Be failed for a few reasons (IMHO) a, it took them ages to get from a 'demo' of an OS to a final shipping OS. B, they went directly up against M$ with a 'cost' OS (Unlike Linux which is Free-ish) c, There was like NO APP'S. It started out as a Multimedia OS, but no big company's (Adobe, Macromidia etc.) ever made any products for it. No OS can survive without Big Apps.
They had started to try and sell the OS to company's making Web appliances (Sony made one) but these things never sold well.
I wish I could've tried BeOS once, but I couldn't since it's not compatible anymore with just about anything. I hope I could one of these days, too bad nobody puts any attention to it these days. your right, it's dead. err, it must be tough. who runs linux here? e.g. red hat, mandrake etc?? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Actually they had the idea from the beginning that they could get Apple to buy it from them. After all most of the owners worked at Apple at one time. But they was asking way too much money for it. I think Apple offered them $170million and they was wanting 300mil. I find it funny that Palm bought them for 20mil.
They should have took the deal when Apple offered it
But yes the main reason Be never took off was cause of Application support. I was all ready to switch over to Be at one time.. but it never happened.
<strong>Actually they had the idea from the beginning that they could get Apple to buy it from them. After all most of the owners worked at Apple at one time. But they was asking way too much money for it. I think Apple offered them $170million and they was wanting 300mil. I find it funny that Palm bought them for 20mil.
They should have took the deal when Apple offered it
But yes the main reason Be never took off was cause of Application support. I was all ready to switch over to Be at one time.. but it never happened.</strong><hr></blockquote>
funny how the Be asking price constantly changes with mac users
BeOS is great. If you own an old PCI mac preG3 by all means buy BeOS. You'll be truly amazed at how fast a mac really is. the Mac OS does not do justice. It's an amazing difference.
<strong>Be failed for a few reasons (IMHO) a, it took them ages to get from a 'demo' of an OS to a final shipping OS. B, they went directly up against M$ with a 'cost' OS (Unlike Linux which is Free-ish) c, There was like NO APP'S. It started out as a Multimedia OS, but no big company's (Adobe, Macromidia etc.) ever made any products for it. No OS can survive without Big Apps.
They had started to try and sell the OS to company's making Web appliances (Sony made one) but these things never sold well.
took to long to go from a demo to a shipping product? The Bebox was released. that's where it started. that didn't get enough sales. they ported to mac in less than a year and a half. This is when Apple expressed interest in buying them. Apple screwed them into believing they would and then at the very last minute Apple bought NeXT. Be was screwed. They had a shipping product but who would buy BeOS for the Mac when Apple was going to come out with their own modern OS and when Apple was giving Be no support at all. So they ported to X86 but it was too late.
How can you blame a company for lack of developer support when they were forced to port their OS 2 times in 3 years?
Considering all that BeOS 5.0.3 is amazing piece of software, has plenty of apps to get by for normal things and could have had a place in the future had Be had money to invest in it
[quote]He did have vision, but seemed to lack enough practicality to be able to profitably implement that vision. Basically why he left Apple in the first place, his vision wasn't supported by the top of the food chain.<hr></blockquote>
Apple screwed them into believing they would and then at the very last minute Apple bought NeXT. Be was screwed. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Aw, bad ol' Apple.
Gassée was quoted as saying, re his negotiations with Apple, "I've got them by the balls, and I'm going to squeeze until it hurts." He tried to play hardball, and he lost; he has no one to blame but himself for what became of Be.
Gassée was quoted as saying, re his negotiations with Apple, "I've got them by the balls, and I'm going to squeeze until it hurts." He tried to play hardball, and he lost; he has no one to blame but himself for what became of Be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And yes that is exactly what happened. Gassée even started Be thinking Apple would eventually buy them. Gassée thought Apple had no other choice.. had them "by the balls" and was asking WAY too much for a company that wasn't worth that. He was trying to rob them blind at Apple's expense.
