Opinions? BeOS

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:13:19 -0800, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: I know what you mean, but after a few years, and actually building up an old PowerMac 7300/166 I got given for free with a load of bits off eBay - paying money for hardware, most unlike me! - and actually getting to *use* Mac OS X, I came to the conclusion that Apple did the right think. BeOS was gorgeous. My favourite PC OS ever. Everything I used to really like about systems like Acorn RISC OS, Psion EPOC and so on, or AmigaOS. Like those early proprietary 16-bit and 32-bit OSes, BeOS was small, blindingly fast, had a clean, simple GUI and came with an assortment of useful apps. It had a small but competent portfolio of useful software. Unlike most of them, it had networking and Internet capabilities built in, supported memory protection, virtual memory and multiprocessor hardware. And unlike any of them, it ran on cheap generic hardware, What's not to like? But whereas it would have made for a small and blisteringly fast Mac OS X, which with a bundled or integrated copy of SheepSaver would have happily run Classic MacOS & all its apps under the new OS, that's *all* it would have made. BeOS was unique. POSIX-like, but not Unix. Proprietary GUI but one with no unique advantages. Traditional C/C++ development model. Proprietary environment with all that that entails with programmers having to learn it. NextStep/OpenStep represented something different. Yes, all the clutter and kludge of Unix, but: - a new, simple development system using Objective C, Interface Modeller & a vast & comprehensive class library (arguably the best development system and tools for GUI apps there has ever been) - deep thorough object orientation - based on Unix, so familiar to millions of existing programmers, users and techies - based on /open source/ Unix, freeing Apple from the burden of developing & maintaining the entire OS on their own - a solid open networking system build deep into the OS - designed, like BeOS, by former Apple engineers - unlike BeOS, commercially successful (in a small way) for a decade in the open market on various hardware and software platforms - a new and revolutionary GUI based on Display Postscript (now Display PDF, but it's the same difference) - one that offers compelling advantages for designers, users and developers, with powerful new capabilities, but that's already based on known, widespread technology. Up front, BeOS would have made a better successor Mac OS. NextStep had to go through a lot of painful development to make it look and work like MacOS and the result was initially slow and clunky. However, /every/ successive release has made it sleeker and faster, bucking the trend of every other OS in the industry. But that's not what's important. What is important is that along with bringing over all the Mac developers with Carbon, it brought in lots of Unix developers with the Mach/BSD underpinnings, and tempted PC C coders with a different dialect of C, and Java coders with good Java support. Then to all of them it offered, /for free in the box/, the most remarkably polished and effective GUI development environment there is. Getting programmers behind a new OS is essential. It's paramount. That, I think, was the basis of Apple's decision. The result? OS X is by almost any standard the single most polished, friendly, usable, attractive, flexible desktop OS on the planet, and it's attracting lots of new and interesting software development. But by the same token, it's Unix, so if you want to drive it with EMACS and X tools from a /bash/ prompt, you can. BeOS could never have been that. -- Liam Proven Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com