Be on the G4

adraken writes "Jean-Louis Gassée of Be Inc. talks about the recent release of IBM's PPC motherboard specs, the G4, and what BeOS will do about it in Be Inc.'s latest newsletter."

Comments

Re:BE's president is vague...

[William Wallace]

"It seems to me this guy obfuscates every issue he comes in contact with."

It seems to me you don't read many of his
articles. I felt this article was a pretty nice
way of saying, "We will not support PPC much
longer... unless things change dramatically."

Can you provide some more articles where you feel
he's waffling? Or are you just trolling?

"Why doesnt he just say: we dont think this will sell enough more copies of BeOS to make developing for the g4 platform cost-effective."

Uhhh, because that's not the truth? Gassee would
like nothing better than to be able and target
BeOS at the large number of designers on G*
hardware. They need the specs to do that. It's not
like it's a huge change to the kernel, but they
DO need the info to do it.

They can't use the Linux info without open-sourcing their own kernel because of the GPL.
There are legal questions regarding reverse engineering. Apple has been on a legal rampage
lately, and court cases cost LOTS of money whether
you're right or wrong in the case. They also bring
bad publicity.

It's not worth it. It's not about not being able
to sell enough copies to people with G* systems,
it's whether it's worth the risk for a platform
that is obviously going to be a lot of trouble to
work with now and in the future.

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Re:Be is a never has been

[William Wallace]

Spoken by someone who's never even used the OS.

I guess Linux was a never has-been when it first
started? Same thing with DOS? Apple?

It's called a *NEW OPERATING SYSTEM*. Deal with it.

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Re:G4 another lie?

[William Wallace]

Why bother with the Merced? Just compare it to the
Athlon, which is out and kicking Intel/Apple ass
NOW.

Gee Apple, did you forget the Athlon comparison
charts in your press releases and ticker tape
parades?

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Re:You're welcome ... though you missed my point

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't doubt that the upgrade manufacturers can figure out a work-around. In fact, in my post I stated:

Given the hoops the upgrade manufacturers will need to jump through...

I didn't express any doubt that they could jump through those hoops. I also mentioned IBM's Win-OS2 Win32s upgrades. IBM was able to continue adding the APIs Microsoft released. However, it took time and effort.

Furthermore, I covered the scenario in which Be would find a work-around to such roadblocks Apple might hypothetically throw up. (Did you read my post or were you just trolling for URLs to supposedly dispell?)

Any company has limited resources. Why would Be want to expend theirs chasing after a hostile manufacturer?

Re:Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a mechanic, so I hire one and buy parts. Thanks to a competitive auto-parts market, I don't have to pay monopoly prices and settle for what the auto-maker (who'd rather sell me a more expensive car than improve the one I have) felt like manufacturing; thanks to a competitive repair and maintenance market, I don't have to make a business-hours appointment and spend $30 (and remember, that's what they charge when they have competitors) to have the auto-maker change the oil.

Re:Taiwan motherboard makers.......

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC they got burned on licensing MacOS and proprietary ROMs to successfully make a Mac clone. If they blame the PPC architecture instead of themselves for naïvely trusting Apple, that's really disappointing.

Re:How huge is huge?

[Anonymous Coward]

the software community was split between two different platforms

Sheesh, it's the 1990s. With Be being such a new platform, why weren't developers bright enough to write portable code?

Re:You're an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you fix your software; I'm sure your argument is very convincing, but it seems to have been omitted.

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the GUI you really like. The actual OS is such an embarassment Apple had to buy NeXT (and go out of their way to screw all their customers) just to get a decent one.

PPC should have better bang/buck than x86, but of course Apple strangled everyone who was delivering that because they couldn't.

Re:typical Be posturing

[Anonymous Coward]

Promises about what you can deliver on your own hardware are much safer (and more believable) than promises about what you ought to be able to deliver on unknown hardware someone else might hopefully make soon if all goes well.

Re: Be API Access

[Anonymous Coward]

Because now that moving to completely open source systems is finally becoming feasible, BeOS is a step backwards. A gilded anchor that happens to be shinier now than Windows and MacOS, but it'll rust even faster than those festering heaps with fewer people cleaning its proprietary innards.

It doesn't help that Be hasn't made trying it easy.

Re:what "real" benchmarks? Please provide link/pro

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right...the Apple mantra: Our speed of light is faster than your speed of light. Get real...300MHz is 300MHz no matter what.

Here's a link that might change your mind.

[dolanh]

"Get real...300MHz is 300MHz no matter what."

What planet are you from? So you're telling me that that overclocked 700mhz Celeron is going to stomp a 500mhz K7 in 3D? No, it will choke, because of Cache and FP performance defecits.

Mhz is a measure of processor performance, but not the only one. If you know anything about hardware, you'd know that instruction set efficiency is as important as anything else, and the PPC instruction set is far more efficient than that of the x86 series, thus allowing it to perform the same number or more tasks as the x86 at lower clock speeds.

Yes, the K7 may narrowly beat the G4 SpecInt and SpecFP, but once altivec is taken into account, forget it -- the K7 is toast. Besides, I don't think we're going to see PIII or K7 notebooks any day soon...

Here's the link:

http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/AltiVecVsKNI.html

Enjoy.

Re:Question

[networkz]

If you want to get even more pedantic, I could say that the 050 (or 68050) came out before the 68040 and was either not a CPU (maybe an embedded controller) or was a very early 68k processor.

The 68060 was used in Amigas, as well as certain embedded devices but not the Mac. If memory recalls it clocked up to 80Mhz or so, tops.

reverse engineering linux / BSD

[mcc]

"Some have suggested that we look into the Linux sources for such data. Perhaps, but I see little reason to open ourselves to possible accusations of reverse-engineering. We're welcome on x-86 hardware, we're not welcome on Apple G3/G4. We respect the logic and that settles it for us. "

"Accusations of reverse-engineering?"
Ignoring for a second whether it is logically _possible_ to reverse-engineer linux, who would accuse them of anything, and what bad could possibly come out of it? As long as you aren't actually reusing code, i don't see any way they could violate the rights of a GPLed program.

What if they just had one engineer read the linuxppc kernel source, write down everything you have to do to work on a G3 chipset, pass that information to another couple of engineers and have them put that into Be? They wouldn't be copying any code, so it would be perfectly legal. Does it even have to be that complicated?
I could understand if Be just wasn't comfortable getting information on the G3 chipset from a secondhand source, but that's not what they say the problem is.

Hell- forget linux, what about NetBSD? or Darwin? They could just take that code and it would be legal, wouldn't it? Is there anything in the ASPL that would at all limit Be's usage of code from Darwin?

I just wish it was possible to get more than one side of this story. All that we have to go on is what Be says, and while it sounds like it's probably true, i'm not certain how difficult it would really be for Be to work out the G3 if they wanted to. And maybe apple just has better things to do than provide tech support to Be?
-mcc-baka

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[arielb]

Be had problems with the GPL before and the linux community raised a big stint about it. I don't think Be wants to even bother with the ASPL because they'd need a bunch of lawyers just to make sure that Apple wouldn't take them to court (they probably would just like they did with e-machines). NetBSD? sounds like a good point there

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[Shrubbman]

What if they just had one engineer read the linuxppc kernel source, write down everything you have to do to work on a G3 chipset, pass that information to another couple of engineers and have them put that into Be?

What you just described was clean-room reverse engineering TO-THE-LETTER.

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[mcc]

yes. so?

does the GPL say there's anything wrong with that?

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[tdanner]

Be isn't worried about "accusations of reverse engineering" regarding Linux or BSD - they are worried that Apple will drag them into court for reverse-engineering Apple hardware. This has nothing to do with the GPL, BSD, APSL or any other sort of license, it has to do with Apple's well-documented belief that they own their hardware even after they've sold it and intend to exert control over what is done with it by the buyer. It is my personal belief that this sort of thing has no legal standing - hardware isn't subject to the same licensing nonsense that software is, but when big corporations like Apple are involved, little guys can be bankrupted in court even if they are in the right. I can definitely sympathize with Be's desire not to piss Apple off. Competing with both Apple and Microsoft is a two-front war. Ouch!

Tim

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[MindStalker]

I wonder though, in a theoretical sense. Reverse engineered code would be different enough from the original source code, that it wouldn't accually be covered by the GPL license. Could you then just hand the source code created by the computer from the process of reverse engineering straight to the designers without the clean-room step as it wouldn't be needed seeing as reverse engineering isn't illigal in a GPL license? I could be so wrong about this I'm not even funny. Just asking for comments

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[Mr. Piccolo]

Strange... then how were NetBSD and LinuxPPC able to get specs to write their products?

I distinctly remember Apple helping the mkLinux folks out, but not sure if they helped LinuxPPC any.

I wish I knew the history of these two ports, but I think if anyone would have been sued by Apple, it would be them.

Unless, of course, Apple doesn't consider tose two projects as a threat because they aren't corporations.

I wonder what the market shares for LinuxPPC, BeOS, and NetBSD on PowerPC are. It might answer some questions regarding what Apple perceives as a threat. Then again, it might show that BeOS has a _lower_ market share than both free OSes!

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless, of course, Apple doesn't consider tose two projects as a threat because they aren't corporations.

Ding! Also, Apple probably realizes suing mendicant volunteer Linux geeks now would be a public relations disaster so big even suits would hear about it.

Re:reverse engineering linux / BSD

[Shrubbman]

Did you READ the post I was replying to?

Re:Be is a never has been

[arielb]

some people just want the status quo and are scared of anything new which requires them to take some risks

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[arielb]

that's right-they made a choice to go with ppc instead of pentium in the beginning.

Apples role

[Anonymous Coward]

No no...
Be might have some bonds to Intel.

But I don't believe it to be a PR stunt for Be to put blame on Apple.
Point to to one (just one) official statement from Apple about BeOS on their hardware.
Point me to one (just one) email sent to Apple about the issue which have been answered.

Be is not lying about Apple. Apple is has clearly chosen to ignore that be exists... to Be and to users.
...then of course. Apples ignorange may come handy for Be to defend it's decissions.

tried it went back to linux

[Anonymous Coward]

UI is quirky, So is E, but it's improving. Be's raison d'etre is to be a pretty single user unix clone, and charge money for it. Linux is a free unix clone that is getting prettier every day, and has more industry support. Look at how Wall Street treated Be. Believe me if there was any success buried in Be Wall Street would have smelled it. They didn't.

