Slashdot Mirror
Be to Drop BeOS? No.
MrChris2 writes "Found this over on benews, it seems that Be have decided that Microsoft dominate the desktop market too throughly, and have decided to withdraw from the field. There will be several more updates to the BeOS, but eventaully they will fold it into an Internet Appliance only OS." I called Be Europe this morning to confirm this, and it's just not true. I spoke to Jean Calmon at Be, who feels that the interview with Lamar Potts was taken a little out of context. Jean informed me that while a large amount of the engineering firepower at Be is being directed at BeIA and the 'internet appliance' angle, there are no plans to stop supporting or updating the BeOS. Gosh, this sounds like NeXT, doesn't it?
I'm glad to hear that BeOS is not quite beaten yet, though. They have a wonderful product, and if it weren't for the lack of vendor support (which is partially Microsoft's fault), I'd probably be using it right now.
How many other systems come with apps that give you haiku error messages? Now that's just cool...
Got Rhinos?
that is the question
it easier then linux
Do Not Read Burgatronics... It's Evil
for the dangerously small 3rd party developer community. Yikes.
If Be gets some deals set that puts their tech in a few million set-top boxes, there's really not going to be much motivation from their standpoint to continue supporting a standalone OS, especially when it's now being given away for free and there's not a lot of people using it anyway (support market).
Perhaps the curse of having a very stable, easy to use OS? (small/weak support/services market when going the "free" model).
Perhaps they could keep Be Free, by introducing a lot of bloat/bugs in future revisions of the OS, thus causing paid support business to take off. Hmm.
Perhaps they could just market a $15,000 version with some nice hardware as an "Avid Killer".
"Believe half of what you read and none of what you hear."
What passes for journalism on the web reminds me of this every day.
If a large amount of the "firepower" is to be directed at other projects, I wonder how much committment they have to the OS? There is a difference twixt update and UPDATE after all. Perhaps I am just reading into this but it would seem a shame if this were allowed to languish. Especially since it seems that I hear more about Be than ever.......
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Isn't it obvious? Be is down financially, AOL has all the components it needs to be Windows free, except an OS. Yeah, they could go with Linux, but AOL has always tried to remain proprietary. Be will give them a foray into internet appliances (think set-top boxes and web-pads), has the multimedia capabilities that AOL craves (think AOLTV) and will tie-in beautifully with Mozilla.
;-)...
It just makes sense. I am starting this rumor right now
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
..if it's at all true. I think it's unfortunate that BeOS, which is a fairly nifty OS in its own right, can't compete in this marketplace.. Apple's closed hardware is really taking away from their chances.
:)
With the breadth of PC hardware out there, it's very difficult to support everything (as evidenced by Microsoft's inability to make a 100% stable OS). If Be were able to produce BeOS for G3/G4 hardware, which is much easier to support, they'd be able to compete with Apple on their own ground -- video editing, desktop publishing, sound, and general multimedia apps.
Obviously, this is less than appealing to Apple, but unfortunate nonetheless
I hope more of the BeOS gets open sourced -- Be shouldn't let it die like NeXT did.
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
I've not seen too many people moving to Be erratically, nor are there too many people i know who actively support it, over other os's like bsd, or linux
-------------------
Kryogen WebHosting - proud to be 100% micro$oft free
Kryogen Technologies
Wow, that really made me sit up and pay attention.... Thankfully it's not true. The apperance of an OS admitting defeat (in a manner of speaking) to MicroSucks - that's something I'd really rather not see at all.
If Be were to be really like NEXT then Be advocates have nothing to worry about. After all, look what happened to NEXT. Corporately they were bought out but technologically, NEXT's OS memes dominate the new Apple. What is Cocoa if not NextStep?
From a Forbes perspective, NEXT lost. From a true nerd perspective, NEXT won all that counted. I hope the ending of the Be story turns out as happy.
DB
This makes sense, though it's a bit sad. Looks like marketing wins the product race, not tech.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I'm glad this is not true. Video on BeOS is very cool. I'd rather this stuff worked on Linux (and it will in due time) but for now BeOS is just cool.
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
I am not a Be person, so my information may be flawed or even *GASP* wrong.
1) Be does not have a large amount of manpower. They had barely enough to keep BeOS going and slowly keep up with driver support and software support all at the same time.
2) BeIA is more important to Be as a company and therefore more of it's resources will be working on BeIA (and not BeOS).
