Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X

hackaday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 430 posts

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

#321

Post by runjake »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
danans wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BeOS had a regular Unix like (even posix IIRC) dev environment. I was able to do most of the CS course work projects normally done on my University's Sun workstations on BeOS instead. Most of these of courses were data structures, algorithms, compilers, etc projects in C, and not things that required platform specific APIs. But arguably, BeOS' overall model - a single user desktop OS built on top of but hiding its mo…

BeOS was as UNIX like, as Amiga was. Surely it had a cli, UNIX like directory navigation and a couple of UNIX command like utilities. But good luck porting UNIX CLI software expecting a full POSIX environment. If I am not mistaken, Haiku has done most of the work regarding POSIX support.

AmigaOS was not UNIX-like in the least. Amiga UNIX, which shipped on a couple models, was directly System V UNIX, though.

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

#322

Post by forwhomst »

perardi wrote: post #56

In my hazy recollection, there was another, rather pedestrian reason Apple didn't go for BeOS: it had almost no infrastructure for printing. The Mac's niche was prepress and desktop publishing (remember that phrase?), and BeOS could barely print and had no color management. (Though I could be totally wrong on this, and welcome a correction.)

BeOS didn't have a lot of stuff. For example networking. Big gap.

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

#323

Post by jonhendry18 »

TheCondor wrote: post #310
mumblemumble wrote: post #35

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, networking, multiuser, i10n, print (don’t even begin to underestimate this and quartz and display postscript) beos was an rtos with a neat UI. it was still fun but there was a gigantic pile of work before it could do what system 7 did, let alone what next did.

Additionally, NeXTStep had been in use in production on investment bank trading floors, in scientific institutions, and in military/intelligence agencies. It wasn't widely used, but it was used.

So while it might not have been quite ready for the median System 7 user's expectations, it was pretty solid.

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

#324

Post by jonhendry18 »

jonny_eh wrote: post #166
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #129

I was another former Be "power user." And I think that was probably accurate -- if you weren't in the "BeOS lifestyle" during the admittedly short window that it was possible, it's hard to understand how much promise it looked like it had. When I tell people I ran it full-time for over a year, they wonder how I managed to get anything done, but... - Pe was a great GUI text editor, competitive with BBEdit on the Mac -…

You may have hinted at it, but I think Apple's subsequent turnaround after acquiring Next was mainly due to their founder, Steve Jobs, coming back to Apple.

Jobs helped enormously, of course, but if Apple was still trying to sell classic MacOS in 2005 I'm not sure even Steve Jobs could have kept them afloat long enough to ship an iPhone.

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

#325

Post by numlock86 »

statico wrote: post #201

One of my favorite anecdotes about BeOS was that it had a CPU usage meter[1], and on the CPU meter there were on/off switches for each core. If you had two cores and turned one off, your computer would run at half speed. If you turned both off, your computer would crash. Someone once told me that this was filed as a bug against the OS and the response was "Works As Intended" and that it was the expected behavior. (Th…

Reminds me of a game called NieR:Automata. You play as an android and the skill/attribute-system is designed as a couple of slots for chips. There were chips for things like the minimap and various other overlays along with general attributes, so if you decided you want to exchange your experience gauge for another chip with more attack speed, you could totally do that.

Among these chips was one called "OS chip" you had from the very beginning. If you'd try to replace that or simply exchange it for another one you "died" instantly and were greeted by the end-credits.

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

#326

Post by jonhendry18 »

pjmlp wrote: post #20

In this alternative universe, Objective-C would have died, Swift would never happened, and C++ would rule across desktop and mobile OSes (thinking only of Windows, BeOS X, Symbian, Windows CE and what might have been BeOS based iOS). Also POSIX would be even less relevant, and very few would be buying BeOS X for doing Linux coding.

What would have been interesting is if Apple had bought Be in 1993 or 1994, and incorporated BeOS tech in System 8, then wound up buying NeXT anyway at the end of 96 and OS X incorporated Be and NeXT tech.

Though it's entirely possible Jobs would have tossed the BeOS tech along with Quickdraw GX, Newton, etc.

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

#327

Post by pjmlp »

arpa wrote: post #317
pjmlp wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia is still around, and working from the offices I used to visit regularly in Espoo.

I wouldn't call that what's left after elopcalypse "alive" and "around"

Alive enough to be one of the best Android brands, that actually provide updates without having to pay Apple prices.

Around enough to still have a good networking business, and be the owner of Bell Labs.

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

#328

Post by kbenson »

_8ljf wrote: post #231
jimbokun wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NeXTSTEP pretty directly evolved into iOS, though, so it was certainly a significant asset in the acquisition, too.

True, but a technology is only a means to an end, not an end itself. What sells is product. You may have the finest tech on the planet—and that means precisely squat. What counts is putting bums on seats. Your seats. And keeping them there. Limps of tech are just a vehicle for that; to be used, abused, chewed up, and/or discarded on the road(s) to that end. Apple could have done better; they certainly did plenty wors…

I'm not sure I've ever encountered someone so invested in the "great man" theory of history.

Jobs was obviously talented, but assuming no matter where he went he would have had the same level of success is discounting a lot of luck in how everything lined up,and who was available to help bring all the things to market jobs is famous for. There's no guarantee the hundreds or thousands of people that were also essential to the major successes of Apple would have been around jobs had he stayed at Next. Those people deserve respect and recognition too.

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

#330

Post by Corrado »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #129

I was another former Be "power user." And I think that was probably accurate -- if you weren't in the "BeOS lifestyle" during the admittedly short window that it was possible, it's hard to understand how much promise it looked like it had. When I tell people I ran it full-time for over a year, they wonder how I managed to get anything done, but... - Pe was a great GUI text editor, competitive with BBEdit on the Mac -…

I actually toyed with the idea of starting a radio station based on the BeOS MP3 player + file system. The thought was to have a system without human DJs that used a simple web interface to gather "votes" for songs/genres, and to use the metadata in the file system to queue up the songs. If I remember correctly, BeOS also had a macro programming interface (ie. AREXX) that could be used to glue things together.

This made BeOS (and BeBox) a great product in my mind; the ability to use it in unexpected ways.

Post reply on HN