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Be Shareholders Approve Sale to Palm
moooooooo writes: "Well it's official. Be shareholders have approved the sale of Be Assets to Palm.
Hopefully Palm will announce something about either a new BeOS version or licensing the source to the BeUnited crew."
Perhaps the reason Palm has lagged behind their competitors for a while is because they're directing their efforts toward The Next Big Thing — perhaps the BeOS will be running on our palmtops after all. It's a gorgeous, elegant, and terribly resource-efficient OS; given sufficient horsepower (from an ARM processor, for example), it might be quite impressive at 320x320 resolutions.
Anyone out there with behind-the-scenes knowledge willing to provide some insight?
2. PalmOS doesn't scale. It's applications are wonderful and it looks good when compared to CE but lets not kid ourselves about the CPU it's tied to - it's a dog. BeOS is a good replacement.
3. They got some of the best developers in the world to sweeten the deal.
The plan of BeUnited is more or less to license BeOS, release a new version, and use the sales profit to pay for the license. The OS would then be improved with the help of NDAed enthusiasts and possibly some pros. An open source release is not planned.
As much as I'd like this plan to succeed, I consider it purely wishful thinking:
1. No money.
BeUnited doesn't have a sponsor (I asked), and in the current situation I think it's unlikely that they'll get a high enough credit.
2. No product
While it's true that BeInc has been doing work on a new network stack (BONE) and a nice OpenGL implementation, this stuff is still in late beta. Other parts like Java and Opera4 would have to be ported from BeIA.
3. The numbers aren't right.
Have a look at the 'Save BeOS' petition: Around 4000 entries. So how many versions could you sell? For what price? What's your margin? Even if you would get a credit and if you wouldn't need to do dev work: You wouldn't make enough money to make Palm an attractive offer.
Sad but true.
Now if Apple bought Palm, Steve would have an awesome product-development team from Be, people that know how to optimize PPC media streams and squeeze incredible media through apple hardware.
Right now Apple's core market won't jump to OS X because it's not as good at multimedia (IMO) as the cooperative-multitasking and close-to-hardware Classic Mac OS. This would be just what the doctor ordered for Apple.
I think Palm is prettying themselves up for a buyout.
I would be VERY pleased if such things happened.
I'd pay to see Jobs and Gasse competing for "most warped psyche" on Apple campus!
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I hate to say this, but the way things are going, Microsoft will win the PDA war.
Most users out there like the safety (or feel good) that a familiar environment provides. Most will buy a PDA not because it has the best OS, but because the migration from their PC to the PDA is not difficult.... ie it is still fairly intuitive.
Palm forking and introducing another OS would just muddy the waters, and at best I think would win market share from the other minor OSes, instead of Microsoft.
Incorporate some the good bits of BeOS into PalmOS if you must, but please do not introduce yet another PDA OS.
For what it's worth, I think Palm should bequeth BeOS to the GNU/Linux crew, and slowly migrate PalmOS to Linux. The result would be more critical mass, and a concerted and coordinated challenge to Windows on the desktop, on the servers, and on the PDA.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
Because what Palm wants is the BeIA platform, not the PC desktop. And, having a freely available development environment for the BeIA won't hurt Palm's interests on this respect. They could allow you to freely develop on the BeOS and then charge you for licensing your soft for the BeIA
RedHat can run an SMP Kernel out-of-the box.
And no journalling filesystem can ensure data integrity if the power dies... the memory can fill with all kinds of crap, which may or may not get flushed to disk. This is true of all PCs, and basically any Von-Neumann system (ie, any computer).
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
I have to STRONGLY disagree with your sound card comment. Sure, when I has a SB16 PNP, it picked it up just fine. However, when I tried to use my classic SB16 IDE (non-PNP), it failed to detect it. I tried all freaking day to figure out how to make it work. I must say I hate that jumpered device dialog now. With a passion. That said, I loved how fast it was, and switching resolutions and refresh rates was quite easy. I wish they would've used a more "standard" directory structure, and not crippled the BeOS5PE free version so severely. I also wish (but it's a big wish) that it was Open Source. It's amazing to think what would be possible if someone could actually take the time to hand optimize every single instruction going to every single pathway in say an Athlon XP 1800+ and Nvidia GeForce 3, the way games had to be carefully tweaked and coded in 100% assembly/machine language "back in the day."
A solution to the problem with music today
However,
1) Since OSX is based on Mach, it had a 30-yr strong Unix heritage, plus a GUI interface more enticing than BeOS.
2) BeIA is the biggest waste on earth : 64-bit journalling file system and preemptive multitasking for a wireless webpad??!! If done correctly, BeIA might be as powerful as Linux or FreeBSD on a workstation or a small server!
3) Like many ironic stories out there, products that are "successful" are usually those promoted by marketing genuises, not those that have technical excellence. Thus why people go WindowsME/XP or Pentium4....Be Inc. just didn't have enough marketing to convey the message that it's a superior alternative to MacOS (or to an extent, Windows).
Imagine a Titanium PowerBook G4 tri-booting BeOS, MacOS X, and LinuxPPC! Damn I want one of those babies!
Palm does need a new OS, but i think that the purchase of Be Inc. is not cost effective and is actually the worst decision carl has made as ceo, for 12 million, it is way overpriced, and their desperate to get something new out after they stock price went from $165 to a $1.98. The time to port and market the new BeOS will probably be at least a year. Dont get me wrong i like BeOS, and i like my palmpilot, ive had several over the years, but i think they could have hired some programmers and had a OS ready in the same time it will take to port BeOS. Just my 2 cents.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
might be offtopic but it is true..