With those two issues stated, I submit that BeOS is turning into a bastard stepchild. Be will give it enough resources to appear alive, but in the end, it will never receive the attention it needs to really make a difference to anyone. I am NOT happy with this situation. If Be won't take care of BeOS, then let someone else. Why not Open Source the thing and spend a little effort to help nurture it out into the Open Source world? I think that everyone could benefit from a very workstation oriented, open OS. Even Be.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I see nothing about the future of the BeOS market to suggest that it will be a lucrative market for developers. Its focus on the multimedia market is nothing but backpedalling. They might as well make a solid run at the appliance market - the desktop market is spoken for. The Mac and linux suitably fills in the small cracks that windows doesn't address - the remaining market share is too small to bother trying to make a profit off of.
How could anyone imagine that it isn't safe to compete in the same space as Microsoft?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I had just downloaded the free BeOS from ZDNET.What are they thinking?? From the snippet,it makes you wonder if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Sounds like ,years ago,when the old COCO was dropped.Tandy denied it to high heaven,then BOOM! It's gone. I'll look this up further.
Geek Hillbilly
And, unfortunately, that's going to happen in the appliance business also. As much as customers like to have choices, customers like more to have compatibility, and there is no room for Be (or Amiga, or...) to break in here. Yep, we haven't seen the last OS yet; there will be some new OS someday (I'm not predicting, but something like PalmOS on steroids could leverage its current success) but right now it's not going to be Be.
Having used most OSes known to man at some time or another, I can sincerely say that BeOS is the most *comfortable* OS for the desktop. Its user interface just feels natural and easy to use.
I'll agree that BeOS is not for everything or everyone. Linux, FreeBSD, and the free Unices are by far superior on the backend, whereas BeOS network performance, features, and support are, for lack of a better word crappy at the moment. Be was meant for the desktop. M$ still has the corner market on games, but BeOS is coming out with some great ones, including Worms: Armaggeddon.
BeOS is designed to be "The Media OS" and now it is beginning to live up to it's claims with the new features and media support that has been introduced in R5. Several things still need to be done for BeOS to become a M$ killer on the desktop:
More media support (increased codecs, file translators, etc.)
UDF and DVD movie support
Increased device driver support
Better browsers (can we say Bezilla?)
Mainstream applications (we're halfway there)
More interested programmers
Eventually, with the continued help of everyone, BeOS will become a truly competitive OS of it's own right.
If you are a programmer and are interested in developing for the BeOS, have innovative ideas, or just would like to help, email me [carlos.noguera@millersville.edu] and visit the BeUnited website.
Man, I hope Be keeps enough resource on BeOS. They're almost at the point of being a solid alternative for music and multimedia applications, something which Windows ain't. I would hate to see them stick it out this far and then not put enough muscle behind the last 10ft of the race.
By the way, has any company that has decided to focus on embedded applications or OSes ever been successful? I saw so many of those "thin client" type focus announcements, and then usually the company just implodes.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Be opened the source code to the Desktop Interface around the same time that they release FreeBe 5. The press release is right here. I personally hope someone is doing work on this for linux, I really like the way Be handles.
Before you Begin to Blah about Be, you ought to Believe you have a valid point, Because I said so, and so it will Be, or you will get Beheaded, so Behave yourself.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Don't snicker - I think we may actually be seeing winds of change. Slashdot might become a better site, with unbiased journalism
Does anybody remember GEOS and Geoworks? It was a wonderfully cool OS and software suite that replaced most of DOS and provided a gorgeous GUI, excellent software (including an especially advanced word processor/semi-DTP program), speed, and "full pre-emptive multitasking" (argue on this one all you want). It ran like a champ on my 10Mhz 286 with 20 meg HD, 1 meg of RAM and 512K of video memory.
And it reached a usable level of maturity about the time MS released Windows 3.0. Case closed.
Where is it now? It morphed into a pen/portable/gadget OS and is, I suppose, still alive. Barely. (Go to geoworks.com to check it out.)
The point? Be is great and gorgeous as a desktop OS. Chasing the apparently fashionable market (appliances) of the moment, though, can be a foolish move when it involves abandoning/de-emphasizing your core competencies.
Careful, Be! I don't want to see you ignominiously fade away.
AFAIK the GUI and Tracker lean too heavily on the underneath layers of the BeOS. I don't think you can easily port it over to X or something. The whole concept of BeOS was building it up from scratch. So every mere part of it, is quite new technology, which relies on implementation of that technology in the whole OS. Ie. the GUI is multithreaded: it works so well, because the kernel is natively multithreaded, and fine-grained. Most UNIX kernels aren't (at least, not in the way dat BeOS is). So porting the GUI over, would only result in YATK (Yet Another ToolKit) and YAWM (Yet Another WindowManager), without any technical advances which the BeOS has.
... sometimes I fly with the white swan to my Liffey home.