Re:tried it went back to linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at how Wall Street treated Be. Believe me if there was any success buried in Be Wall Street would have smelled it. They didn't.

Interesting logic. I suppose any companies who aren't at $50/share or more yet should just close up shop then, because if they were ever going to go higher, they'd be there already!

Re:tried it went back to linux

[William Wallace]

"UI is quirky, So is E, but it's improving. "

You're the first person I've heard that has said
something negative about the GUI. And then to
compare it to any unix windowing system is an
utter joke, IMO. But hey, what'd you do, use it
for all of 5 minutes?

I do believe it took me a few days to get used to
Windows, MacOS, BeOS, Irix, GNOME, etc when I
first used those...

"Be's raison d'etre is to be a pretty single user unix clone, and charge money for it."

If you knew anything about BeOS, you'd know
that it has features Linux users drool over. BFS,
pervasive multi-threading, OO API, support for as
many processors as your motherboard will allow (and when you add an extra processor, it actually
INCREASES the performance of the machine... there's that pervasive multi-threading again), an
integrated GUI that is responsive and intuitive,
with a POSIX-compliant back-end and a bash shell
to boot. Oh, I forgot to mention the 10-second
boot time.

Yeah, you're right, BeOS is just a unix-wannabe.

Hahahaha!

By the way, since you're obviously not informed,
I'll let you in on a little secret: The BeOS has
the road laid out for a multi-user environment.
Their current plans are to have it multi-user by
R6 or sooner, last I heard. Go ahead, open up a
shell and 'ls -a'. Wow, who's that guy Baron?

"Look at how Wall Street treated Be."

Hahahaha! Yeah, I'll use Wall Street tech IPO's
as a way to gauge an operating system and a company...

The only thing the IPO shows is that Be received
bad press before the IPO, and RedHat/Linux is
riding a wave of hype. That's OK, I made money off
of RHAT, and I'm doing the same thing with BEOS.

"Believe me if there was any success buried in Be
Wall Street would have smelled it."

Pardon my German, but why the fuck would I believe
someone who obviously has no clue on how the stock
market works?

When was the last time you considered "Wall Street"
a group of technologically savvy people? Just
because RHAT soared and BEOS did not has nothing
to do with the business model or OS for either
company -- it's all HYPE. I'd be saying the same
thing if the roles were reversed.

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

AltiVec isn't bogus. It is insulting to its designers to mention it in the same sentence as the hackneyed MMX/KNI stuff. It just that you won't see much use for them in a general purpose workstation market. People there usually throw money at high end graphics cards. Otherwise these are used for general purpose calcuations that won't benefit from a specialized vector unit. [ Altivec isn't a general purpose vector unit. If it did double, IEEE floats I'd say yes but it doesn't. ]

The problem with AltiVec is that is sucks up about 1/4 of the 7400 die. If I recall correctly, about as much space as the caches. Now if that space were dedicated to cache instead of AltiVec you'd see a distinct jump in SPEC ( and other benchmarks, legacy applications) performance. Or they spend those transitors on improving the float unit. Or just not spend that transitor budget and get more dies per wafer (improving costs).

While the G4's Altivec gives you a distinct boost in some media processing benchmarks its Spec numbers for int and float only went up a small percentage. Is 1/4 of the die worth that? In addition to Apple's uses, Motorola is aiming the G4 for embedded contexts where are currently a CPU and DSP being used in conjunction. Altivec takes the place ofthe DSP. Here giving up a 1/4 of the die to take a two chip solution to a one chip solution has benefits. Also by definition embedded usually means custom software. Unless specialized Altivec libraries show up you spend 1/4 of your die spend on something that sits idle a heck of a lot.

Besides IBM has tweaked versions of the PowerPC of their own to worry about (e.g., the AS/400 inspired 64-bit multithreaded chip). They can only spread their resources so thin.

Hypocrite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overall, he's complaining that Apple is doing to
BeOS what BeOS does to developers -- jeleously
guard his proprietary design.

Here's my newsletter:

**Attention taiwan mobo gurus -- Free us from X86.
Make a PPC ATX mobo.

**Linus and Alan (and a cast of thousands) will
free us from Bill Gatus Of Borg.

**Chipset makers (like 3Dfx) will make high power
chipsets available on plugins, and make kick ass
drivers for Linux, or they can consult with people
like Darryl Strauss or Alan Cox to write the
drivers under NDA. Free the source after two
years.

A computer marketplace with a variey of mobos,
plugins, and software, where no one company can
take all the pieces.

Just say no to proprietary designs from Steve
Jobba The Hut, Bill Gatus Of Borg and Gassee The
Pootmeister.

Re:Hypocrite.

[Anonymous Coward]

**Chipset makers (like 3Dfx) will make high power
chipsets available on plugins, and make kick ass
drivers for Linux, or they can consult with people
like Darryl Strauss or Alan Cox to write the
drivers under NDA. Free the source after two
years.


Retch! First of all, I don't think that Alan Cox would ever write anything under NDA that has to be released binary only, and secondly, (fortunately) I don't think the Linux market will tolerate binary drivers for much longer. After 2 years???? The products will be obsolete/useless after that much time; what good would the source do?

Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Zagato-sama]

Wow ;) What a concept, a company creates a product and refuses to show how it did so because it wants to be reimbursed for it's effors. I suppose we should also boycott non open source videogames? What's next? Cars? Planes? "Sir this soup isn't open source, I'd like something on the GNU menu"

Re:Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you got up in the morning, had a decent
chunk of money laying around, and wanted :

1) A videogame;
2) A Car;
3) A Plane;
4) A Bowl of soup.

Furthermore, you looked in the phone book, and
the same company was listed in all categories.

You go there, and they just happen to have a
package made up with all four.

You notice it's not your favorite soup, car, game,
or plane. You ask "Ya know, maybe I'd like
something different..." but they cut you off and
yell "Facist! Get Out! POLICE!"

As you drive home, nervously looking in the rear
view mirror for the flashing lights, you see a row
of restaurants. You park and walk past them,
noting the menus in the windows. A door opens,
and the smell coming out is irresistable. It's the
soup. As you eat, you realize it's the best soup
you've ever had.

Similarly, you pass an airport, row of car
dealers, and a Frys electronics. All your needs
are satisfied, you had a variety of vendors to
choose from, no one called you a fascist, and
you paid no more than you wanted.

So, it's not really fascism. It's granularity of
choice. Apple wants me to buy everything from
them -- os, hardware, support, everything.

BeOS wants me to register as a developer to get
at their API's. It's free now, but maybe it will
evolve into something like MSDN or Sun -- $100's
of dollars a year.

But with Linux, I pick my own window manager,
ftp client, etc. Anyone can design against it.
Many developers are gainfully employed at RedHat,
VA Reasearch, IBM, SGI, 3dfx and Creative Labs.
They are reimbursed for their efforts, and the
companies they work for are selling product.

3dfx and nVidia fight to beat each other, I win.
Intel and AMD, same thing. It's a good model, with
a lot of people making money and selling goods.

Doesn't sound like fascism to me. Sounds like a
thriving market economy. No one owns the traces
on a PC board. Open the OS the same way PCs are.

---
The Anonymous Open Source Facist
POOT! POOT!

Re:Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy premade auto parts from the store, but I don't have to sign a NDA to open my hood :)

Re:Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that is the classic pragmatic argument for Free Software - "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" If I buy something, it's mine, and I'm not willing to let the manufacturer tell me what I can and cannot do (or hire someone to do!) to it.

Re:Open source fascism at it's best ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you play an active and integral role in developing free software? If so, what specifically have you released? So with your car, are you _realistically_ capable of manufacturing every piece from raw materials by hand? Do you get your own free sand to make windows, mine for free metal ore to construct the chassis? Or do you go to the store and buy the already manufactured/assembled components?

Re:Question

[hime]

There were two types of DX?/100. The DX3, 33Mhz * 3 = 99Mhz + 1MarketingHz and the DX4, 25Mhz * 4 = 100Mhz.

Um, no. There was only one - the DX4/100, which was actually a tripled chip. The reason behind it was because Intel wanted to keep trademark and did it to throw off the court by somehow indicating that the number after DX had nothing to do with the speed multiplier.

Be's gone corporate, all right...

[Slarty]

Be doesn't *seem* to have changed much from the IPO, but in this little expository, Gassee is demonstrating his prowess at writing a whole lot while saying almost nothing (a corporate talent if I've ever seen one). Just about everyone's heard why Be doesn't/can't/won't support Apple's G3 machines; that's all been covered before. The big questions is... if a sizeable manufacturer starts making PPC machines based on the newly released stuff from IBM, will Be support it or not? And we've gotten *no* word on the answer to that. Come on, Be! A yes, a no, or a strong maybe... anything would be preferable to "no comment."

Slarty

Re:Be's gone corporate, all right...

[Monoman]

"We're welcome on x-86 hardware, we're not welcome on Apple G3/G4. We respect the logic and that settles it for us."

That sounds like "No" to me. It is at the very end of the article.

Besides, who in their right mind would follow IBM when it comes to anything PC related? IMHO IBM never seems to get things right. Great ideas that go nowhere.

Re:Be's gone corporate, all right...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting as Scott Elyard, but show up as anonymous since I'm not at my typical workstation. As much as I would love to see Be continue to support the PPC (and the G4), I think it's only fair to expect real hardware to show up first before expecting Be to support it. Hardware developed for linux (that has the collateral effect of supporting another OS like BeOS) using this specification seems likely enough, but let's see if it happens. I'd love to buy an 8-processor G4 BeOS box, personally. I hope some hardware manufacturer is listening.

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[be-fan]

Here is an idea. How 'bout the fact that PC and Mac based Unixs still do didly for media. BeOS has a lot of support in the media department and thus is a direct competitor to MacOS. Face it, except for hardware and software support, BeOS can do everything MacOS can do except better. Linux can't hold a candle to MacOS in the media depertment, but BeOS can, and thus threatens Apple. By supporting Linux, Apple gets its machines into servers and gets to have the media hype of Linux, but does not lose anything because Linux can not compete with MacOS.

