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

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

#131

Post by hinkley » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #17

> In 1990, Jean-Louis Gassée, who replaced Jobs in Apple as the head of Macintosh development, was also fired from the company. He then also formed his own computer company with the help of another ex-Apple employee, Steve Sakoman. They called it Be Inc, and their goal was to create a more modern operating system from scratch based on the object-oriented design of C++, using proprietary hardware that could allow for…

And Jobs was celebrated for cracking 10% market share. It’s hindsight now for sure but it turns out you can do pretty well without a majority stake.

The problem I think was that Microsoft competed hardest in the enterprise space, which was supposed to be IBM’s roost. Apple went after creatives. It’s not clear what was left for a hypothetical third place contender.

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

#132

Post by Joeri » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

It was ok. Back when I ran BeOS as my primary OS (2001 or so) I built half a C++ web application on BeOS, the other half on a HP-UX server logged in through an X terminal using ftp to sync between the two. Not much support in the wider *nix ecosystem though, so anything big would often fail to build.

I regretted having to move away from BeOS, it was by far the most pleasant OS I’ve used, but the lack of hardware and software support killed it.

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

#133

Post by jbn » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #28

Oh man! I first tried BeOS personal edition when it came on a CD with Maximum PC magazine. (Referring to same demo CD, though the poster is not me: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1067159&s... . Also, how crazy is it that Ars Technica’s forums have two decade old posts? In 2000, that would be like seeing forum posts from 1980.) I remember being so happy when we got SDSL, and I could get online from…

Here's the BeFS book: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309686

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

#134

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

deepaksurti wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never used BeOS, can you explain why you are glad now that it wasn't selected?

Mostly because of the UNIX subsystem. Having all that horsepower under the hood has been awesome. Also, NeXTStep became Cocoa, which knocked PowerPlant into a cocked hat. That may not be as compelling an argument. I heard that the BeOS framework was damn nice (never tried it, myself).

Besides that, it is also very likely that Apple would have remained stagnant (or worse) if Steve Jobs had not been brought into the fold. I am not into persona worshipping, but Jobs brought some well-needed focus to a sea of overpriced beige boxes.

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

#135

Post by rusk » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

all2 wrote: post #65

rusk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when the Amiga bouncing ball demo was impressive? Ironically 3D graphics ended up being the Amiga's specific achilles heel once Doom and co came on the scene.

That's curious to me. Doom is specifically not 3D. Was it a publishing issue (that Doom and co weren't produced for the Amiga), or a power issue, or something else?

Doom didnt use polygons but it very much was 3D in any practical sense of the term.

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

#136

Post by amatecha » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #125

bitL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok, so this is the big BeOS thing I've heard. What technically enabled this on such limited hardware? Was there lack of security/containerization/sandboxing that made os call much faster and context switches better?

Real pre-emptive multitasking? I seem to recall that was one of the huge differentiating factors of it against Mac / Windows.

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

#137

Post by aeyes » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #98

anthk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux could do that in 2001 just fine, and without crashing like Windows. XV was amazing. So was MPlayer.

In 2001 I could still hang X Windows as much as I liked. And it still happens occasionally, while my Windows 10 userspace drivers just reinitialize instead of locking the OS.

I think most hangs on Linux today are caused by low memory pressure, see this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620545

No swap, some swap, huge swap, swappiness=0, zram - nothing helped me.

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

#138

Post by Accujack » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #125

bitL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok, so this is the big BeOS thing I've heard. What technically enabled this on such limited hardware? Was there lack of security/containerization/sandboxing that made os call much faster and context switches better?

Bear in mind that resolutions back then were much lower than now, and not all computers had 24 bit color frame buffers. Video cards ran one monitor for the most part, with no others attached.

Be had well written multi threading and preemptive multitasking implemented on a clean slate - no compatibility hacks required. That meant it worked well and was quick/responsive. There were still limits, and the OS didn't have many security protections that would get written in today.

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

#139

Post by amatecha » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:38 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…

Fun vid that might bring back some memories :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3lUw9GUJA "SGI's $250,000 Graphics Supercomputer from 1993 - Silicon Graphics Onyx RealityEngine²"

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

#140

Post by jonhohle » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

morio wrote: post #128

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…

I used to work for Be in Menlo Park in a previous life and I can confirm that the code base quality would have made for a very bad outcome for Apple. Security was the least of the numerous serious issues. That said BeOS somewhat still exists in spirit as a lot of folks from Be went to build/contribute to Android.

> a lot of folks from Be went to build/contribute to Android.

Does that include the quality and security perspective as well? ;-) j/k

Having never crossed paths with a former Be employee before, __thank you so much__ for your contribution. BeOS was so instrumental to my perspective on computing and operating systems (and potentially the conception of my disdain for what Microsoft did to the world of operating systems around the turn of the century).

From a user perspective, BeOS was nearly perfect. Great UI and utilities, POSIX command line, so fast and responsive. The "install to Windows" option was amazing for trying things out. BeFS was wonderful (it's nice to see Mr. Giampaolo's work continue in macOS).