The BeOS was originally part of a package called a BeBox. I have one. It is holding up some books right now. It has 2 133mhz PowerPC 603 processors, midi in and out, a slew of serial ports, scsi, infra red ports, a GEEK port which has a bunch of DAC and ADC on one standard port. It was very quick when we got it. It took me months to get my developer software. But that was ok. We didn't have much in the way of docs for the API, their developer manuals weren't done, but we had some .h files to work with and I managed to get a program compiled and running pretty quick. Then the OS went up a version and I started over. Then they abandoned the hardware.
I have to explain, the reason we wanted BeBoxen were that we produce live exhibits and its ability to play MANY streams of media at once was needed. We were stretching our Macintoshes thin. This sounded like a solution. I remember one person who was using it to develop an ambient noise generator for a zoo. I knew folks who were doing similiar light controlers... It was a MEDIA OS with a MEDIA Hardware...
We were notified at first that they would not be supporting the BeBox with new OS after a year... Since all their developers were at that point BeBox owners, they backed off on that. I still am technically a Be developer but hell if I trust them to do ANYTHING right...
Maybe I have been missing out, but with a choice between Linux and Mac OS X and BeOs is there even 100000 BeOS users who don't use one of the other OS'S for their primary work?
I don't think so.
Or 25, i don't really care, but this is almost a month late..
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
That was a good call, comparing BeOS to NeXT. Other than the comparison mentioned in the topic, there's a bunch of others.
Let's see...
1) Both started by ex-Applers.
2) Both designed to be legacy-free, "beautiful" OS's
3) Both started with their own hardware, with names referring to a hexahedral shape
4) Both OS's were considered for the job of being Apple's next OS. (NeXT won.)
5) And they both have the same goofy-looking
CaPS SeQUEnCE.
Hey, is BeOS is following in NeXT's footsteps, maybe Microsoft will buy up BeOS (though I'd suspect it more likely that say, Sony would for "PlayStation O") and make it into their next generation OS, though I have no idea what they could call it with their nomenclature. They'd probably call it Windows 40,000, and it could run on a PC, a handheld, or a Predator Annihilator Tank.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
Unfortunately you can sell a bad product with good marketing but you can't sell an excellent product with poor or no marketing. Examples of bad product/good marketng: Microsoft and the National Basketball Association. Good product/bad marketing: NEXT and the Amiga
That's why it is good that Linux is free (both as in speech and beer). If Linus had made it proprietary like the other Un*xes it never would have seen the light of day.
Unless Be releases BeOS as open source it will die a rather quick death. It is a nice system - acutally a better desktop system than Linux - but I wouldn't pay US$70 for it. The free download is too limited to be a serious contender right now.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Maybe his statements reveal an underlying strategy, a paradigm shift: Be recognizes that OSes are as passe as the PC and is pegging its hopes on the information (Internet) appliance trend.
Perhaps the OS itself, by itself, is now meaningless. Maybe it's becoming an application-specific, high tech commodity world out there?
If the OS is a commodity (which it is) then companies that peg their hopes on selling and licensing the OS itself are in financial danger (MSFT, anyone?). The fact that a Bazaar-produced OS competes at all, and well in certain areas (like the Internet), against a Cathedal-imparted one bodes ill for the latter. Soon there will be mass defection from the High Priestly order of the Cathedral and spontaneous, free, open gatherings will supplant it. Viva Reformation!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
A few months ago when Sega announce they would focus on internet games, the media reported that Sega was dropping out of the console market.
When Toys R Us decided to sell stuff online, it was reported that TRU was closing down all of its stores.
This BeOs story is just another in the long line of over-reacting media hype.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
You just spelled it out for those of us who CAN'T see this. Be should *NOT* go OSS because: Linux would just STEAL all the best parts of BeOS. Open Source Software... Open Source Thievery!
So now we have a non-issue reported as news after being rumored in a Be zine. For a while I've been a on Slashdot's side about "the editing sucks" type articles, but this is sort of the last straw. If you need to hire more editors, do it. If you need to extend Moderation to story selection, do it. But please, never again with the non-stories.
Ushers will eat latecomers.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
just my 2 cents.. a wonderful system, but I am afraid that it suffers from the same drawbacks as linux... lack of hardware support and lack of productivity software... sure it's a beauty to play with... fast, configurable & way ahead of windows... but once you've played with it & start recieving the darned .doc files that you *have to* process, .... you understand that it won't survive in the office.
I just ordered my copy of Beos 5.0 today. If I find any truth to this rumor I will cry like a baby. I even bought a new hard drive just for it! I've tried the personal version, and I really like it, except for one thing: I can't stand the interface. Somebody should write a Gnome for Beos!