Re:what "real" benchmarks? Please provide link/pro

[be-fan]

Actually the G3s are faster at the same MHz for INTEGER MATH. But the G3 is based on the pile 'o shit 603e processor and has a floating point unit
"whose math skills are so poor it must have come out of an urban high school" to put it in the word of boot. (So the quote was used in referance to a K6, you get the idea) In Quake, Inspire3D, rendering, and other benchmarks such as SPEC, the x86 is much faster. But face it integer math is plenty fast already. Make that FPU more powerful. Thus a 600MHz PIII is much faster than the fastest G3 even for integer (higher clock speed), not to mention that all the high performance hardware is made for x86 and since they are cheaper, you can afford more RAM/HD on the x86 machine. However, the G4 is based on the 604 and can whoop any x86 any day of the week.

Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[smoondog]

I work in an environment with a lot of macs around. It would be nice to get some Be. But, once again it seems the problem is Apple's insistance on proprietary, difficult to upgrade, essentially 3 year disposable computers. It is unfortunate, really.
-- Moondog

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the fact that they are in bed with Intel doesn't confuse the issue at all.

Every time Be is mentioned, it turns into an Apple flamefest. The simple fact is they partnered with Intel. They made a choice to support Intel, and dump Apple, and in a nice PR move put all the blame on Apple. If you think Jean isn't more than a little sour on Apple, you should take some time and look at what he did before starting Be.

The Apple bashing serves NO POINT here at all, as these boards have nothing to do with Apple. It would be like saying that you wouldn't buy a penguin computing box because you have bead feelings towards Dell. I mean, they do use the same processor don't they?

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Darchmare]

---
As if they had a choice? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they were on PPC *first*, and then ran into
a dead-end when Apple cut off their access to the
G* specs.
---

Are you so sure Apple has done this? If so, how come LinuxPPC and Debian support for recent PowerMacs is so good? If Apple has the PowerPC platform by the balls (forgive the term), why have they provided pivotal source code for their upcoming OS (it may not be much, but it's bootable)? Why would they have supported the MkLinux project at all?

Last but not least, between people buying Macs to run BeOS and those buying PCs to run BeOS, what exactly does Apple have to lose? Hardware is, and always has been, Apple's main source of income. Remember, prior to MacOS 7.X the OS was free (as in beer). They may make some cash off of it now, but it's not their main source of funds.

MacOS sells PowerPC hardware, not the other way around. If the BeOS can help them in that aim, I doubt Apple would give a damn. Blame Be and their new investors.

- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[lukpac]

:::P.S. Apple bashing occurs because Apple pissed off a shitload of PPC users that love the hardware, but not the MacOS! :::

Funny...I could really give a crap about PPC. It's the OS I really like. Sure, the underlying parts of the OS suck (memory management, multitasking, etc), but to me, MacOS is like home. I've also got Linux running on a P233 to play around with, but to me it's still not something I can say is my main OS.

If Apple had decided to use the IBM PC way back when, I'd probably be just as happy as I am now. It would be nice to be able to use standardized hardware, although on the other hand my system does everything I want it to... I have no particular love for the PPC platform, except possibly that setting up new hardware is generally less painful than on a PC...

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Uart]

Right, because they wanted to be the new AmigaOS/MacOS, and got passed on for both. That was why they were on PPC, since they didn't make it happen, they needed to move to a bigger market, AKA, Intel, but they also needed an excuse for abandoning the PPC version, so instead of taking the blame and saing, "we couldn't make money", or "nobody would license it", they passed the buck.

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Darchmare]

Indeed, it would be in Apple's best interests to support the BeOS (just as they do with LinuxPPC and Darwin) on their boxen. They make their money off of hardware, not software.



- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[William Wallace]

"Are you so sure Apple has done this?"

Yes.

"If so, how come LinuxPPC and Debian support for recent PowerMacs is so good?"

Because they can reverse-engineer things to get
info on G* support, with little fear of being
sued by Apple. Be, however, cannot do that.

"Why would they have supported the MkLinux project at all?"

I don't have all the facts on MkLinux and Apple,
so I cannot say, other than to guess it would
give them more smiling faces in the Linux camp.
For example, your response to my message is one
perk for Apple.

"Last but not least, between people buying Macs to run BeOS and those buying PCs to run BeOS, what exactly does Apple have to lose?"

That's the point! Apple is shooting themselves in
the foot on this one.

Look, it's not some conspiracy theory. Apple WILL NOT PROVIDE THE SPECS FOR THE G* TO BE. This was
the case *BEFORE* Intel ever invested in Be. Do
you really think Gassee and the rest of Be could
sit there and lie about this without being found
out?

But let's pretend for a minute that you're right,
and that it's just a conspiracy between Intel and
Be. You are then forgetting that this hurts Be's
chances to make in-roads on all the G* machines
being used by media specialists -- people Be is
actively targeting with BeOS.

Now how much sense does it make to have this
conspiracy with Intel?

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's Apple that ditched them. You should see that Apple wants to try for domination, they want to be the supplier of widely supported but also reliable OS. The fact that Be was and perhaps still is in a better position to reach that aim is not very favorable with Apple, so they don't want to lose to Be. Consider that Be works on Powermacs. If you are working with Be instead of Macos then you are not tied to using Macs, you could just as well go out and buy a PC, load Be on it and use your apps (after all it's supposed to be an easy recompile) on it. That's not so good for Apple. Anyway, no one knows for sure the G4 processor is as hot as it is made out to be. All the tests come from the Apple camp and as far as i can see the results claim the same things, up to 2 times as fast as the P III, as they did when G3 came out. The bottomline for me is that Apple probably could not manage to get sufficient bandwidth to take advantage of the G4 and are not therefore that much faster than the G3. Don't take this as bashing apple, if the G4s are any good and the MacOS X is any good, I will get one. But till MacOS X come out, Apple is not so cool.

Re:Hmmm. Is this encouraging?

[William Wallace]

"The simple fact is they partnered with Intel. They made a choice to support Intel, and dump Apple, and in a nice PR move put all the blame on Apple."

As if they had a choice? Correct me if I'm wrong,
but they were on PPC *first*, and then ran into
a dead-end when Apple cut off their access to the
G* specs.

They could roll over and die, or move on to a
larger, cheaper, and faster advancing platform...

-WW

P.S. Apple bashing occurs because Apple pissed off
a shitload of PPC users that love the hardware,
but not the MacOS!

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

BE's president is vague...

[slywire]

It seems to me this guy obfuscates every issue he comes in contact with. Why doesnt he just say: we dont think this will sell enough more copies of BeOS to make developing for the g4 platform cost-effective. Thats the answer.

Re:BE's president is vague...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't Picard say, "Computer, bring up commandline interface please"? Because he's already speaking right into it silly.

What I want to know is: why does he actually have to speak?

He sidestepped the clone issue.

[slothbait]

All he did was state that they weren't "welcome" on Apple computers. That is wholly irrelevent here. What he was supposedly answering was the question about whether Be was going to embrace the emerging indie PowerPC boards. Notice, these will *not* be made by Apple, and won't even be Mac-compatible clones. Thus, Apple is not involved one bit.

His statement really said nothing at all. He simply reiterated their reasons for not supporting the Mac platform. Those reasons have no bearing on the emerging "no name" PPC market, however. He was hoping that we would forget the question somewhere in the middle of his apparent muddling about x86 and SGI.

It sounds like Be just doesn't want to be on PowerPC anymore. I'm still hoping for a Linux PPC explosion, though.

--Lenny

Re:He sidestepped the clone issue.

[William Wallace]

Apparantly you missed this entire paragraph:

"To return to PowerPC hardware, we need to know more about chipsets that support the PowerPC. Who builds them, how competitive are they, which I/O devices are supported, how is the technical documentation accessed, who fixes bugs in the product and the documentation? As far as the IBM PPC hardware is concerned, other questions arise. Where can I buy it and where can I get it fixed, for instance? As answers emerge, it will be easy for us to make a decision."

In other words, they want to wait and see how the
IBM boards work out before committing to them...

Doink.

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

relax

[Anonymous Coward]

"if a sizeable manufacturer starts making PPC machines based on the newly released stuff from IBM, will Be support it or not? "

relax, it hasn't happenned yet. He probably doesn't know if Be will or not, depends if enough people ask for it I guess. Just wait until a manufacturer actually does make PPC machines from IBM specs, and then ask Be if they have enough info on "chipsets" to support it.

Re:relax

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on whether the sizable manufacturer commits to providing correct, useful specs, actually does it, whether they're really affordable commodity machines, whether something better comes along such that nobody's going to bother to buy them, etc., etc. Committing to hit an unknown target would be stupid.

BeOS pretends to be cool

[duder]

I once seriously considered switching to a all BeOS system, but I could not get the thing to install. After non-helpful tech support e-mails I just gave up. When I bought my new system, I was having trouble dialing up my ISP in Linux so once again I tried Be. BeOS installed and ran on my new system but my modem settings were out of range and Be just felt clunky and "not nice." I am happy with linux but I love to read bedope.com and would be willing to try Be in the future (even more so on a G4).

Disposable computers?

[LordRathma]

How do you figure? I work in a Mac environment also. I work on the latest G3 at the moment, yet we have very old Macs still chugging along here...we even have an old IIci working on the job.

We never throw anything away. Also, could you please clarify for me how difficult to upgrade the Blue and White G3's are? You mean upgrade cards to G4's and new video cards and stuff like that DON'T exist? Guess we better cancell our order for all that then.

Re:Disposable computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple tweeked the Blue & White G3 firmware code in an effort to prevent their customers from using G4 upgrade cards. Apple doesn't want the upgrade manufacturers to be "leading the technology."

http://www.slashdot.org/art icles/99/09/04/0130235.shtml
http://www.wired.com/new s/news/technology/story/21583.html

Given the hoops the upgrade manufacturers will need to jump through, I can't blame Be for not wanting to play in the Apple G4 space. It is sort of like IBM's Win-OS/2 support - Microsoft began the Win32s API of the day program, forcing IBM to keep releasing updates of their own.

If Be finds a workaround, Apple can introduce a new firmware version to break BeOS. That is a vicious cycle Be is smart to stay away from.

How did you get to be so stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand. The price of one share, without any context, is a meaningless piece of data. The valuation of a company is not. Redhat's IPO demonstrated that the financial markets think that RedHat will continue to grow. Be's IPO reflected the understanding that Be will not.

I ask you this. Be advertises itself as a multimedia computer, what platform has greater Audio and Video support? Linux or Be?