I ran a later incarnation of the BeOS (Release four aka R4) on a dual Pentium II 350 with 128MB of RAM and an U/W SCSI controller with an attached U/W SCSI HD. While it is true that the BeOS really lacked quality name-brand apps, there were a number of options available to those who looked around. I used the OS on a daily basis for my normal stuff (www browsing, email, IMs, html coding, etc) and it did things quite well.
There were a few things I found to be particularly amazing about the BeOS. The demos of it are true to what the OS can actually do, while other demos of OSes (MacOS X 10.x comes to mind) aren't always completely accurate representations of what goes on. On R4, you could play multiple movies, run OpenGL demos at high framerates, play mp3s backwards (or eight at once, backwards, all at varying speeds) and encode audio to the mp3 format, all at the same time. While this isn't very practical, it did show the immense power behind the OS.
When comparing R4 (and later R4.5) to Windows, I was amazed at how it utilized my machine's second processor. Through some very rough benchmarks I ran on that machine, I found that Windows NT 4 sp5 had between a 50% and 75% speed boost with the second processor enabled. Doing the same for BeOS would show gains of above 90%, effictively doubling the computer's overall processing capacity.
It really is a shame that the BeOS went under in such a fashion. With some name brand apps and more hardware support, it really could have gone places. I guess it'll always remain as a true geek's OS.
Be was asking for 3 and wouldn't settle less than 2</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wasn't saying your figure was wrong. I was saying that the figure constantly changes when mac users talk about it.
[quote]And yes that is exactly what happened. Gassée even started Be thinking Apple would eventually buy them. Gassée thought Apple had no other choice.. had them "by the balls" and was asking WAY too much for a company that wasn't worth that. He was trying to rob them blind at Apple's expense. <hr></blockquote>
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually he wasn't. NeXT had a lot more money invested in it than Be. AND it was a lot further along than Be was. Be would have also taken longer to get it to the final product.
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.</strong><hr></blockquote>
So first it's Apple's fault for screwing Be, and now it turns out Jobs actually screwed Apple?
Apple paid the amount that NeXT was worth to them. Part of the reason for that may well have been that Jobs is a better salesman than Gassee, but that's how business works.
BeOS was great. I started with R4 on my PowerMac 7300, and I loved it. Took a little getting used to, but I thought it was much more solid than the MacOS, and I was so hoping Apple would buy them out.
Thing is, people are right when they said it didn't have enough apps. I still stuck with OS 8 most of the time, because I wanted to actually get things done. And when I bought an iMac, it was too late... Apple stopped talking with Be, so no more support for new models. And I had just grabbed R4.5 too.
Put simply, Be didn't have a hope of competing against Windows on PC hardware, couldn't oust PC hardware for its BeBox, and failed to convince Apple to buy them out when an alternative (NeXT) stepped up. That's what killed it.
Kind of a Beta/VHS situation, I'd say. BeOS actually was superior to NeXT from what I've seen, but NeXT came with one ultimate feature: Steve Jobs.
Actually he wasn't. NeXT had a lot more money invested in it than Be. AND it was a lot further along than Be was. Be would have also taken longer to get it to the final product.
Plus they got a lot of good NeXT devs and Steve.</strong><hr></blockquote>
what the hell are you talking about? NeXT had more money invested because Steve Jobs did everything out of his own pocket then convinced Perot that NeXT was going to be the NeXT Big Thing?. They weren't even close.
NeXTStep was no further along than BeOS was and its just insane to say that it would have taken BeOS longer to a final product. Nearly everyone says the exact opposite. BeOS was already PPC native, it already ran on the mac, it already supported all the macs hardware features, was optimized for the mac, etc. SheepShaver was already made for a "blue box environment" and with Apple's resources could have quickly become what we now know as classic. Tell me how NeXTStep would have shipped faster and was further along? please do.