1. This only solidifies the Monopoly that M$ holds on the OS market. BE made a good effort and resulted in fairly good OS that seemed to have a growing following. M$'s control is so great that a company has given up its development on their OS solely on the fact that another company has complete control of that market.
2. This plain blows that they gave up. They shouldn't give up completely. At least keep some guys on the project. Maybe they will. News is sketchy. I like rooting for the underdog. Some may have a problem with BE because it controlled by a company and not like the GPL and GNU world of Linux. I don't mind a company control of an OS as long as they don't become an M$ rooted in controlling a very expansive and highly creative market. Company control breeds a centralized system of management of an OS. The fact is that we need more quality OSes other than Linux. I wish Apple would do more in the OS field and expand to other platforms. Their OS has its problems but it is a time tested and quality OS. Diversity is a very good thing in all things.
>Therefore NEXT lost. The "true nerd" perspective doesn't mean squat. Nerds don't generate sales, marketing does.
>That doesn't make it right but it makes it a fact.
Ehrmm..quick sanity check..do you mean that anything that the big companies and world economy doesn't care about doesn't count? Like, love, sex(except for the sort sold..)friends, to be respected, poverty and so on.
--
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
Apple's closed hardware is really taking away from their chances.
Every single time Be is in the news, some /. reader bitches about "It sucks that Apple's not releasing any specs for G? hardware," not taking into account the fact that Apple Computer Inc. has released a kernel as semi-free software. What better hardware documentation is there than the commented source code to a working official kernel?
Be shouldn't let it die like NeXT did.
It never died; it just got absorbed into Mac OS 10 (which doesn't deserve an X).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Congrats to emmett and anyone else who was involved with following up this rumour and finding the real news. I've been seeing too many "Oops, we weren't quite right" updates lately, so it is refreshing to see that facts were found and reported on. It is also nice to see that /. has begun using their media clout (the power that allows them to go directly to a reliable source for the news) to get news and not rumours. Mind you, this is fact-checking on a rumour, so it's pre-emptive squashing, and therefore really a non-story, but hey, it's a step in the right direction. (Then again, since most of the "news" on mainstream media has been reduced to rumour mongering and pathetic emotional manipulation, I prefer the /. reporting.) Congrats once again emmett and I hope we see more of this "following up" and "straight from the source" kind of reporting, which is a major advantage of the Web! Johnathon
I don't know enough about BeOS to know why it is good or bad. The demos I've seen show multimedia capabities, but I don't know much more.
I used to think BeOS was viewed as the eventual replacement for the MacOS, but I haven't heard that talk lately.
Would a knowledgeable individual please explain this all to me.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
BeOS is suffering from the classic problem of there being no users because there are no applications, but there are no applications because there are no users.
BeOS is supposed to be *THE* digital media platform. But after being out for two years, there are *STILL* no professional quality digital audio + MIDI multitracking suites out there. Nothing. You're still stuck in Windows or Mac for these.
I've spoken with a few of the big music software companies and they've all pretty much said that they're unsure if they're porting their stuff to BeOS or not yet.
I for one would have a brand new BeOS machine if I could do true *PROFESSIONAL* digital audio on it.
But what about a pig & an elephant?
I don't know if this story is true or not, becuase you never can tell what a PR guy will say when called to task on the truth. Still the fact that Be is denying it should be taken, in lieu of other evidence, as the only credible account.
But if it is true, why not release BeOS to open source? I mean, if you're already giving up on the product, why not give it away, instead of throw it away. Not only does it cost you nothing (in comparison to throwing it away), you get good PR from doing it!
Sure would like to see that.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Only on Slashdot could "it's a shame that they're dying a horrible death, but what about *me*? *pout*" be considered "Insightful".
Red Herring, December 1996
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
For using 'To Be or not to Be', you are relegated to 'Unoriginal.' Minus one or pay a $50 cent fine.
Wah!
Was that responsible reporting?
If you look at the article from the standpoint of spreading inaccuracies, then no, it is not responsible reporting. However, if you look at it as trying to squash a rumor before it can get started, then yes, it is responsible reporting.
I think that pretty much summarizes my argument: a published report came in, the editor researched the evidence, and made a report. How much more responsible is he supposed to get?
(And if you're really interested in blasting someone for irresponsible reporting, try the folks over at BeNews who ran the story in the first place -- despite their own admission that they were unable to get a complete English translation of the interview in question or make contact with Be(Europe)!)
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
"Here's to you, to all those who have obtained a copy of the BeOS and ..."
..."
hmmm. "here's to the dreamers
BE: think different!