It's really simple guys...

[MrKai]

Intel is a *huge* investor in Be.

End of story.

With all of the specs, etc being out there in the open, nothing is really stoping Be from going for the gusto....except...

Intel is a *huge* investor (HUGE) in Be.

-K

Re:It's really simple guys...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you can point me to the specs lying out there i would like to start an OS for the apple stuff out there. will you point me to other specs when apple releases the G5?

Re:Be is a soon to Be

[Max von H.]

Well said.

I've been waiting a longtime here in slashdot for a POSITIVE comment regarding Be.

Just between you and me (already enough wars) I'd say Be is far more appropriate for the desktop than Linux. Linux for the servers, Be for the desktop... Sounds nice to me and coherent too.

I'd say both OS could (should!) learn a lot from each other in terms of development, hence giving an even better choice to the end user.

Just a 3am opinion.

Unfortunately (or not), its curtains for Be

[Anonymous Coward]

Be simply doesn't have anything noteworthy to say at this point.

Its a nice single-user OS for x86 systems...with some multimedia twists added in....unfortuntately folks, that isn't enough to get it any more marketshare than it currently has.

Be really hasn't caught to open-sourcing, greatest change in OS thinking since the GUI. For security reasons alone, we are all starting to realize that the OS must be open, even if some apps aren't. Computer security is no longer a trivial matter, and more people are realizing trust is worthless - inspection and verification of source is all that matters.

Whether it makes sense for Be to do this technically or not, they really do need to bow to the will of the trends and open up the source on this OS if they want anyone to pay attention to it.

Also, Be needs to move on beyond labelling BeOS as a "multimedia" OS. It didn't turn any heads when first announced, and frankly everyone knows that multimedia authoring is all about apps. If you don't have photoshop on your platform, you aren't considered a serious graphics platform, for example.

Even taking these two steps probably can't help Be at this stage - the OS market is simply too crowded and linux is taking all the attention right now (discalimer - I am not a linux user). The last business I would enter into at this stage would be the OS market.

Oh well, good luck Be.

Re:Unfortunately (or not), its curtains for Be

[Anonymous Coward]

I too have stopped trying to use Linux as an alternative desktop platform after purchasing BeOS. I have found Linux to be a morass that wastes what precious little time I have to USE my PC for enjoyment trying to get it to do what it is capable of. BeOS installed, worked and has some pretty nice packages available for it. I plan on buying several of them. Maybe when Corel does their distribution, we'll finally see one that works and configures out of the box. Even Caldera wouldn't do more than install and crash with my TNT2 installed. SuSE, as nice as many of the features are, is still frustrating to tweak. I have yet to get Xfree86 to stop trying to overdrive my monitor without lying about the monitor's refresh rates and being stuck with substandard refreshes at lower resolution. Hell, Linux only JUST started supporting my large HD. Quite the contrast to BeOS. Ontop of that I get all the power of the Unix command line utilities with BeOS, since it uses bash for command line work and is POSIX compatible. If BeOS is dead, then Linux is even more so, because Be is a far sight better for desktop use than any distro of Linux I have tried.

Re:Question

[um... Lucas]

They're not counting 68k in that...

Nubus Power Mac's (6100, 7100, and 8100) were 1st generation (601's)
PCI Power Macs (7200, 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600) were the 2nd Generation (603, 603e, 604, 604e, except the 7200 which still used a 601)
(quite a lot of model numbers! I'm glad they've pruned them selves down to a basic model/speed
G3 Power Macs used the PPC 750 chip
G4 Power Macs will use the PPC 7400 chip

Don't fall for the Red Herring

[Anonymous Coward]

You wanna know why Be isn't jumping all over PPC anymore?
For the record here's two common reasons and why they are false:

1. They don't have the specs and Apple won't share them.
Why it's not true: Be is a pretty brilliant bunch of engineers, some of the best in the industry. Not to mention that there exists TWO publicly available sets of source code for OS's on the newer PowerMacs (G3/4's). Perhaps three if you include NetBSD (not sure tho). They could have it licked VERY quickly.

2. Intel controls them.
Why it's not true: IIRC, Intel has a 12-15% stake in Be. This is hardly a controlling share. They certainly have some influence, but to think that Intel is strongarming Be is ludicrous. If that were the case, you'd have seen PPC support dropped LONG ago and PPC Beos bugfixes would be non-existent for the existing versions (have any of you actually checked to see how they still make bugfixes for their current PPC versions?)


The real reason why Be won't support PPC? The only -REAL- (read: not vapor) new PPC boxen are branded by Apple. Apple has clearly shown that they don't like non-OSS operative systems on their hardware that aren't MacOS. Be is a business trying to make money and it would be -SUICIDE- to try and build a business plan on trying to support the hardware of a company that is hostile toward you.

Imagine having to walk into a meeting with shareholders and venture capitalists who have supported you and tell them to their face that you are going risk your embryonic company to support a hostile competitor's hardware. Think about how quickly those investors would flee!

Bottom line is, yes it'd be astoundingly cool to have Be on the G4, but 'astoundingly cool' is rarely a good business plan. If you think otherwise, I suggest you actually -think- about why companies make the decisions they do.

Bart 'too lazy to log in' Grantham

no unbiased benchmarks

[Potatoswatter]

Don't think Intel + AMD don't rig their benchmarks too. There are no unbiased benchmarks, because anyone who is going through the trouble (or even has enough knowledge of the processor) will be biased. (though with Photoshop marks, PowerPC processors have long been leaders) How about the /.mark?

Re:no unbiased benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it have to be /.? Do you believe Tom's Hardware and AnandTech are biased too?

Intel's investment

[shr]

It should also be ntoed that according to Be's own Financial Disclosure Intel owns 8.43% of Be and has "certain board representation rights" as a result of the arangement that granted the stock.

Re:Took me away from Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and another few that I know....I guess its taking market share from linux...the so-called supposed desktop...what a joke.

PPC & gcc

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people were upset about not moving to gcc on PPC, but I think switching would have killed PPC right then, since a lot of PPC s/w hasn't been updated since R3. If BeOS/PPC makes a comeback, I think they should take a look at gcc again (or at least upgrade to a new version of CodeWarrior).

what "real" benchmarks? Please provide link/proof.

[LordRathma]

I've looked on the net, but can't find anywhere that shows that the PII or PIII outperforming the G3 at all.

Can you provide a link or anything? Or are you just talking out of your ass?

Be needs a hardware vendor

[goingware]

I think that if a hardware vendor appeared who would sell systems with those motherboards installed, Be would support them in an instant.

They've got years of work and many millions invested in the PowerPC, and honestly the PowerPC is just a superior microprocessor.

They can sell in the x86 market because they can write for a few common motherboard standards and expect them to work on millions of machines. Suppose they did ship a product with G4 support, that wasn't for Apple? Who'd they sell to?

Mostly people like me, who want to upgrade their PowerPC systems but don't want to buy a new mac because the BeOS won't run on it.

Because PowerPC users are a very small fraction of the installed base, they wouldn't sell many at all.

But if somebody sold a supported system, that was BeOS only, or dual booted into Linux or BeOS - bingo!

So if you want to see BeOS supported on PowerPC in the future, call up your linux hardware vendors and ask them to offer the BeOS as an option on their systems, x86 systems to start, they'll get around to PowerPC eventually.

People who want to resell the BeOS can obtain a free eval copy and a videotape by faxing their resale license to Be (Americas only; other countries have other arrangements). Find out about this at:

http://www-classic.be.com/resellers/

I've been told by a Be executive that the BeOS bundle pricing is "very aggressive". So someone selling a machine with the OS installed would find it easy to profit on it.

And I've used the BeOS for years now, and I'm very happy with it. It's a dream to install and configure, unlike Linux, which rendered my disk unbootable the last time I tried to install and upgrade, and which took me two weeks to figure out how to change the resolution and refresh rate of my X server.

Re:Be needs a hardware vendor

[Cato]

At least in the UK, Digital Networks (http://www.dnuk.com/) ship BeOS pre-installed on x86 boxes. They also do Linux - in fact I got an NT/Linux/BeOS box pre-installed from them in January, though this was a special setup I think.

Re:Be needs a hardware vendor

[Martin Hock]

And I've used the BeOS for years now, and I'm very happy with it. It's a dream to install and configure, unlike Linux, which rendered my disk unbootable the last time I tried to install and
upgrade, and which took me two weeks to figure out how to change the resolution and refresh rate of my X server.

Linux can be unfriendly with its installation, but Be isn't necessarily any better. Be decided to set up my friend's box in such a way that it would start by saying "Starting Windows 98" and then immediately booted Be, every single time. He decided to get rid of Be and install Linux, and using some easily-located instructions on the Net, I was able to set him up with a boot menu and Loadlin very easily. (LILO didn't appear to work, as Linux was installed past the 1024 cylinder limit. This is probably also what tripped up Be.)

Thanks for the links...though they're wrong...

[LordRathma]

They've already worked that out:

"Although some technical and political issues remain unresolved, sources said the current barriers are temporary; they assured MacWEEK that an upgrade path will soon be blazed, either by Apple or a third party"

Yes, there were concerns..but they're being ironed out. It amazes me that everyone thinks in terms of "forever"....like nothing can ever change or be modified.

The whole article is at:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,23 28303,00.html?chkpt=hpqs014

The Viability of Be and Linux

[chromatic]

I'd say Be is far more appropriate for the desktop than Linux. Linux for the servers, Be for the desktop... Sounds nice to me and coherent too.

How stable is Be on the desktop? I've heard good things there, but one of the things I really like about Linux (for members of my family who just want a box that WORKS) is essentially zero-administration on their part, and very little on mine.

If Be can offer something similar, I'll look into it.

I prefer Linux on my desktop for development. Unlike Slashdot, however, the percentage of developers in the Real World is fairly low, so my opinion isn't terribly useful there.

--
QDMerge 0.21!

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

How stable is Be on the desktop?

I've only been using Be since R4.5, but I haven't had any crashes yet. I've honestly been using my Be machine alot more than my Red Hat box lately, and it seems at least comparably stable for normal desktop use.

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never had Be crash on me.

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[daviddennis]

Advantages of Be:

- Very Good stability. I've had it crash occasionally, but only when I run it completely out of memory. Don't do that and you're at Linux levels of stability.

