Be Throws in the Towel

darrad writes: "ZDNet is reporting that 'Be, the failed maker of a computer operating system once considered a rival to Microsoft's Windows, said Monday it would dissolve itself on March 15 and delist from the Nasdaq stock market.'" The Be front page says the same, and explains that this is the natural conclusion of the company's sale of most of its property to Palm.

Comments

Be a rival to Microsoft's Windows?

[maggard]

Be, the failed maker of a computer operating system once considered a rival to Microsoft's Windows

In what parrallel universe? Sure it went for the gold ring but c'mon, who ever really considered them a serious contender? Name me one large business that "went Be"?

Nice technology, clever stuff, but c'mon, that's like saying.. oh, wait, this is /., never mind.

Maybe those with hope in YellowTab will wake up...

[Xafloc]

I am a BeOS supporter, as I love the OS. However, I have not run the OS on a primary machine for over 2 years. BeOS users need to recognize that the only hope for Be is a Free Be, and that is not going to happen. YellowTab, as far as I know, does not have the source to the licensed code. So therefore, any changes they make are going to be cosmetic and not core changes.

The way I see it, if you really like the BeOS, head over to the Open-Source Be like projects like openbeos and pledge your support with money or code.

Shot themselves in the foot a long time ago.

[_pi-away]

They've been dead ever since they decided to "change focus" from multimedia to networking. They had steinberg lined up, high-end sound card makers were starting to announce driver support plans, then they "change focus." As if the networking niche wasn't completely saturated already. Too bad, they could've given mac a run for their money in the multimedia market . . .

Re:Shot themselves in the foot a long time ago.

[tswinzig]

Good Lord. Here we go again.

They've been dead ever since they decided to "change focus" from multimedia to networking.

They didn't change focus from media to networking. They changed focus from burning many millions a month on an OS that no OEM would distribute, to a company burning only ~$1 million a month, selling licenses to companies for an internet appliance OS. Companies such as Sony and Compaq. This has been rehashed too many times already, read a little history. If Be had not changed focus, they would have been dead many months sooner, since they were burning 10x as much cash, and still not selling the OS.

They had steinberg lined up, high-end sound card makers were starting to announce driver support plans, then they "change focus."

Ooh! They had Steinberg lined up! And some sound card drivers ANNOUNCING support plans. YIPPEE!! What were they thinking when they changed focus? I mean, we all know with a powerhouse like Steinberg lined up, and sound card drivers announced, success is sure to follow quickly!

As if the networking niche wasn't completely saturated already.

When Be changed focus, it wasn't saturated at all. The IA market was just starting out. No one owned the market like Microsoft owns the desktop market. And why the hell do you keep referring to it as 'networking'? It's not like they were trying to compete with any networking companies.

Too bad, they could've given mac a run for their money in the multimedia market . . .

Yeah, I thought so too, 4-5 years ago, when they first came out on Intel's platform. Then after a few years, reality set in -- Be was running out of cash, and sales of the OS were not picking up enough steam. It takes time to compete in the desktop market, even longer when trying to compete against an entrenched monopolist that illegally uses its power to provide barriers-to-entry in the market.

How an ignorant post such as yours was marked +4 I'll never know.

So much inertia...

[GCP]

The inertia in things like operating systems and programming languages continues to frustrate me. If you aren't a mere extension to the dominant technology, you may as well not bother. If you're something significantly different, but only a few hundred percent better, you may as well not bother. The inertia is just too great for really good ideas to be adopted quickly.

Be will be a lesson to those who hadn't already learned from NeXT, Amiga, etc. When Be first started, I remember commenting to a friend that "there's a group that just doesn't get it." I've hoped ever since that I would turn out to be wrong. I wasn't talking about their technology, which I always admired. It was the insurmountable market barriers that they would face.

If you're not 10x better, the only approach that seems to work is to find a whole new market niche to go for.

(Sorry, this next part is going to sound like a troll, but...) Even Linux is a bit depressing. So much talent out there, and the best we can come up with is the amazing innovation of cloning a 30 yr old OS? Free and open source aren't technical innovations, they're marketing innovations.

There's so much research in OS theory, in programming languages, in user interfaces and human-computer interaction -- so many great ideas from the 80s and 90s that will take another generation to reach the daily lives of most of us professional developers.

Re:A silly business model doomed Be to failure

[tswinzig]

Everyone was, at that time, aware of the "chicken and egg" problem: a new platform has no software, so no users will migrate to it, so nobody will write software, etc. This problem had doomed every new platform. Everyone was aware of it. Be decided to forge ahead anyway, while offering no solution to this problem whatsoever.

Wrong. Be did have a solution. They made it easy to install/run BeOS alongside Windows and Linux. Then people could easily switch into Be for things that it excelled at, such as multimedia. Their plans are all clearly laid out in their lawsuit against Microsoft, if you care to read it.

The result, predictably, was that BeOS had no applications. Running that nifty teapot demo got a little old, and nobody felt compelled to pay for it.

Clearly someone who never used BeOS for more than a couple days (or past 1997). BeOS had plenty of decent applications, many of them cheap or free. GoBe productive is a great office application, for example. Ever used it?

And how did Windows get so popular? Ahh, I forgot, they weren't going up against any entrenched monopolists in the desktop market. Apple's only still around because they started at the same time as Microsoft, and could build up a loyal userbase, which sustained them long enough to build a niche.

Be was only ever TRYING to build a niche based on multimedia, they never had that niche market, though. It takes time. Hard to do when an 800lb. gorilla is using illegal tactics to stall you.

If you're going to make a new commercial desktop OS, forge an alliance with Adobe etc and have app makers lined up BEFOREHAND. The game console makers know this.

Yes, let's turn to the game console makers for examples of great businesses! Need I list all the failed game console makers in the past decade? It's a fairly high percentage of all game console makers!

Besides, I'm sure it would have been cheap to get a company like Adobe to port their huge application (Photoshop) to an OS with a tiny market. Great business strategy... if your business has billions to burn.