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New The Little OS That Could, but Didn't: Why did BeOS Fail?
Back in 98 or thereabouts, I got a computer magazine cover CD that was a change from the usual fodder of crappy game demos, shit shareware and assorted multymeeja crap that invariably failed to entertain or astound.

It was a bootable (this in itself was interesting, at the time) demo version of an operating system called "BeOS". I'd heard of it - mainly from hearing about an unfeasibly expensive but equipped-with-blinkenlights thing called a "BeBox", but the big news was that it was now available for computers with x86 processors. At the time, I had a computer with an AMD K6-2 CPU at 400MHz, a 6.4GB hard disk, and 64MB of RAM. I'd just recently forked over what seemed like an armful of cash for a Matrox Mystique 220 graphics card. It was shit.

BeOS promised much, and appealed to me because I'd not long since abandoned my 1992-vintage Acorn computer running RISC OS 3.0, which, whilst having a fairly fragile multitasking model (co-operative multitasking with no virtual memory) had many modern features; an extensible filing system model that allowed anything to be a filing system, including all sorts of devices and file formats, including compressed archives and disk images; advanced font technology, with kerning, anti-aliasing and hinting and (oh joy, oh rapture) proper file attributes: there were no filename extensions. All this was held together by a GUI that had considerable 'snap' and responsiveness.

Windows 3 and Windows 95, by comparison, although blessed with much more software and bigger memory address spaces, looked a bit shonky.

BeOS promised an alternative - advanced graphics, pervasive multithreading resulting in a GUI that was responsive at all times, powerful multimedia capabilities, and a GUI that tossed out the old Windows 3 model for something a bit more powerful and spatial.

Pity that the BeOS R4 demo disc didn't actually work on very many computers, then. Mine included. However, it did work on a friend's computer and we spent a couple of evenings going "ooh" and "aah" at the fact that we could play a video and drag a window around, and the window dragged and the video played.

This was going to be huge. There was nothing not to like. It was a bit UNIXy underneath, so we understood how to navigate around and make it do things (contrast with the truly alien nature of something like Plan 9, where even being able to edit a file marks you as StudlyNerd), the GUI was fun but useful (the Tracker was nifty) and the icons were, for 1998, properly posh. It even had spiffy fonts, and a few good-looking apps. Despite the fact that I wouldn't have an Internet connection at home for another couple of years, I got excited about the NetPositive browser.

And then...

...well, there was no 'and then'. And then, nothing. It turned out that BeOS was going to be a hundred sheets, which is a lot of money for an OS that didn't have any apparent software other than that which came on the install disc. It supported pretty much any hardware that I didn't have. OSNews kept talking about it, but despite Eugenia Loli-Queru's love for it, BeOS simply didn't get any software.

What went wrong? Why did such a genuinely useful operating system, that should have been a no-brainer drop-in replacement for Linux (at home, anyway), die on its arse?

I've got a Haiku VM around here somewhere; I grabbed it last year, and nothing's changed. There's still no software for it, and the GUI, which was revolutionary in 1998, is looking extremely tired some 12 years on.

The other question is this: why does BeOS (and, latterly, Haiku) engender such dedication in people? Making a complete operating system, with a kernel and its associated drivers, a GUI and a network stack is a metric arseload of work. Why bother to do all this to produce something that is so quintessentially useless? It's not as if it's art; I can see the beauty in Plan 9, even if I can't work out how to edit a file.

On the gripping hand, I think it's somewhat wonderful in a mad way that a group of people can organise themselves to make things like this. Even if I can't work out what the shuddering fuck you're supposed to do with it.
New I never tried it myself.
Nice post. Thanks.

It was a neat OS, and the BeBox was a neat piece of hardware (SMP built in!). I had some hope at the time that Apple was going to grab it, but they clearly made the right choice in getting NeXT and Steve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

What killed it? I think that ultimately, the same thing that killed HP's NewWave - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_NewWave - and GEM - http://en.wikipedia....vironment_Manager - and WordPerfect, and even OS/2. Not the lack of apps, but mostly the various restrictions and bundles that Microsoft put together. Why buy GEM when you get Windows Runtime for free? Why buy NewWave when MS decreed that future versions of Windows would not permit a different shell? Why buy WordPerfect when you could get the whole Office for less money? Why buy OS/2 when you can get Windows "free" with a new PC and the next version of Windows will be better anyway?

Initially Apple's Look-and-Feel lawsuits attempted to kill competing GUIs. Then MS's per-processor licenses locked up the pre-installed OS market. The PowerPC machines never matured as quickly as promised (which may have been at least partially related to Intel strangling the market with their contracts). The new GUIs needed every bit of horsepower they could get back then.

Yes, the apps weren't there either. But the apps don't come if the machines aren't there to be a platform. (The Wikipedia article says about 1800 BeBoxes were sold.)

Maybe the ARM platform will finally help break MS's stranglehold and cut Intel's market share in general-purpose PCs. It's David fighting two Goliaths though. We'll see.

Cheers,
Scott.
New that's the ringer
Why buy something else when your Windows hit was free.

I experimented with it on one of my machines, and while I thought it was slick it didn't get much use due to lack of software.
     The Little OS That Could, but Didn't: Why did BeOS Fail? - (pwhysall) - (2)
         I never tried it myself. - (Another Scott) - (1)
             that's the ringer - (SpiceWare)

My other car is a Lincoln.
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