- Superior multitasking - I find it a much smoother system than Linux.

- Extraordinarily slick look and feel. I think it says something that one of the most popular Enlightenment window manager configurations is the one imitating the BeOS. Rasterman is a genius, and I bow my head to him as a programmer, but the high overhead of the X-Windows system just can't compare to the integrated nature of Be.

- If you know C++, the API is said to be fantastic.

- Cool applications like e-Picture and GoBe Productive make me think the platform has a good long-term future - despite all the "No Apps!" noises, they are coming, and what's there is great. Apps tend to have an original, well-throught out flair which I find very endearing. They still aren't as full featured as Microsoft Word and Excel, but who uses all those features, anyway?

Disadvantages of Be:

- No released version of Netscape yet. Opera is out and works well, but you have to pay to use it past 30 days.

- Hardware support can be probematical. What's there works great, what's not there frustrates users no end. I'd say at least 90% of Be user complaints on the newsgroup are hardware support-related.

Hope that helps. I'd say it's definitely well worth checking out. Incidentally, it may be proprietary, but actually it's quite a bit cheaper to keep up to date than commercial releases of a Linux version.

D

----

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[Nelson]

- Very Good stability. I've had it crash occasionally, but only when I run it completely out of memory. Don't
do that and you're at Linux levels of stability.

Your point is good but there is something else. My non-experimental Linux (stable kernel, even number, no "Nelson patches" or experimental stuff) has never crashed. There isn't any thin ice to avoid. OS/2 was like that. If I avoided a few WPS operations, the thing would run forever. There were a few things that would lock it up though. It's like being in prison, sure it's minimum security and you can play golf but if you walk too close to the fence you might get shot. It's extremely liberating to not worry about anything crashing the system.

- Superior multitasking - I find it a much smoother system than Linux.

BeOS does feel nice. I'm not sure that is multitasks any better than anything else but it certainly looks like it does and the GUI feels smooth. They did the right thing in this respect. OS/2 and Linux both can suffer from poor GUI performance during mutlitasking, OS/2 won a lot of benchmarks and was understood to be better than Windows but it didn't look good when you click and then wait a second for something to get painted on the screen, even though the work was happening. User perception is important here and BeOS is great at it.

- If you know C++, the API is said to be fantastic.

It's nice but it's not any better than any other I've used. At least not dramatically. MFC is nice to use. QT is nice. GTK+ is nice. BeOS is nice. It's not compelling enough to make me rank it above another.

- Cool applications like e-Picture and GoBe Productive make me think the platform has a good long-term
future - despite all the "No Apps!" noises, they are coming, and what's there is great. Apps tend to have
an original, well-throught out flair which I find very endearing. They still aren't as full featured as Microsoft
Word and Excel, but who uses all those features, anyway?

OS/2 had a lot of applications. Mainstreet is important. With OS/2 or BeOS you're pretty much guaranteed to not be on it. Whether or not you can work matters but it only matters to people who are already sold on the platform. It doesn't bring new users in. There is a huge difference between filling a void for a group of users and creating a value for non-users. ABM is the only reason to really run out and get Be right now and even then Linux has far more users and far more support, you have to get frustrated with the learning curve before you dive on to Be from linux.

- No released version of Netscape yet. Opera is out and works well, but you have to pay to use it past 30
days.

No version of netscape ever, at this point. BeZilla will be a reality but netscape never will.

No java and the core group of users don't seem to be programmers are two other problems I see. Be's got a tough road but they can make themselves relevent. They've got incredibly loyal followers (they are pretty much just believers at this point, there are a lot of Be claims that have never been tested yet, a la mindcraft) and they seem to be getting an inordinant amount of media support despite their low sales, alternatives to MS are hip and Be is riding that wave well. I hope the new politics of being a public company don't destroy their chances, they were in a tight spot and needed money to keep going but now they have to produce something.

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[daviddennis]

I'm not sure who the BeOS core group is - it seems to more or less be developers right now. But it's certain that they are designing software more or less for the mainstream, and in my view (as a programmer), that's a Good Thing. At some point, I'd like to honestly tell someone, "Here's this great alternative to Windows, it's easy to set up and use, and you can do your mainstream stuff on it." Right now, I recommend MacOS to mainstream people; I'd like to recommend something for people who need the low cost of an X86 system.

I think the reason that multitasking feels better on BeOS is that every window is a separate thread. I don't understand why Netscape for Unix wasn't written that way, but it wasn't, and the net effect is that during DNS lookups you can't use multiple browser windows. That problem never comes up on BeOS.

I must admit to thinking of Mozilla as "The next version of Netscape". Me bad, I suppose.

D

----

Re:The Viability of Be and Linux

[be-fan]

Mostly nice points, but seriously, you cannot think that MFC is nice to program? My DirectX demo program (draws lines and circles and arcs, does blits, etc) and written with the API is smaller than the MFC defualt "Hello World application." And the naming guys at MS are morons. Who though up stuff like stdafx.h and DIDDEVICEOBJECTINSTANCE as an object name! Aside from MFC, the Win32 API is nice to program. But what I like about be is the coherance. Programming QT is not like programming the rest of Linux. Neither is ALSA. At least with DirectX all the parts are similar. But Be is something else. It is entirly coherent, even the BSD sockes implementation has a Be-style wrapper!

Re: Be API Access

[swetland]

All available online, as they have been for years and will be for the forseeable future.

How much of the future is forseeable? A month? A week? A day? A second?

And who is capable of seeing the future? Wise men? Seers? Be developers? You?

I don't see it ever happening. Can't say I've never

been wrong, but this is pretty much a no-brainer. It

makes no sense to make it difficult to develop apps

for the platform. I do happen to work for them, so

I may be a bit biased. I may also be right. *shrug*

--Brian

but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the chipset argument? I don't think he
is doubting his ability to deal with the ppc as a
cpu, but the proprietary chipsets have him by the
yarbles.

The os's you mention might have enough info to run
as a server, but for multimedia and a decent
accellerated X server they might be hosed. BeOs
can't really be just a server; it's not their
niche.

That's why no one should buy these fucked up
proprietary systems, and urge the boyz in taiwan
to start crankin' out some ppc 750 ATX mobos.

shouts to by bros! rock!

---
The Anonymous Open Source Fascist
POOT!POOT!

Stock is not a good measure.

[Nutcase]

It is based on hype. Be has no hype, because Be is being quiet. If they made too much noise, people (read: microsoft) might notice them and then they would Be dead. Stock is not a measure of a program - that is a measure of the stock buying publics understanding of a program. Just wait. It will go up. As for multimedia - show me a computer on linux running 10 quick time movies, as well as mixing 16 track audio in real time, WHILE saving the audio to a seperate wave and editing videofiles in realtime with no need to render the video. I have done it on Be using a p3 500. and oh yeah - lets see linux get a 2ns audio latency. Linux has more drivers - but Be has more potential (in that area) Be is not a single user pretty version of linux. It is not UNIX at all. There is no unix. it is POSIX compliant, but is _NOT_ a version of UNIX. is uses the bash shell, but only as default - others can be used. It is not a gui like E or Windows that sits above a seperate OS - linux or dos respectively - it is a GUI system that is inseperable from the shell - the shell is not the base of the os, nor is the GUI. they are intertwined. The gui is no more confusing than any other - it takes a few days to really get used to. Be is a superior OS for the desktop - NOT for servers. Linux is good and stable for servers. But for a user on the desktop who wants to mix some audio, work on some video, or just work in a nice environment, Be is the best choice. and oh yeah, "How did you get to be so stupid?" in the subject line does not really depict you as a person who is rational enough to take seriously. Try being civilized. Your opinion is just that - an opinion. It is no better than anyone elses. This email is my opinion - it is no better than yours. But its no worse. The difference is that my subject line shows some dignity.

Re:Stock is not a good measure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah. Seriously, I just wanted to point out that there is ongoing work to get Linux that 2ms audio latency. Also, in case your 2ns was not a typo, trust me, it's 2ms, not 2ns. 2 nanoseconds translates to 500 MHz. Aside from that kind of audio latency being impossible to achieve on current CPUs, it would be pretty silly because the audio is only 44.1 KHz.

Re: Be API Access

[Anonymous Coward]

BeOS wants me to register as a developer to get at their API's. It's free now, but maybe it will evolve into something like MSDN or Sun -- $100's of dollars a year.

http://www.be.com/developers/ -- The Be Book (all public APIs), example code, drivers, newsletter articles, whathaveyou. All available online, as they have been for years and will be for the forseeable future. No need to be a registered developer to get at the information. The headers, docs, and samples also ship with the OS.

--Brian

What the hell needs to be 'secure' in a Media OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I think you've started thinking Server OS's like Linux where it makes SENSE to be secure is the exact same thing as a Multimedia OS. You blather about Be being closed source for god knows why. Because someone might want to add in their own AVI support or something? Give it up. Be is a single user OS, that doesn't give one rats ass about being 'secure' with weekly patches and kernal updates, etc. It has no need for it, and never will. Your Open Source spouting has no home here, and never will. Companies don't and won't rely on BeOS to hold their vast amounts of corporate data secure from hackers/crackers, so it's a total non-issue.

BeOS is NOT a Server OS.

It's that simple. We don't NEED to use it's source code.

Read the article again, Nimrod.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh. Gasse went over your points quite straight-forward. You didn't even bother to read his article did you?

Sheep!

[Anonymous Coward]

I applaud anyone who thinks one operating system is the answer for everyone's computing needs. Such a showing of stupidity is impressive in today's Information Age.

I get so sick of people ripping on Be on Slashdot. Hate to burst your bubble, script kiddies, but BeOS does some things that Linux can't touch. And vice versa. Linux was not built as a desktop OS. BeOS was not built as a server OS. When you boil it down, they are targeting two different things.

Be doesn't plot and conspire ways to destroy Linux; that's Microsoft. Linux doesn't consider BeOS competition; Almighty Linus has stated this already. BeOS and Linux work quite well together, actually. The biggest hurdle between BeOS and Linux coexisting together is not in the technology, but in shortsighted attitudes like these. Don't assume something is "dead" just because you don't have a need for it; last time I checked, both Apple and Tampax were doing just fine with their products and I have no need for either. :)

Re:Sheep!