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
Woohoo!! Then we can carry handguns to make our country a safer place!! And cultural differences will be put to the side for the better economic state of our united north american nation!! And suddenly, 30 million more people will have the unquestioned right to be arrogant!!
COUGH... sorry.
It's not better or worse than Linux, *BSD, *NIX, MacOS, Win*, or QNX it's just different, and that's why it's so good :)
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I love it when the trolls have nothing to complain about except having nothing to complain about.
--
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Sheeesh. I'm working on Palm software, knowing now that I'll get to port it to ARM in a year or so.
I wanted to try compiling a few class libraries under Be -- maybe make some software for that. Of course, now I know that I'll probably have to do it all over for BeIA.
Forget it. I'm sticking with Visual C++. At least I know that my OLE objects, oh wait -- COM, no -- ActiveX, no -- DCOM.... wait....
What I meant to say was that my RDO database code, no -- make that my DAO, no -- ADO, yeah, won't have to change every year.
(This post had no point other than I hate my job today. Sorry.)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Poll suggestion from the Poll Mastah...
Slashdot is:
Poll Mastah
But as a working stiff in the US electronics industry for the last 25 years I can assure you (although there are some pleasant exceptions) that most of the companies I have either worked for or dealt with, both as vendor and customer, care about their bottom line and very little else, including the quality of their product or the welfare of their employees and customers.
That is the sad fact of business today, especially in the US - it's all about the Benjaminz. Be, Apple, Microsoft, and every other business, software and otherwise, are in business to make $$$$ and for no other reason whatsoever! If the product is good, so much the better. If it sucks but sells, that's OK too. The company makes money for its stockholders and that is the only thing that matters.
Sorry for the cynical view of things but that's the way it works.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
From a true nerd perspective, I wouldn't say that NeXT won. From a developer perspective, somewhat, as that beautiful OpenStep/Cocoa API is still there and will form the framework for what is to come.
But from an end-user nerd perspective, NeXT didn't win in everyway. After all, it looks like Mac OS X won't have the NeXT shelf -- one of my most favorite things in NeXTSTEP and OpenStep.
I don't understand the Be-NeXT analogy. NeXT wasn't moving anywhere in the direction toward being an Internet Appliance OS. They were moving toward enterprise database connectivity, client/server apps, and away from plain old desktop stuffs. The moving away from desktop OS is the same, but it ends there.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Time for someone to get moderated to 4 or 5 (Interesting). How are claims of Be's dropping OS support like NeXT? I've heard of NeXT, but I have no idea of their history, and why read some online news thing when here at slashdot, we usually get personal, in-the-trenches-type accounts? TIA
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
Geos lives on as NewDeal from NewDeal, Inc. NewDeal release 3.2 is out, and requires only a 286 with 640K RAM and 10MB of disk space. It is available as NewDeal Office, NewDeal WebSuite, and NewDeal SchoolSuite to meet different needs. It may be purchased through the NewDeal, Inc. web site with discounts available to users upgrading from previous versions, including Geos.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
Apple talked with Be before NeXT when looking
for help in reviving Apple a few years ago.
The talks collapsed when the price was too high,
although I recall it similar to the 400 million
for NeXT. Both Be and NeXT were as valuable to
Apple for former Apple execs who knew how to
run computer companies as well as their technologies.
BeOS was a courageous effort in designing a new
OS from the ground up for multimedia and networks.
This stuff had been grafted less efficiently
on earlier OS.
Look at MS-Windows for a prime example of inferior technology winning (at the moment).
I hope so, but I haven't tried doing it yet. 500 Mb isn't a whole lot, although it does leave about 300 Mb free after install. I don't want to repartition since my 1st drive is FAT32 with Wincrap (need it for work unfortunately) and loopback versions of BeOS and Linux and my 2nd drive is 100% Linux and I want to keep it that way. A 2nd loopback filesystem for BeOS would be nice, though.
Don't get me wrong - BeOS is a nice system but I wonder if it really is too late for it. I hope not.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Blue sky time....
:).
Maybe it would work if a company put together custom recording studio setups based on BeOS. It would be a business model similar to the companies who go into small businesses, set up their entire network, get the check, and handle the occasional support issue.
Building the boxes wouldn't be too hard -- it's commodity hardware and you could make sure the soundcard(s) were compatible in advance.
It's been my experience that most musicians don't give a flip about the OS -- they just want something that sounds good, is easy to use, and helps them make better recordings faster. As a platform, BeOS could fit the bill nicely.
Obviously, the software part is what's missing. If EMagic goes ahead with their Logic port, that would help. The important step would be for Be and EMagic to partner with consultants and certify "BeMagic Studio" systems.
And the total cost of ownership must be cheaper than an equivalent Windows or Mac system.
