BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X • Hacker News Board

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#31

Post by philwelch » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #10

When I started University in 2000, I had a quad-boot system: Win98, Win2000, BeOS 5 and Slackware Linux (using the BeOS bootload as my primary because it had the prettiest colors). I mostly used Slackware and Win98 (for games), but BeOS was really neat. It had support for the old Booktree video capture cards, could capture video without dropping frames like VirtualDub often did, and it even had support for disabling…

There also used to be other CPU architectures--though even at the time, enough people complained about "Wintel" that maybe it was obvious that the alternatives weren't ever going to catch on.

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#32

Post by JBReefer » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

localhost wrote: post #27

Before I first saw BeOS running on a colleague's machine back in the ~mid-late 90s (same guy who introduced me to Python) I used an SGI Onyx Reality Engine machine [1] (roughly $250K computer back in the day) for molecular mechanics simulations and BeOS ran circles around it on perceived responsiveness. I really wish we have OS's that prioritize input/output latency over all else. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG…

Don’t mobile OS’ prioritize perceived latency above all other resources (besides battery)?

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#33

Post by jackbravo » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #11

dwmcqueen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you didn't get it because Jean-Louis asked too much when Apple inquired.

We still wouldn't have it; no way Apple w/o Steve Jobs but w/ BeOS survives.

Who knows. Maybe BeOS also had other nice talented people working there, with good vision for products, that just needed more room and market that apple could provide. We will never know

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#34

Post by dwmcqueen » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #11

dwmcqueen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you didn't get it because Jean-Louis asked too much when Apple inquired.

We still wouldn't have it; no way Apple w/o Steve Jobs but w/ BeOS survives.

Maybe.

All conjecture. Had I finished my Java port (BeKaffe), the world would run on BeOs :).

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#35

Post by mumblemumble » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

Ah, memories. Used to use BeOS as my primary OS for a year or two. I think it's the only OS I ever found to be truly intuitive and pleasant to work with.

That said, I don't think the world would be in a better place had Apple chosen Be over NeXT. The elephant in the room is security: NeXTSTEP, being Unix-based, has some amount of security baked in from the ground up. BeOS didn't; it was more akin to Windows 95 or classic Mac OS on that front. Consequently, I doubt it could have made it far into the 21st century. It would have died unceremoniously in a steaming pile of AYBABTU. Taking Apple with it, presumably.

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#36

Post by rvz » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

BeOS was really something of what the future 'could' have almost been. Too bad that it was killed by better competitors. But again I think its fair to compare with the lessons learned from its successor 'Haiku' that can be learned by many other OSes:

From what I can see from using Haiku for a bit, it has the bazar community element from the open-source culture with its package management and ports system from Linux and BSD whilst being conservative with its design from its apps, UI, and SDK like macOS. Although I have tired it and its surprisingly "useable", the driver story is still a bit lacking. But from a GUI usability point of view compared with many Linux distros, it feels very consistent unlike the countless confusing interfaces coming from those distros.

Perhaps BeOS lives on in the Haiku project, but whats more interesting is that the real contender who learned from its failure is the OS that has its kernel named 'Zircon'.

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#37

Post by dfox » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #24

zozbot234 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and C++ would rule across desktop and mobile OSes C++ in a non-standard version as compiled by gcc 2.96 release! Awesome.

What lack of imagination, as if they wouldn't be upgrading their toolchains. In fact, Haiku does support more modern toolchains and the BeOS R5 is only kept around due to ABI issues with binary only BeOS software.

The ABI issues are exactly the reason why having C++ as OS API level language is a bad idea.

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#38

Post by GeekyBear » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #12

slipheen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, the two are related- Microsoft stopped it from having much of a chance as an independent OS.. This stopped us from getting it outside of a major vendor like Apple acquiring it. Apple saw this, so didn't want to pay as much as they might have if it were selling well on it's own. So Apple ended up going with NeXT "instead of plan Be" as it were.

Yep. OEMs were not allowed to sell dual-boot systems if they wanted to keep buying cheap MS licenses. I think they lost that lawsuit, but it was long after BeOS closed up their commercial operations.

Didn't Be publicly offer up a free Be OS license to the first OEM willing to ship a duel boot system?

When there were no takers for a free way to have your hardware stand out from the pack, it was hard to imagine a reason for every single OEM in a very crowded field to back away that didn't involve antitrust shenanigans.

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#39

Post by bluedino » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

The founder of Be wrote a bunch of articles about Be's life, and demise

https://mondaynote.com/tagged/beos

Re: BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

#40

Post by ng7j5d9 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

eb0la wrote: post #2

I installed BeOS a long time ago on a PC. It was something ahead of the times. I still remember how incredible it was the rotating cube demo where you coud drag and drop images and videos on the cube faces... it worked without a glitch on my pentium. Just found out the demo video shows the application with a GL wave surface playing a video over it: https://youtu.be/BsVydyC8ZGQ?t=1074

Agreed, I remember trying BeOS in the late 90s and I felt the way Tesla fans report feeling about their cars - "it just feels like the future".

The responsiveness of the UI was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Unfortunately BeOS fell by the wayside, but I have such fond memories I keep meaning to give Haiku a shot.