[Anonymous Coward]

server workstation unable to pay attention to the user in front of it desktop workstation unable to pay attention to any users but the one in front of it

Any decent system needs to handle either role from moment to moment; people just think of them as different because so many systems are too stupid to do both.

Re:Sheep!

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrgh! /. eats <DL>!

Moronic Linux users.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying because AOL does good on Wall Street that is actually good?

Where do you people come from? Windows... Thats right... I should have known. Ran out of kewl d00d scripts to run, so you went and got a server os to have more script fun.

Re:Moronic Linux users.

[William Wallace]

Now now now... We don't need to make fun of other
OS's. I agree, this guy is a moron. However, I
use Windows as well as BeOS (hopefully that will
change soon enough :-). I've used Linux, MacOS,
and Irix, too.

They're all just tools.

-WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

Oracle most wise, please tell me,

[Anonymous Coward]

How good an OS could BeOS be, if BeOS could be an OS?

OOPs (OOP as in Object-Oriented Programming), wrong forum. Just couldn't resist.

basic question about Be

[cwinters]

I've always been intrigued by Be but couldn't seem to find this info on their website: the current release (4.5) is still a beta, right? If so, when is v1.0 supposed to be out?

(Not that there's anything *wrong* with beta, just curious.)

Re:basic question about Be

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not going to be a version 1.0. BeOS is not beta. There's still some missing features and basic work is still done in some areas (say, laptop support), but BeOS is not in beta. The parts of it which are done is a production OS.

Re: Be API Access

[Anonymous Coward]

The headers, docs, and samples also ship with the OS.

...and the compiler.

WHY! is so many Linux-advocates bitching about an OS they probably haven't even tried??? I use BeOS and Linux and they supplement each other nicely. BeOS doesn some great thing linux just doesn't!! .. and vice versa. Everything doesn't have to be like Linux in every respect to be good. Get over it!

Re:what "real" benchmarks? Please provide link/pro

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Specfp and specint

Re: Be API Access

[Loundry]

All available online, as they have been for years and will be for the forseeable future.

How much of the future is forseeable? A month? A week? A day? A second?

And who is capable of seeing the future? Wise men? Seers? Be developers? You?

Re:G4 another lie?

[TheRhino]

Apple's claims were that the G3 machines were "up to twice as fast" as Pentium II machines. Those figures were according to BYTEMarks. Which ones "showed the PII outperformed the G3 very easily" - you know, the "real" benchmarks you mentioned.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple doesn't care for its suppliers' trademarks.

Hmmmm...............

[Blind Freddy]

Interesting........

effort to port is minimal?

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, the Genki on G3 didn't support the onboard ethernet, nor the onboard audio, nor booting from ATAPI CD-ROM. While this actually supports your point, saying that it's in Be's best interest doesn't necessarily follow.

Be has to reallocate some engineering resources to do the engineering. Be has to reallocate testing resources to test the thing. Both of these are precious commodities at such a small company.

Other points:

Until someone actually starts producing a POP-based motherboard, we won't know what chipsets they use. Manufacturers are free to redesign it and use other chipsets. Do you really want ISA, but not USB?

Don't be too hasty to clamor for GCC on PPC. The PPC development environment can currently run rings around GCC (what with precompiled headers, the lack of DWARF, etc).

Be has to tread very carefully here. If, at some point in the no-so-distant future, they decide to drop PPC support completely, they want to do so with a minimum of uproar. There's something of a chicken & egg problem here. Will enough manufacturers produce enough POP-based machines to warrant Be's commitment? I hope so. I'd like to think that the inevitability of Linux on such a beast would make it so. I'm sure Be's watching the POP very carefully to see if it will make business sense.

As a BeOS developer, I would love to see Be announce that they'll support any and all POP-based machines. As a Be stockholder, I think that patience is more prudent. As an interested consumer, I'll probably buy a POP machine if only to run Linux.

Finally, on a slight tangent, IBM's description of POP is that it's for the PowerPC 740/750. Disregarding Apple's current fiasco about upgrading from the 750 to the 7400, what's the likelihood of using a 7400 with the POP design?

Thoughts on Be/PPC

[daviddennis]

I really don't think JLG wanted to drop PPC support. In fact, I'm sure it was a wrenching decision for him. But there were a whole lot of factors that forced his hand:

• He wasn't welcome. Why struggle to do something when your efforts are clearly not welcome? I think this is a very valid argument. Apple doesn't want him to do it, and with his usual gallic charm, he obeys with a smile. I must admire his composure - typical Slashdot readers would launch an assassination attempt on Chairman Jobs.
• Support Issues. Leaving aside Be's own personal desires, virtually all new software for Be is coming out for Intel, without PowerPC versions. The reality is that the developers have spoken, and Be at this point is really run for the developers. Developers feel that Intel is the future, because it's so cheap and popular. Sadly, they are probably right.
• Apple shouldn't be so close-minded. I know I was considering buying a new blue and white G3, and one of the main reasons I decided against it was that I like Be and wanted a system that ran it. So I bought an Intel system instead. I didn't really want to do it - I would have liked to support Apple over Microsoft-based clone systems. At the same time, I know Apple needs to push MacOS X, and they probably don't want Be to cut into that market. JLG doesn't blame Apple for this; he tells us it's a reasonable business decision.
• Be needs to make money. Actually, Be gets punched both ways here. We criticise it for not doing future PPC versions, because it needs to make a profit, and yet we turn around and critisize it for not making a profit, too. Which is it, making a profit or producing a PPC version few are likely to buy?
• This non-Apple PowerPC stuff is unproven. From the point of view of an average consumer, you can either buy Intel, with tons of software and support from Microsoft, or you can buy PPC, with no support from anyone other than Linux or AIX. Who's going to buy these systems? JLG now markets Be on the basis of coexistance with Windows and MacOS; until these machines can run one of those systems, this "piggyback" strategy won't work. Worse, as I said before, developers are voting for Intel with their feet. So why support the new PPC systems? At best it would fragment the platform and divide developer's interests, just as everything seemed to be coalescing on Intel. I wouldn't want that outcome if I was JLG.
• Be is one of the few thouroughly decent companies in the world of software. People who give Be a fair shake tend to love the product. Be's upgrade policies are more than fair; they're generous. JLG is a bit of a character, and that makes following the company and its exploits fun. How many company chairmen respond personally to your email?

Given that Wintel/WinAMD/etc systems are so cheap and run Be so well, I see little point to PPC other than sentiment. Admittedly that's a powerful force, but it's not going to win Be the mainstream friends it needs to survive.

D
----

Re:Thoughts on Be/PPC

[Oniros]

A few years back, I went at a Be demo, at Be's HQ. The marketing VP doing the demo swore BeOS would never run on Intel CPU because they were such pieces of crap.

A few years later and a few millions dollars from Intel injeceted into be and... well you know the story, Be's PowerPC effort is dying (dead?)

As for Apple worrying about BeOS... I don't get it... since running BeOS on Apple HW would require buiding a Mac, I don't see where Apple lose any money. If Apple lose any money it's by having Be users buy PCs rather than Macs.

Also JLG criticizing Apple for being closed makes me laugh, he was the one who tipped the balance (when he was VP at Apple) and voted against the Macintosh OS to be licensed to anyone. And so Apple remained closed and proprietary.

I think Be not supporting the PowerPC HW anymore boils down to:
a) lots of Intel investements in Be (money, support, etc.)
b) JLG being bitter for not having been bought by Apple and such not cashing in hundreds of millions. (NexT got bought.) Jobs and JLG probably doesn't go along well either (that's two strong head and fiery beasts we have here :)

Given the situation Be is in, I can understand they don't want to lose a)

I wish them luck on the Intel side of the fence.

Just my $0.02

Janus

Re:Thoughts on Be/PPC

[daviddennis]

I actually think Be would have been a better OS than NeXT for Apple, and the price was much lower. But with 20/20 hindsight, there is no doubt that Steve Jobs has revitalized the company, and he deserves massive credit for it.

As for JLG, I think he's wised up a bit since his days at Apple. He seems to have genuinely changed his mind about being more open over the years.

I, too, wish both of them nothing but the best. MacOS X is likely to be quite impressive, and I look forward to seeing it and giving it a try on my G3.

D

----

Re:Question

[mountain]

Why was the Intel 586 called a Pentium?

The couldn't trademark it because they didn't trademark it early enough (ie: 8086,80186,etc). And there were already clones of previous generations, and 586 was generic (in context with pervious generations)..

Then again, ask yourself why a DX4/100 was really triple the speed, not four times the speed? :)

There were two types of DX?/100. The DX3, 33Mhz * 3 = 99Mhz + 1MarketingHz and the DX4, 25Mhz * 4 = 100Mhz.

This, of course, got confused in marketing.

How huge is huge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you checked Be's SEC filings? If I understand them correctly, Intel holds approx 10% of Be, which is more or less as much as JLG himself.

Re:How huge is huge?

[Nelson]

But JLG's holding is in stock that had no value prior to the IPO. Intel fronted real cash.

It's a presumtion to assume that Intel is calling shots (although it seems entirely reasonable since they did have cash and Be is operating at a loss) but it's not because JLG has more power in the situation.

JLG's out to make money off the deal, just like Intel. They are both doing th best thing in that interest by only supporting x86. They just don't have the resources to support more than that. Being a Be user sucked quite a bit when the software community was split between two different platforms, there was always something I wanted that only ran on the other platform. If they get big or if they decide to focus on set-top-boxes (a very real possibility come two or three losing quarters with no rise in stock price) they should then return to multiplatform focus.

Taiwan motherboard makers.......

[Mai Longdong]

If you knew anything about the business you'd know that profit margins are so slim there's absolutely NO WAY the Taiwanese could invest in another os/architecture even if they wanted to. Very few Taiwanese (and I mean VERY few) know squat about anything other than Wintel. They design everything for MS/Intel and if others can use it fine, but they aren't going out of their way to support anyone or anything else. Also, alot of Taiwanese companies (like UMAX) got burned real bad several years dealing with PPC. Remember the Apple clones? I don't think you're going to see many Taiwanese companies jumping over to PPC anytime soon.
BTW, just to give you an idea of prices, a top of the line case (no power supply) sells to the big boys (Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM etc) for only about $13.50US. You buy it on the street and it'll go for about $90.

Re:what "real" benchmarks? Please provide link/pro

[LordRathma]

Um...

