Slashdot Mirror
MacOSX Vs BeOS ShootOut
Jolie writes: "After Palm purchased Be's assets, the future of BeOS became uncertain and a lot of users have left the platform. One of these users was Scot Hacker, mostly known for his 'BeOS Bible' book among other things. Scot tried to stick to Windows, then to Linux but he ended up with MacOSX. He has written a long and detailed article comparing, from the user's point of view, his beloved BeOS to his new favorite, MacOSX."
With a little more polish (multi-user, better networking) it coulda been a contender.
Frankly, no. For a system with such a small user base and development team as BeOS, the product was *highly* polished. It contained virtually every feature of a modern operating system with outstanding features ranging from the kernel (true multithreaded processing) to the interface (the textual "move to" and "copy to" options are some of the most ingenious interface considerations in a long time). Tet it's obvious that BeOS wasn't a finished product, but it was definitely going places quite fast-- and if the company was actually able to get money, the rate and quality of development would have been quite impressive. Ever hear of BONE or BeOpenGL? Besides, does an OS really need to have "polish" to market? Think of a little company in Redmond and define "polished".
The real reason BeOS wasn't "a contender" is because Microsoft screwed Be over with the fine print in its OEM contract. I suggest that you read this article by Scot Hacker with an accurate description of Be's demise.
One of the reasons it died is sort of summed up by this comment in the linked article:
Most of this applications section isn't really about operating systems, but about the apps available for the operating systems, so you might want to skip it if you're just looking for the OS comparisons. However, I believe that the applications landscape is an integral part of the total OS experience, so included it here.
The problem is that apps are not "an integral part" of a computing experience. They are almost the totality of it. With the exception of some supergeeks, nobody buys a computer in order to run the operating system. People buy computers to run apps. No matter how lickable the shutdown/adduser/finder screen interface is, without real apps a system is doomed. If Be had all the killer apps that people buy computers for, it would still be alive today.
Nobody cares about threading, "multimedia support", or POSIX. Users want Photoshop, MS Word, Quicken, Halo and that goofy little custom VB app that runs your small company's entire finance department.
Spare me the "OS Shootouts." Gimme the apps.