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Be Throws in the Towel

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the past-tense-of-be dept.

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.

8 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. What about the IP? by Ryu2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What will Palm do with it? Does it fit in to their plans? Any chance of releasing some stuff open source?

    --
    There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  2. Lawsuit? by VP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is the lawsuit vs. MSFT still on? The PR is still on the front page, but can the suit be continued after Be is dissolved?

    1. Re:Lawsuit? by kcbrown · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And if the antitrust case lasts longer than three years? Does Microsoft then win by default as their opponent disappears in a puff of blue smoke?

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      Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
  3. Re:Be a rival to Microsoft's Windows? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Intel was one of the first investors in Be. I believe one of Intel's execs was quoted as saying (paraphrased) "our hardware can do that?!?!" when he heard about BeOS running on X86 hardware.

    --
    Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  4. A silly business model doomed Be to failure by cartman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Be wanted to create an OS that was superior to Windows and Mac OS. That was EASY TO DO. Back then, MS and Apple operating systems SUCKED ROYALLY and ANYONE could make something better. Some companies actually did make something better (OS/2). Even Apple and MS could have made something better if they started from scratch, however they both realized (correctly) that application support is far more important than kernel threading, so they stuck with their crappy backwards-compatible OSes.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    tom

    1. Re:A silly business model doomed Be to failure by Thing+1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

      Microsoft actually had a good answer for that problem. They made the "Designed for Window 95" sticker requirements include that the program ran correctly on Windows NT.

      By the time they released Windows XP, most programs could already run.

      This is, of course, completely tangent to their guilt.

      --
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  5. Huh? by donkeyboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought they already sold the towel to Palm.

  6. Be Rock(ed)s and why OpenBe will be 4 me by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I discovered BeOS about a year ago, just BeFore it died. I installed the Personal Edition on my overclocked Pentium 225 :) and sat back amazed at what a huge speed gain it had over Winblows98. I could do a million things at once, with no ill effect. (Try scrolling a webpage while listening to a mp3 on w..i..n..d..o..w..s) Ugh.) Then I tried finding something similar to Acid (by Sonic Foundry) and was immediately dissapointed to find nothing that would work for me. :( I was so enamored by this OS I looked into writing my own software. I realized I could be either a programmer or a musician, and I chose musician. (I've had much more practice at that :)

    I still have Beos installed on my machines and boot into it occasionally to see if BeAcid has suddenly appeared. It hasn't. I will definately look into OpenBeos when it gets more fleshed out, and look forward to the day I can stop using something I hate (windows) to make something I love (music)