Splunge and frick to you too....

But this isn't proof. It's well known that G3's are faster than PII's and PIII's at the same Mhz.

Show me a link out there that disproves that please...if not, shut the fuck up.

Not quite that simple

[Watts Martin]

This is a common misunderstanding--because Apple has had "programming specs" for the G3 line up on their web site for a long time, people assume that that's what Be needs to port BeOS to Apple G3 machines. It's not. The freely-available documents detail the changes in the OS from the API side--essentially, the application-to-OS interface. Be needs the OS-to-hardware interface. This is the difference between a document telling programmers the API for new features in DirectX 10.3 to support the FooBarGL 2700's revolutionary features, and a document detailing how DirectX 10.3 talks to the FooBarGL 2700's hardware.

I don't remember the name, but there is a specific document that Apple produces for internal use for all of their machines which is essentially a hardware reference book, detailing the OS-to-hardware interface for the proprietary ASICs each new Macintosh model introduces. When Steve Jobs returned to the company, the release policy for these documents changed; they are now only releasable outside the company to MacOS licensees. You can't license MacOS unless you're making approved Macintosh-compatible hardware, which Be certainly isn't.

Be has said point blank--check the PowerPC FAQ on their site--that they could reverse engineer the specs for the G3. They're just not going to do it. Unless Apple explicitly gives them the hardware reference documents for their new Macintoshes, Be is not going to modify BeOS to run on them. End of story.

I know "Apple and Be are obstinate about one another" isn't nearly as sexy a rationale as a grand Intel conspiracy, but it's a lot more plausible. Intel has invested in not only Be, but Red Hat and VA Research; it is obvious that Intel has decided that it is in their interest to keep alternative operating systems alive on their CPUs. There is no rationale for believing that Intel would mandate ending of support for non-Intel chips from Be and not from Red Hat, and indeed, no rationale for Intel to do that at all: Intel is not interested in actions that make them look more like chip monopolists, and furthermore, from a business standpoint the PowerPC really isn't competing with them. (Think about who Intel's customers really are--hint: it's not consumers--and you'll see this.)

Question

[Bizzaro]

Can someone give a simple answer to why IBM uses the name 'PowerPC 750' while Apple uses 'PowerPC G4'?

Are they the same chips with different names or are they really different chips? If they are different, what are the differences?

--

This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.

Re:Question

[Graymalkin]

Apple deals with people who know jack shit about computers, do you think they'd understand PowerPC 750 or just G4 better? Why do you think Intel just calls their chip the Pentium 3?

Re:Question

[RandomFreq]

They're the same chips.

G4 in this case means "Generation 4". Same goes for "G3". If you think of it, m68k = G1, PPC60x(a) was G2, and G3 = PPC750. PPC 750 is just IBM's internal own referencing. G4 in this case means the added features of altivec.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The PowerPC 750,as IBM refers too it, is actualy what Apple called the G3s.

The PowerPC G4, as Apple refers to it, is actually the PowerPC 7400 and is made exclusivly by Motorola though IBM is "considering" them and Altivec now.

Apple calls them the Gx to signify they are the X Generation of PowerMac and processor. I guess it's just a marketing thing.

Mike S.

Re:Question

[Sahib!]

Actually, I think it goes G1 = 601, G2 = 603/604, G3 = 750, G4 = 7400. The 'generations' referred to are the PPC revision and do not include the m68k line, which had many generations in itself (68000, 010, 020, 030, 040, and the 050 which never made it into an Apple machine).

Re:Question

[Pope]

The PowerPC 750 is Apple's G3
the 7500 is the G4

It's just a naming issue, really.
Why was the Intel 586 called a Pentium?
IIRC, a ruling was made that they couldn't copyright/trademark a number designation
so Intel came out with the "Pentium."

Then again, ask yourself why a DX4/100 was really triple the speed, not four times the speed? :)
same reason
Pope

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

PowerPC 750 is derived from IBM 603 core. "G4" is derived from 604 core Sorry can't really fill in hard details except I believe 604 is actually earlier and more expandable/powerful by original design. it supports more cache and SMP. G3 (750aka improved 603 core) was less industrial strength by design but cheaper to make. The speeds attained by 750 however were a surprise to IBM/Apple, thus for a while, the 604 was dropped from the Apple line in favor of the cost effective 750. Motorola continued development of Altivec on 604 and as IBM declined to participate in Altivec, now all Apple models will have Moto cpus. Probably IBM is also involved in actual fabrication, I dunno. This sort of helps explain why IBM is trying to push the CHRP motherboard spec out to commodity PC parts makers. Their own PPC design needs a lowend home. It sure could make a great Linux server. Sorry I don't know more, and prolly 1/2 of this is inaccurate.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

PPC 750 is neither a "G4", nor in a G4.

G4 is series of computers.

PPC 750 is a processor model.

The Processor in a G4 is a 7400.

Because Apple's hardware is integrated and model generations now rollover with processor changes, and because it shares it's processor with no other mainstream platform, people naturally conflate the computer model with the processor model.

I see the same thing daily when people refer to their whole PC, BIOS included, as "Windows".

I have tried to delineate this step by step because you are obviously someone who knows "jack shit" about Apple computers :-)

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes some of it is incorrect. IBM's cpus are not lower end. IBM chose to go for higher clock speed as they need/want higher clock for their workstations, not the AltiVec extensions,which are probably as bogus as MMX and KNI, if they were any good IBM would have used them in RS/6000. Anyway IBM has lots of manufacturing capacity and they want to use it for Powerpc.

if chipset it standard, effort to port is minimal

[Clith]

During the "Genki" beta [was that for R4.5?] there was a kernel produced [genki7] that ran on Apple G3's. I think it was done by an intern who then left, so the code wasn't supported and got axed.

So, given the following qualifications:

• the IBM platform uses standard, well-known chipsets
• it's easy to port the Be kernel to PPC variants

then it stands to reason, that it *would* be in Be's best interest to support the IBM PPC platform [does it have a name? Is it CHRP? PREP? NuCHRP? :-)], since their cost to do so is minimal and can only grow revenue.

Now one thing Be really has to do to be a real presence on PPC is to move to the same development environment [compilers] as the x86 side -- GNU cc. Otherwise, they have to do tons of software support, which ups the cost of supporting the platform. This bullet should have been bitten in R4 at the same time as it was for x86.

BeOS running on a quad-G4, each of which has a dual CPU core -- hey, I can dream, can't I? :-)

PPC Motherboards, Be, doublespeak

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda sounds like Gasse doesn't want to be able to release on PPC.

Does anyone have a link to a company that is going to make IBM PPC motherbords (No, not Apple). Isn't there some company named "Prophet" or similar that announced their intention to do this? Thanks.

The Open PowerPC Platform, etc.

[EverCode]

The only thing Be can do is wait to see what happens with the Open PowerPC Platform. The only OS meant to run on Apple machines is the MacOS. Sure, there is Linux, but that should also be run on an open platform.

Apple is probably smart to keep everything closed. Those MacOS clones were great for users, but bad for Apple. It all depends on how you look at it.

As for Be, they need "workstation" and "server" versions of their product to bring in more revenue. I know there is a need for a multimedia oriented server OS. If they can do this while supporting both x86 and PowerPC, great. If not, x86 is the only way to go, obviously.

I love BeOS 4.5. The biggest drawback is the lack of apps, so far. Actually, once Mozilla 5.0 is stabile on BeOS, I will be happy with the options for apps, and I do not fear going with someone other than the big names for productivity apps, Gobe and Beatware, for examples.

As long as BeOS makes a platform switch transparent, I would not think twice about switching from x86 to PowerPC.

(Hint for Be: Optimize for AltiVec if you are going to support the G4 processor on an open PowerPC platform)

Re:The Open PowerPC Platform, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those MacOS clones were great for users, but bad for Apple.

IOW, Apple hardware is bad for their customers. Since they can't make hardware competitively, they should leave that job to somebody who can, but since they insist, keeping a crippled proprietary platform is the only way they can survive.

G4 BeBoxes

[Graymalkin]

If Be could indeed slap BeOS on G4 chips it would probably be the best thing to happen to the company. The reason that Apple had such a big problem with the clones is they weren't getting much more money than for the OS, which is a pretty small profit margin. If Be gets working on the G3 and G4 chips it won't affect Apple as much as clones did, the people that love Apple will continue to love Apple, and MacOS will still appeal to people who would rather not learn anything about their OS, not to mention the Cuddletech lovers. Now if Adobe would port their stuff to Be...

typical Be posturing

[Anonymous Coward]

for a company that had enough balls to try to be the alternative hardware platform, Be sure has become a master of non-commital posturing. if they don't have their heads up their butts, they'll see the IBM mobo as leverage against Apple's (lame) proprietary stance. and Apple's just afraid people would laugh at their designs...

Re:typical Be posturing

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you about the whole posturing that Be does, but you're wrong about IBM and Apple. IBM never cared about whether Apple is proprietary or not, they just want to sell PPC chips. The current popularity of Linux allows them that. I'm sure IBM wasn't exactly thrilled when Jobs got rid of the clones, but it's not like they cared that much in the first place. Their focus has always been high end Power3 AIX servers. If they sell more lowend PPC chips, great, if not, no big deal. As for Apple being afraid that people would laugh at their designs, well, I don't know what do you mean.

Re:Waffles, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulling off amazing stunts like that is an honored tradition, but everyday dependence on such jury-rigging is just bad engineering.

For me, one of the scariest aspects of Linux is knowing some of the drivers seem to work, but they were written by people who couldn't possibly know everything there is to know about my hardware (because some manufactures are clueless jerks). I try to only buy stuff with open specs, but haven't replaced all the old garbage yet.

Here I sit....

[Anonymous Coward]

...on my BeOS 4.5.2 Pentium 166. I'm watching the History Channel on my ATI All-in-Wonder Pro video card. I'm reading Slashdot in the NetPositive web browser (no java/javascript, but the error messages are in haiku). I'm sending and receiving e-mail. My webserver's running quietly in the background.







There are things that other OS's do better than BeOS. There are more applications for other OS's than on the BeOS. Everyone already knows this.