Personally, I would LOVE the chance to do something like this using Be or perhaps Linux as the platform, but there would be significant start-up costs and a few years before profits are realized. Maybe a brave venture capitalist group would be interested in backing it (hint to Bruce Perens and anybody else
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Personally, I'm waiting for a monkey with five asses.
QNX is from Canada...:)
-William Bull
30 years?
That's pretty impressive for an OS that has only been in development for less than a decade.
About the same amount of time that Be has been around, actually.
Perhaps you meant Unix instead?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
BeNews has just spoken to Be's Vice President of Marketing Lamar Potts, who was
interviewed by Computer Channel. "The Computer Channel reporter got it completely
wrong. I said nothing of BeOS development being halted, and we have no plans to do
so." A complete quote from Potts follows.
According to Potts,
"This is a drastic misinterpretation of my words. I said nothing to the
reporter about BeOS development being halted. I simply reiterated the
same thing Be has been saying for months, about our shift in focus to
Internet Appliances. Obviously, we need to continue BeOS
development. BeOS is the development platform for BeIA, as well as
our 'calling card.' Strong visibility for BeOS is strong visibility for Be
and BeIA. We've just completed a major launch of BeOS 5, we've
struck deals with Gobe and international BeOS distributors, and we've
just promoted Dave Johnson to BeOS Product Manager.
I'm puzzled by the reporter's misinterpretation of my words. The
reporter was young, but his English seemed fine, and the whole
interview is on tape. Our PR firm was also present, and can verify that I
said nothing of the sort. I can't in my wildest imagination figure out
where the reporter got this idea from what was said during the
interview. We didn't head down that path at all."
Find it at www.benews.com
Sigged!
I think you may be getting GEOS and GeoWorks Ensemble confused. GEOS was a GUI-based OS that was available on the Commodore 64/128 and Apple ][ series. (It may have been available on other platforms, but I have first-hand experience with it on a C64 and an Apple ][e.)
GeoWorks Ensemble came later, and was a PC-based loose adaptation of GEOS. You're approximately right about the timing relative to Windows, and you're absolutely right about the astonishingly good performance on very low-end hardware.
GeoWorks Ensemble actually still lives today. It was sold a few years ago to a company called NewDeal Inc., and has been renamed NewDeal Office.
I gave NewDeal Office a spin some time last year, and it still looks and feels very much like the original GeoWorks Ensemble. The improvements are mostly incremental -- nothing revolutionary. The UI is increasingly Windows-like, even including something that looks almost identical to the Windows Start menu.
NewDeal Office is a solid product for people and institutions that have old hardware that isn't up to snuff for the latest OSes and applications. The product is pretty much marketed as a "suite" that happens to have it's own built-in OS, which is appropriate, given the dearth of third-party applications. (That dearth, BTW, is what killed any chance it might have had as a mainstream OS in the first place.)
begin 644
"You just spelled it out for those of us who CAN'T see this. Be should *NOT* go OSS because: Linux would just STEAL all the best parts of BeOS. Open Source Software... Open Source Thievery!"
If they were to GPL it, then any changes made would have to include source code releases. Also they could fold any GPL'd part of any Linux Distro right into their OS without fear of conflicting licenses either. This would be a win-win situation, as both projects would have a much larger base of code to use/examine.
I could take the low road and say that we don't know for certain *how*much* GPL code is bein held captive in Be and what-not, especially with recent news suggesting that as well as mistakenly leaving GPL'd code in their libraries they have been accused of this before. The do, however seem to be a straight up company and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove themselves otherwise. Just pointing this out to show that you shouldn't go pointing fingers and yelling theif until you have something to back that claim up.
The "true nerd" perspective doesn't count with corperate types, but, by definition, it does for "true nerds." Given that this is a "news for nerds" site, the nerd perspective would seem to count here.
The whole notion that sales make something count is a corporate one. Now, in many (most?) circumstances, sales have consequences (availablity of cool stuff, getting paid enough to afford it) about which most nerds do care, but are not in themselves particularly important. Whether that applies in this case is what is being debated.
You can make "Linux" into almost anything that you want given you have enough patience. Yes, but once you do you need to make the source open to anyone (including competitors) and many companies aren't willing to take that risk. When companies are creating general-purpose software (like a Linux distribution or an office suite) they can afford to open source it. There will be a broad enough population of users who will be able to look at the code and make useful contributions back to the greater community. The population of these types of users are much smaller for dedicated devices (like a set-top box) _and_ software fixes are much harder to implement so going open-source shifts from being a benefit to being a liability.
chec benews to read the update, Lamar Potts is surprised because he never said that to the journalist!
