251–260 of 430 posts
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I think BeOS was the only OS that allowed smooth playback of videos and work at the same time, something Windows was capable 5 and Linux 10 years later :D
Linux could do that in 2001 just fine, and without crashing like Windows. XV was amazing. So was MPlayer.
https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/qnx621
(I know that QNX was and still is widely used - the "tech demo" bit refers to its use as a primary desktop OS, not the usual embedding scenarios.)
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 cla…
Security from what? Do user accounts really provide much benefit in the personal computing space? Where the median user count is 1? Neither OS had the kind of security that is really useful today for this usecase, which is per-application.
We used to be able to trust intentionally installed programs not to exfiltrate data. It's sad that we still can't.
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If people willingly exchange currency for products from a company and are satisfied with the value that they get out of it to the point that they become repeat customers, then how can you judge that no one except stockholders are benefitting?
Network/lock-in effects and negative externalities can easily have that result.
This is very true. macOS and the iPhone, for me, went from being "obviously the very best of the best" to "the lesser of all evils".
When my 2015 rMBP finally gives up the ghost and / or when 10.13 loses compatibility with the applications I use, I have no idea what I'm going to do - probably buy another working 2015 rMBP used and pray that the Linux drivers are livable by then.
I know it's ridiculous, but it helps me fall asleep at night sometimes.
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I installed BeOS when it first came out. To me it was a cool tech demo, but it was fairly useless as it didn't have a usable browser (NetPositive was half baked at best), couldn't play a lot of video codecs and couldn't connect to a Windows network share. I feel like if they launched a better experience for existing Windows users, it would have done much better.
There was a version of Opera 3.62 for BeOS around 2000. At the time, Opera was a great browser.
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If people willingly exchange currency for products from a company and are satisfied with the value that they get out of it to the point that they become repeat customers, then how can you judge that no one except stockholders are benefitting?
Network/lock-in effects and negative externalities can easily have that result.
If you clicked the page of the book and dragged it around, it simulated the page turning and the video deforming, without skipping a frame.
I may've only been 12, but that demo has stuck with me since.
Edit: I would love to lay eyes on that demo again if anyone has an idea of where video of it may still exist.
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 cla…
The anti competitive business practices of Apple make it hard to imagine the world could be worse. Instead of competition, Apple survives off marketing medium quality products at high prices. I'm not sure how that's good for anyone unless they own Apple stock.
This seems like a failure of imagination.
I'm not a huge Apple fan, but I lived through the Bad Old Microsoft of the '90s, and grew up on stories of IBM of the '80s.
Apple is nothing like them.
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The anti competitive business practices of Apple make it hard to imagine the world could be worse. Instead of competition, Apple survives off marketing medium quality products at high prices. I'm not sure how that's good for anyone unless they own Apple stock.
You don't get to Apple is (large market cap, high customer satisfaction scores, high reviews in the tech press, etc.) because of marketing. If it were that easy, companies would just copy their marketing or load up on marketing and they would be successful. And a huge part of Apple's current success is based on the tech and expertise they got from NeXT. That work underpins not just laptops and desktops but phones, ta…
Maybe good marketing is really hard and you can't just "copy Apple"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Network/lock-in effects and negative externalities can easily have that result.
> negative externalities This is very true. macOS and the iPhone, for me, went from being "obviously the very best of the best" to "the lesser of all evils". When my 2015 rMBP finally gives up the ghost and / or when 10.13 loses compatibility with the applications I use, I have no idea what I'm going to do - probably buy another working 2015 rMBP used and pray that the Linux drivers are livable by then. I know it's r…