But what people seldom realize about BeOS is that it doesn't piss you off. There are limitations and Be is quite frank about which hardware is supported and which applications are/aren't available. But the OS doesn't *not* make sense. It does what it's supposed to do and does it so incredibly well. It is a pleasure (am I gushing?) to be able to sit down at a computer and not wonder, "Well, why in the hell is it doing THAT?" or "Which goddamned script am I supposed to edit to view graphics/dial into an ISP/create a link???" or "I said Shut Down, so why did it just log me off and not shut down" or ....







Working on other OS's is great for employment, but when the day is done and it's time to relax and catch up on news and email and watch a little TV without waiting for a hang/crash, I'd recommend a Be machine. It doesn't try your patience.











regards,



Happy in My Basement

Re:Here I sit....

[Nutcase]

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen Amen. That is the Be experience. It takes power and makes it friendly. Thank you.

You're an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:What the hell needs to be 'secure' in a Media O

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any intention of ever connecting a BeOS machine to a public network?

Intel is an investor in Be

[acomj]

I'm prety sure Intel made a heavy investment in BE before they went IPO. I wonder who's chips there going to support????



Just a thought.

I am quite sick of this garbage from Be

[Anonymous Coward]

Be is very reluctant to develop their OS on the G3/G4. Why? They are very concerned about what apple wants. Why is this ? I Know that Gassee used to work for apple, but come on! This is business. Apple and M$ know this very well. They will F@#*K everybody and anybody on the way to getting theirs. Be is an amazing OS. While the two big players and where promising a true Protected Memory/multi-processing OS(for the consumer), Be had it done. I love Be. I would use it in a second if it could just grow a little more. It is the perfect mixture of the power and capability of a NIX and the elegance of the MACOS.

And the moon landing was a sham!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument about developing for BeOS is neither factual nor sensible. I hope you have more reasons for using Linux than just paranoia.

Microsoft has their API documentation free on the web. You don't have to pay a penny (or join MSDN)to access the Win32 API documentation. Same goes with Apple and the MacOS API. It's all online, free to anyone who wishes to use it.

Developing on Be is even better... not only does Be provide API documentation, sample code, newletters, and much more on their developer site... BeOS uses open-source development tools. There is absolutely no extra charge for being a developer on BeOS. The ONLY thing Be charges for are 2 developer programs that include co-marketing, guaranteed technical support and other perks. Nice, but not necessary by any means.

What justification would an OS company have to lock up their documentation from developers? Not only is it completely insane, but none of their competitors do it. The offerings are free now and they will continue to be because the market wouldn't allow such an about-face. There are other choices out there that do provide free development docs. Choice, remember?

And by the way, next time you participate in a discussion, try to remember what the discussion was about. I'm not surprised that someone barking off falsities about Be's development offerings doesn't know shit about BeOS development in the first place. I won't even bother delving into your statements about economics, choice and open source; as a Slashdot reader I know there are a lot of misinformed people out there and misinformed people like you are just feeding the fire. Check the facts before you spout off again.

Waffles, anyone?

[Raetsel]

Just to take a larger bite of that quote...

Quoth Jean-Louis Gassée:

• Some have suggested that we look into the Linux sources for such data. Perhaps, but I see little reason to open ourselves to possible accusations of reverse-engineering. We're welcome on x-86 hardware, we're not welcome on Apple G3/G4. We respect the logic and that settles it for us.

Yup, I have to agree with Monoman here. They're waffling (And leaving a loud "NO" at the end there). Worried about the 'stigma' of reverse engineering. Worried about following a company that started this whole 'personal' computer idea. As if the IBM PC (and clones) didn't take over the earth... Damn shame.

I just can't understand that. I'd be proud to have bragging rights that I managed to figure out how the chipset worked... perhaps I might even be able to figure out a BIOS patch so G3 users can pop in a G4 chip. That would make me real popular with users, but certainly not Apple. I can live with that -- why can't Be? (Yes, I know R-E's expensive and time consuming, some resources Be doesn't necessarily have.)

Reverse engineering is (to me, at least) a time-honored tradition, held reverently among the holy clan of geek and revered by the royal house of nerd. It is a ritual question that is never tired: How'd they do that?? The answers are unique and special, the quest unending, the chase heady and intoxicating.

Okay, I'm sounding too much like Katz. I live for this stuff. I like knowing how what I own works, and I'm not afraid of taking it apart to find out.

And now that I've raved about the reverse-engineering bit, lets rave about a fact Mr. Gassée conveniently forgot, but Monoman didn't!

• IBM has released an open-spec motherboard and the specs for the PowerPC. Granted, there is precious little manufacturer support at this point, but with a processor as hot as the G4, I hope that'll change
• soon. BeOS, you are explicitly welcome here, as is Linux and everyone else that wants to party.

C'mon, Be. I want a G4, but not MacOS. I want a G4 with BeOS. Somebody (not Apple) will build it, but you'll have to support it. If'n you don't do it, I can't buy it, now can I? Now that's just not the American way, and aren't you ashamed of yourselves?? Show some backbone. Apple used to fly the pirate flag -- they don't anymore (last I knew). It's your turn to pick up that standard and turn the world on it's ear. You have the vision, you have the product, now it's time to market the bejesus out of it!!

Re:Waffles, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

While your thoughts are in large part correct, now that Be is a publicly traded company Gassee (and all of the staff is required by the SEC to be VERY careful about what they say and how they say it.

What has to be realized is that any statement about supporting a clone could be considered a commitment to do so. That makes a very tenuous situtation when the 'clones' you speak of are ot shipping en masse, nor are they gaining a strong marketplace yet. From a non-geek perspective, it is the 'right thing'. Don't commit, but don't say no either.

Be and PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we can all agree that we'd love to have G4s running the next BeOS version. However, I think that Gassee's answer (or non-answer) is a fairly reasonable response, given the situation. He reiterates that they are not wanted on Apple machines, and have no interest in pushing the matter. I can understand that, I wouldn't want to get sued by Apple if I were Be.

As for non-Apple PPC machines, remember that we're talking about an untested market. (After all, how many users have non-Apple G4s on their desks right now?) Be Inc. is not in a position to waste precious resources on something that may not help BeOS grow in the long run anyway. x86 is where Be sees the best chance to grow, and I don't think many people would disagree.

That said, I'd personally love to have BeOS on an IBM PPC machine. I just think we ought to cut Be a little slack, and see how things develop.

Be is a soon to Be

[Nutcase]

Ok..

AST Computers, BeComputing, Microworkz - you're right, no OEM support, and no box builders.

Gobe, Mozilla, Opera, Real Inc., Steinburg, Activision (Civ:CTP), Maxis (SC3000), Id (Quake2 & Quake3arena), etc... The list of developers goes on and on. But yeah, I guess there are no apps.

Be is anything but a dud.They are a highly developed OS, with a _LONG_ list of companies porting high-end media products. They have a very powerful and easy to use office suite which will support MS Office file formats in v2.0, due in 1-2 months, as well as a real-time video editor that does _not_ need to render the video seperately (PersonalStudio) - They have every major browser other than IE5 - They have a professional quality animation program that can export flash files (Moho), They have an incredibly powerful multitrack audio program called Nuendo, previously available on SGI systems -This is the kind of program studios buy specific hardware to run.

Speaking of hardware, Be's hardware support on the intel side is growing, with both Nvidia and 3dfx working with them to produce drivers, as well as growing support for sound cards such as SB Live, and high end sound devices such as the Aardvark 20/20 and Echo Layla multitrack devices.

As far as the IBM PPC board, JLG said that once questions such as support, availabilty, and the size of the market are answered, then a decision would be made. Be does not have the resources to just support any new technology, until a base is there to warrant it.

Be isnt a dud - they are just holding their cards close to their proverbial chest.

This is not a leadership attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever Be decides, PPC Linux is coming soon based on the newly released hardware specs by IBM. And I strongly believe it will sell well, especially if the new G4 can be used and its specific optimizations added to gcc. Than, Be is going to follow Linux again instead of becoming the leader. It could be so good if they had decided to support this hardware platform and contribute to its development by collaborating with the OEMs.

Be Has A Few Choice To Make

[Anonymous Coward]

Be started out on the PowerPC platform, and when Apple showed signs of resistance, Be switched to the x86 platform. IBM has now made it much easier for Be to bring the OS to PPC G4, however, for Be there are more reasons to stay with x86 than to re-support PPC: 1.) Intel. Intel has a lot of money in Be, and Be needs this money. Who is Apple and IBM's worst enemies? Microsoft and Intel. 2.) Money. Be really doesn't have the money to do the work (even if it isn't a lot) to port BeOS to G4. 3.) Interest. Be is happy on the x86 platform. They have many new users, more interest, and much more publicity since they hopped over to the Wintel platform. 4.) Ego. Jean Louis and Steve Jobs are too much alike to get anywhere. Be has hated Apple since Apple bought NeXT, Jean has hated Steve since NeXT was chosen over his company. 5.) Profit. Be is now in the Internet Appliance industry. Thus, Be can easily make more money selling NetTV's with Intel than PowerPC. It would be good to run BeOS on G3/G4 systems. But that just isn't in Be's plans. Sorry. It just isn't going to happen. :-( Anon

Re:Be Has A Few Choice To Make

[Anonymous Coward]

Be has hated Apple since Apple bought NeXT, Jean has hated Steve since NeXT was chosen over his company.

Pure speculation... Very few in the Be community wanted Apple to buy Be. At that time BeOS was about to develop into the very cool system it is today and Appl ebuying Be would probably have gotten BeOS influenced by a lot of Apple politics. Be developers inside and outside Be were glad Be didn't get an offer they couldn't refuse.

Try ask OPENSTEP developers if they are 100% happy with what Apple has done to the OS. Sure they have advanced the OPENSTEP API, but they have also poluted the system with a lot of Macintosh parts. The GUI for one.

Gasse the half a Be ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this is turning into a great Monty Python song! The operating system, can't you see, is viz a viz it's entity...don't you see? (If you don't get this, go find Eric Idle's great little ditty, "Eric the Half a Bee")

G4 another lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

When realeasing the G3, Apple claimed it was almost three times faster than a Pentium II and showed us very impressive fake benchmarks. Real benchmarks showed the PII outperformed the G3 very easily....which means Apple lied. What about the G4? Will it be a Pentium III with false benchmarks again too fool al us poor students? I've got an old Pentium 75 Mhz, but with Linux running on it, I can do a lot of things without any problem. I'm wondering what the G4 will be against thingies like the Merced.