--
BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I've taken the time to mess around with the BeOS, and it is an extrodinarily user friendly, stable, and asthetically pleasing operating system. However, it lacks one thing...ANYTHING! Be does include some nice programs for the most basic of tasks (email, web, word processing), but it because it lacks almost any hardware support, most average users are barred from using it. It developers took the wee bit of extra time to develop cross-platform drivers for their products, Microsoft wouldn't be the staple that it is today. There is absolutly nothing wrong with Be, in fact there are many things very very right with it, but it lacks any sort of support by the industry, and that will be its downfall. Users today have given the majority of their support to Linux and because of user and industry support, the Linux movement is growing because it is more useable with modern equiptment, but Be is limited by a small group of developers and a few devoted users. God Speed Be, you have my vote, if you could all my hardware to run at par on your OS!
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
One of the things that I really liked about the BeOS back when it came out was that they were quoted as having the "BeOS be the spiritual descendant of the Amiga". Basically, they had studied the Amiga and everything that Commodore had done right and WRONG.
One thing Be has done right is that they delivered a superior multimedia operating system with the hardware to support it (read: BeBox). Another thing they did right was to make the OS lean, mean and damn quick.
One thing Commodore did wrong was to ignore their community; while there was a tremendous amount of support out there (and back in the day, from CBM itself), they failed to keep their product up to date with the rest of the world. In this, I mean more of the management decisions which kept the Amiga behind the times (read: AAA chipset) amongst other things.
If Be has learned anything from the Amiga and Commodore, it is that they have a damn fine product which is relegated to a niche community of power users, and that as long as people are out there salivating over BeOS, they better support the damn thing and keep it up to date. I know this takes time, money and resources, but I strongly believe that there will always be BeOS users out there. Heck, people are still using OS/2, eh?
I'm not a big BeOS user, I always wanted a BeBox and I was certainly an Amiga fanatic. I just don't want to see BeOS fall behind and out of the picture - they need to stay a step ahead of the other operating systems out there.
My 2 - no refunds.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Considering all the hoopla I see around here about "bad journalism" and "inflamatory posts" on /., I'm suprised noone has yet thanked emmett for actually calling up Be and asking about this article.
:)
Anyway, I'll be the first; rock on, emmett. Thanks for checking up on the story before posting it. I'm quite sure it eliminated the copious amounts of whining that would have otherwise resulted
It's spelled s-a-r-c-a-s-m.
Unless it was too subtle for you.
And suddenly the image of Stimpy with an extra butt comes to mind... I laughed for days after watching that episode.
As a follow-up to this observation, the reason Apple bought Next rather than buying Be was because of the enterprise capability--that was the market Gil "Human Prozac" Amelio wanted to try to capture. At the time a lot of people thought this was a stupid idea, and I'm still not convinced that Apple wouldn't have been better served by buying Be. (Of course, if they'd bought Be, they wouldn't have gotten Steve Jobs. Whether that's good or bad depends on one's point of view.)
Here's the official word on the BeNews story on dropping BeOS:
"Earlier today, a German website ran an article claiming that Be was
planning on halting BeOS development work. This is a mistaken
interpretation of our remarks on the subject. As we have stated publicly, Be
is continuing to develop and release new versions of BeOS, which serves as the
development environment for BeIA, our software platform for Internet
appliances. We have made no change to this strategy. We appreciate the
interest the Be community continues to show in BeOS."
------------
Dave Johnson
BeOS Product Manager
Be, Inc.
http://www.be.com
--
BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Burris
Does anyone know when BeIA appliances will be sold? How will we be able to get them? What will the products be branded as?
Or are they already out? I've never seen one...
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
When I saw Be`s booth at the Cebit earlier this year, I was very intersested in seeing Be0S at work, but it was nowhere to be seen! They only had a couple of handouts with some internet appliance blurb on it.
I mean from how they displayed their OS (like not at all) I would neither develop for it nor make hardware drivers or anything.
And they simply denied dropping development, too. Not a single sentence about having future plans or a strategy.
(apology: I didn`t look at their website before writing this, its just my impression)
I'm a developer who has been in their developer program from pretty much the earliest stages -- I remember them coming to my school to demo the BeBox and the BeOS and hearing the initial OOs and AAHs since we hadn't seen anything quite this cool in an OS. And then the fun started:
- No, we won't drop support for the BeBox.
- What the heck? No we aren't considering an Intel port.
- We'd never drop support for PowerPC.
- We're committed to being the Media OS.
And last but not least so far,
- No, we're going to keep our desktop OS!