Lot of good NeXT devs? Omnigroup? big ****ing whoop. They make the prettiest but slowest browser for the mac. yawn.
The only thing worth it was Steve Jobs and thank god Apple went with NeXT but don't start spreading BS about Be.
Comments
They had started to try and sell the OS to company's making Web appliances (Sony made one) but these things never sold well.
[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Mediaman ]</p>
[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: artenman ]</p>
They should have took the deal when Apple offered it
But yes the main reason Be never took off was cause of Application support. I was all ready to switch over to Be at one time.. but it never happened.
It's expensive, but a good buy / spend though
<strong>Actually they had the idea from the beginning that they could get Apple to buy it from them. After all most of the owners worked at Apple at one time. But they was asking way too much money for it. I think Apple offered them $170million and they was wanting 300mil. I find it funny that Palm bought them for 20mil.
They should have took the deal when Apple offered it
But yes the main reason Be never took off was cause of Application support. I was all ready to switch over to Be at one time.. but it never happened.</strong><hr></blockquote>
funny how the Be asking price constantly changes with mac users
BeOS is great. If you own an old PCI mac preG3 by all means buy BeOS. You'll be truly amazed at how fast a mac really is. the Mac OS does not do justice. It's an amazing difference.
[ 12-02-2001: Message edited by: applenut ]</p>
<strong>But Apple bought NeXt for 400 mil
It's expensive, but a good buy / spend though</strong><hr></blockquote>
Don't forget that they got Jobs for that $400 million as well.
<strong>Be failed for a few reasons (IMHO) a, it took them ages to get from a 'demo' of an OS to a final shipping OS. B, they went directly up against M$ with a 'cost' OS (Unlike Linux which is Free-ish) c, There was like NO APP'S. It started out as a Multimedia OS, but no big company's (Adobe, Macromidia etc.) ever made any products for it. No OS can survive without Big Apps.
They had started to try and sell the OS to company's making Web appliances (Sony made one) but these things never sold well.
[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Mediaman ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
took to long to go from a demo to a shipping product? The Bebox was released. that's where it started. that didn't get enough sales. they ported to mac in less than a year and a half. This is when Apple expressed interest in buying them. Apple screwed them into believing they would and then at the very last minute Apple bought NeXT. Be was screwed. They had a shipping product but who would buy BeOS for the Mac when Apple was going to come out with their own modern OS and when Apple was giving Be no support at all. So they ported to X86 but it was too late.
How can you blame a company for lack of developer support when they were forced to port their OS 2 times in 3 years?
Considering all that BeOS 5.0.3 is amazing piece of software, has plenty of apps to get by for normal things and could have had a place in the future had Be had money to invest in it
Could you direct me to more information on that?
<strong>
Apple screwed them into believing they would and then at the very last minute Apple bought NeXT. Be was screwed. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Aw, bad ol' Apple.
Gassée was quoted as saying, re his negotiations with Apple, "I've got them by the balls, and I'm going to squeeze until it hurts." He tried to play hardball, and he lost; he has no one to blame but himself for what became of Be.
<strong>
funny how the Be asking price constantly changes with mac users
</strong><hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.macspeedzone.com/frames2000/appleconfidential.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.macspeedzone.com/frames2000/appleconfidential.shtml</a>;
Be was asking for 3 and wouldn't settle less than 2
<strong>
Aw, bad ol' Apple.
Gassée was quoted as saying, re his negotiations with Apple, "I've got them by the balls, and I'm going to squeeze until it hurts." He tried to play hardball, and he lost; he has no one to blame but himself for what became of Be.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And yes that is exactly what happened. Gassée even started Be thinking Apple would eventually buy them. Gassée thought Apple had no other choice.. had them "by the balls" and was asking WAY too much for a company that wasn't worth that. He was trying to rob them blind at Apple's expense.
