedicated blitter and when the PC got VGA mode x 'one byte per pixel' 256 color planar modes the jig was up in terms of the Amiga being able to keep up in terms of game graphics.
- baldfat 13y ago
  BUT that was 6+ years AFTER Amiga launched!
  - gillianseed 13y ago
    And we are talking (atleast I was) about the cause of why the Amiga died, are we talking past eachother ?
    - baldfat 13y ago
      >It was light years ahead of everyone especially Apple replace light years to 6+ years of everyone else. Not the reason it died. It died due to Amiga getting caught up in the biggest tech industry drama story.

by baldfat 13y ago

jacquesm 13y ago

Re. 1: At the same time we had the Acorn 'Unicorn'. Amiga was a nice machine for its day but there were other good machines besides. The biggest factor that did the Amiga in is imo 'CDTV'. Re. 2: looks like superior tech lost to greed. Re. 3: I never felt that my typing speed was the limiting factor in my productivity.

girvo 13y ago
Greed? *shrugs, this was in the 90's. I don't think that's greed, just a difference on what two parties believed it was worth.
- Nelson69 13y ago
  To really compare the two is kind of revisionist in ways. BeOS didn't have a complete production grade network stack at the time (this was pre-BONE.) Or printing (and Apple made their bones on the same thing on the screen being in your printed copy.) Or Multiuser. Or internationalization. There was a lot of stuff that had to be added to BeOS to make it Apple-class. Nevermind device support and nobody knows what the power foot print was like at the time. It does seem like there is a space for it though, if it runs on ARM and has some touch, I could see a ton of Raspberry Pi type projects where something like BeOS/Haiku could be really compelling. Seems like it could conceivably be an interesting android like competitor.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

ebiester 13y ago

1. While the Amiga was ahead of Apple in some ways, there was a reason people bought the Macintosh. It was a better user experience for most people. 2. NeXT would have been considered the "Fantastic technology that was never appreciated" if everyone would have went with BeOS. And do you really think that the Be experience would have been the one that survived to OSX? 3. QWERTY being designed to slow people down is a myth long since debunked. Further, as i understand it, Colemak is the way to go today. Why is everyone sticking with Dvorak? :)

collyw 13y ago
Does querty not make a bit of sense again, with the advent of touchscreens? If it was designed to minimize key jams, then I would assume that it leads to less ambiguity in what words are being typed. (And the Amiga was a far superior experience to a Mac. It had colour for starters. )
- ebiester 13y ago
  QWERTY doesn't really make sense from today's standpoint -- however, most of us still use it because switching costs are high. (I think about switching every once in a while...) But however much I prefered the Amiga due to my love for Commodore and the technical advantages, the Macintosh has a friendlier design.
- wtallis 13y ago
  It seems like QWERTY might have a bit of an advantage for touchscreen use, but the three adjacent vowels (UIO) cancels it out.
pjmlp 13y ago
> While the Amiga was ahead of Apple in some ways, there was a reason people bought the Macintosh. It was a better user experience for most people. Where, USA? Because in Europe it was Atari ST and Amiga everywhere. The first time I could put my eyes on a physical Mac I was already at the university. We had just one little tiny room with 10 LCs and the secretaries at CS department had 3 more. On the other hand, we had lots of PCs, UNIX Terminals, Amiga and Ataris to choose from.

gillianseed 13y ago

>It was light year ahead of everyone especially Apple (Toaster anyone) Drama from Commodore CEO was the cause of death. I have to disagree here, the cause of death for Amiga was in my opinion the PC with which Amiga could not compete performance-wise due to sticking with the Motorola 680x0 cpu's. The Amiga's bitplane based graphics didn't help either as it was slow even with the dedicated blitter and when the PC got VGA mode x 'one byte per pixel' 256 color planar modes the jig was up in terms of the Amiga being able to keep up in terms of game graphics.

baldfat 13y ago
BUT that was 6+ years AFTER Amiga launched!
- gillianseed 13y ago
  And we are talking (atleast I was) about the cause of why the Amiga died, are we talking past eachother ?
  - baldfat 13y ago
    >It was light years ahead of everyone especially Apple replace light years to 6+ years of everyone else. Not the reason it died. It died due to Amiga getting caught up in the biggest tech industry drama story.