Anyone want to put bets on how long it takes? ^_^;
- Dan the cynical
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
The NetPositive web browser which is bundled with BeOS 4.0 and 4.5 (not sure about 5.0 as mine hasn't arrived yet) tossed out rather amusing errors in haiku when it can't connect to a web site.
Also, WON (the BeOS SMB connectivity client) comes out with some amusing error messages if you blow a password or something.
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I may be cynical but I'm not that cynical.
BofG
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Wouldn't it be sweet if BeOS got GPLed, and people could merge parts of GNU/Linux and BeOS together as they saw fit?
Technical differences between the OS's aside, I realize that on the surface this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense for Be from a business perspective. But they are really in a tough battle on many fronts.
I like Be, and would like to see them succeed. I also like Linux, and would like to see it enhanced with better multimedia capabilities.
Is there a business model that Be could adopt that would allow them to join the open-source movement instead of trying to fight against it?
How about a serious discussion of this? There are a LOT of BeOS users now, and currently a growth rate of a million users a month (at least THIS month...)
OK, well Be *was* at CeBit, they were just not showing off anything but their appliance stuff.
And yes, CeBit is a (sort of) consumer trade fair. A big one. Tres importante. At leat its not a conference.
And even if it were, an OS needs applications, and apps need developers who need to be convinced to develop for that OS.
And maybe a company has to share its plans about the future of one of their products if thy need third parties like developers to make it a success.
I would Like to remind you out there in computer land of previous attempts to abolish the stand alone PC and OS for the network only systems currently being promoted by large corperations who wish to again motopolize the entirety of computing to themselves. WEBTv. Started out well but most users upgraded themselves to REAL computers that could DO SOMETHING. Gradually lost money and was bought out by our current computer monopoly Microsoft. Oracle's "Network Computer", Still trying and failing. Sun Microsystems Network Computer, Popular with business but NOT with home users who now make up a large portion of the computer market. Now we have the "Internet Applience" and internet application and storage space providers. (Sun Microsystems again with their Star Portal office suite amongst others) trying replace our stand alone PCs with a Centralized and Monopolized "Network Computer" IT WON'T FLY THIS TIME ANY MORE THAN IT DID PREVIOUSLY. We INDIVIDUAL users are SICK AND TIRED of being herded by giant corperations into this or that centralized monopoly so you can continue to control us. (Witness what is currently happening with Microsoft if you don't believe this.) What does this have to do with Be, They have a good OS for computers that DO SOMETHING other than access the "internet only" rental software and storage space that the "network computer" conspirators are truing to foist on us and if they are smart they would stick with it. Most users of these coming "internet appliences" are probably going to upgrade themselves to true PCs that DO SOMETHING just as the early WEBTv users did despite what the big corperations that want to re monopolize all of computing propagandize about it.
There is a post over at BeTips that explains how to create more space for BeOS 5 PE. I think the post is in the Misc. category.
Maybe I have been missing out, but with a choice between Linux and Mac OS X and BeOs is there even 100000 BeOS users who don't use one of the other OS'S for their primary work?
there must be one other popular OS out there... gosh, what could it be? i'm sure i'll think of it once i stop reading slashdot...
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
And though I don't remmeber him specificly saying "we're not supporting the PC anymore" he did go into great length about how it was impossible to break into a market that MS controls with such a stranglehold and that theyw ere giving that arget up in favor of the embedded appliance market.
:)
I geuss the question is, how much effort (read money) are they going to put into supporting a platform they have given up as a revenue source? I can see them tracking the developments where they port witha recompile but I can't imagiena lot of PC specific development.
Its too bad too, becauser IMO "Free BeOs" was exactly the strategy they needed to become 'another Linux'.
Atl east the free BeOs site is still up
It was announced for the first quarter of 2000, but nothing ever happened... ;-(
I just wanted to say thanks to the folks as Slashdot. Too many times we've been quick to slam them for posting something that turned out to be rumor, so I wanted to step up and say that it's good to see the research and source checking happen before the article hits the homepage. Slashdot may indeed be growing up into a mature (and already quite powerful) news outlet, which we will be able to rely on for Stuff That Matters well into the oughts.
Right. And Apple has been shipping Sherlock and the System Profiler with their OS for about 2-3 years. An OS != the stuff that comes with it.
...Unless of course you want GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/WINE/blah/blah/blah...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
What perspective 'counts' or not is decided by each of us in our own hearts. You can decide to be a lemming and follow a herd or you can be your own man and follow your heart.
"The corporation made me do it" doesn't cut it as an excuse IMHO
DB
I see a major problem for Be, if they were to open source the whole thing. BeIA, their major source of income now, is highly dependent on BeOS, so.....wouldn't they be giving away EVERYTHING????
....Is there a problem, Dave? asked HAL....