There were a few things I found to be particularly amazing about the BeOS. The demos of it are true to what the OS can actually do, while other demos of OSes (MacOS X 10.x comes to mind) aren't always completely accurate representations of what goes on. On R4, you could play multiple movies, run OpenGL demos at high framerates, play mp3s backwards (or eight at once, backwards, all at varying speeds) and encode audio to the mp3 format, all at the same time. While this isn't very practical, it did show the immense power behind the OS.
When comparing R4 (and later R4.5) to Windows, I was amazed at how it utilized my machine's second processor. Through some very rough benchmarks I ran on that machine, I found that Windows NT 4 sp5 had between a 50% and 75% speed boost with the second processor enabled. Doing the same for BeOS would show gains of above 90%, effictively doubling the computer's overall processing capacity.
It really is a shame that the BeOS went under in such a fashion. With some name brand apps and more hardware support, it really could have gone places. I guess it'll always remain as a true geek's OS.
--bradd
::edit: spelling.
[ 12-02-2001: Message edited by: bradd ]</p>
<strong>
<a href="http://www.macspeedzone.com/frames2000/appleconfidential.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.macspeedzone.com/frames2000/appleconfidential.shtml</a>;
Be was asking for 3 and wouldn't settle less than 2</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wasn't saying your figure was wrong. I was saying that the figure constantly changes when mac users talk about it.
[quote]And yes that is exactly what happened. Gassée even started Be thinking Apple would eventually buy them. Gassée thought Apple had no other choice.. had them "by the balls" and was asking WAY too much for a company that wasn't worth that. He was trying to rob them blind at Apple's expense. <hr></blockquote>
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.
<strong>
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually he wasn't. NeXT had a lot more money invested in it than Be. AND it was a lot further along than Be was. Be would have also taken longer to get it to the final product.
Plus they got a lot of good NeXT devs and Steve.
<strong>
NeXT was worth 400 Million? hell no. put in perspective. Steve Jobs abused Apple in his asking price.</strong><hr></blockquote>
So first it's Apple's fault for screwing Be, and now it turns out Jobs actually screwed Apple?
Apple paid the amount that NeXT was worth to them. Part of the reason for that may well have been that Jobs is a better salesman than Gassee, but that's how business works.
Thing is, people are right when they said it didn't have enough apps. I still stuck with OS 8 most of the time, because I wanted to actually get things done. And when I bought an iMac, it was too late... Apple stopped talking with Be, so no more support for new models. And I had just grabbed R4.5 too.
Put simply, Be didn't have a hope of competing against Windows on PC hardware, couldn't oust PC hardware for its BeBox, and failed to convince Apple to buy them out when an alternative (NeXT) stepped up. That's what killed it.
Kind of a Beta/VHS situation, I'd say. BeOS actually was superior to NeXT from what I've seen, but NeXT came with one ultimate feature: Steve Jobs.
<strong>
Actually he wasn't. NeXT had a lot more money invested in it than Be. AND it was a lot further along than Be was. Be would have also taken longer to get it to the final product.
Plus they got a lot of good NeXT devs and Steve.</strong><hr></blockquote>
what the hell are you talking about? NeXT had more money invested because Steve Jobs did everything out of his own pocket then convinced Perot that NeXT was going to be the NeXT Big Thing?. They weren't even close.
NeXTStep was no further along than BeOS was and its just insane to say that it would have taken BeOS longer to a final product. Nearly everyone says the exact opposite. BeOS was already PPC native, it already ran on the mac, it already supported all the macs hardware features, was optimized for the mac, etc. SheepShaver was already made for a "blue box environment" and with Apple's resources could have quickly become what we now know as classic. Tell me how NeXTStep would have shipped faster and was further along? please do.
Lot of good NeXT devs? Omnigroup? big ****ing whoop. They make the prettiest but slowest browser for the mac. yawn.
The only thing worth it was Steve Jobs and thank god Apple went with NeXT but don't start spreading BS about Be.