BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in
1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was built for
digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware
facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing modular I/O
bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a 64-bit
journaling file system known as BFS. The BeOS GUI was developed on the principles
of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design.
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform which could be used by a
substantial population of desktop users and a competitor to Mac OS and Microsoft
Windows. However, it was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market
share and proved commercially unviable for Be Inc. The company was acquired by
Palm Inc. and today BeOS is mainly used and developed by a small population of
enthusiasts. The open-source OS Haiku, a complete
reimplementation of BeOS, is designed to start up where BeOS left off. Alpha 4 of
Haiku was released in November 2012. Design
BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage
of modern computer hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by
utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive
multitasking and a 64-bit journaling file system known as BFS. The BeOS GUI
was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design.
The API was written in C++ for ease of programming. It has partial POSIX
compatibility and access to a command-line interface through Bash,
although internally it is not a Unix-derived operating system.
BeOS used Unicode as the default encoding in the GUI, though support for
input methods such as bidirectional text input was never realized.
History Initially designed to run on AT&T
Hobbit-based hardware, BeOS was later modified to run on PowerPC-based
processors: first Be's own systems, later Apple Inc.'s PowerPC Reference
Platform and Common Hardware Reference Platform, with the hope that Apple would
purchase or license BeOS as a replacement for its aging Mac OS. Apple
CEO Gil Amelio started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but negotiations stalled
when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée wanted $300 million; Apple was unwilling to
offer any more than $125 million. Apple's board of directors decided
NeXTSTEP was a better choice and purchased NeXT in 1996 for $429 million,
bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
In 1997, Power Computing began bundling BeOS with its line of PowerPC-based
Macintosh clones. These systems could dual boot either the Mac OS or BeOS,
with a start-up screen offering the choice.
Due to Apple's moves and the mounting debt of Be Inc., BeOS was soon ported to
the Intel x86 platform with its R3 release in March 1998. Through the late
1990s, BeOS managed to create a niche of followers, but the company failed to
remain viable. Be Inc. also released a stripped-down, but free, copy of BeOS R5
known as BeOS Personal Edition. BeOS PE could be started from within Microsoft
Windows or Linux, and was intended to nurture consumer interest in its product
and give developers something to tinker with. Be Inc. also released a
stripped-down version of BeOS for Internet Appliances, which soon became
the company's business focus in place of BeOS.
In 2001 Be's copyrights were sold to Palm, Inc. for some $11 million. BeOS R5
is considered the last official version, but BeOS R5.1 "Dano", which was under
development before Be's sale to Palm and included the BeOS Networking Environment
networking stack, was leaked to the public shortly after the company's
demise. In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming
that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that
Compaq had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership
with Be. Be also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.'s
initial public offering. The case was eventually settled out of court for
$23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.
After the split from Palm, PalmSource used parts of BeOS's multimedia
framework for its failed Palm OS Cobalt product. With the takeover of
PalmSource, the BeOS rights now belong to Access Co.
= Continuation and clones= In the years that followed the demise of
Be Inc. a handful of projects formed to recreate BeOS or key elements of the OS
with the eventual goal of then continuing where Be Inc. left off. This
was facilitated by the fact that Be Inc. released some components of BeOS under a
free licence. Here is a list of these projects:
BlueEyedOS: It uses a modified version of the Linux kernel which allows it to
run Beos applications. It is free and open source software. There have been no
releases since 2003. Cosmoe: A user interface for Linux that
can run most BeOS applications. It is free and open source software. The last
release was in 2004 and its website is no longer online.
E/OS: short for Emulator Operating System. A Linux and FreeBSD-based
operating system that aimed to run Windows, DOS, AmigaOS and BeOS
applications. It is free and open source software. Active development ended in
July 2008. Haiku: A complete reimplementation of
BeOS not based on Linux. It is free and open source software. The first alpha
release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 1", was released on September 14, 2009. The
second alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 2", was made available on May 9, 2010,
and the third alpha release, "Haiku R1 / Alpha 3", on June 18, 2011. "Haiku R1 /
Alpha 4" was released November 12, 2012. As of 2014, it is the only BeOS clone
still under development. Zeta was a commercially available
operating system based on the BeOS R5.1 codebase. Originally developed by
yellowTAB, the operating system was then distributed by magnussoft. During
development by yellowTAB, the company received criticism from the BeOS
community for refusing to discuss its legal position with regard to the BeOS
codebase. Access Co. has since declared that yellowTAB had no right to
distribute a modified version of BeOS, and magnussoft has ceased distribution
of the operating system. = Version history=
Products using BeOS BeOS continue to be used in media
appliances such as the Edirol DV-7 video editors from Roland corporation which
run on top of a modified BeOS and the TuneTracker radio automation software
that used to run it on BeOS and Zeta, and it was also sold as a
"Station-in-a-Box" with the Zeta operating system included. Nowadays
TuneTracker has switched to Haiku. The Tascam SX-1 digital audio recorder
runs a heavily modified version of BeOS that will only launch the recording
interface software. iZ Technology sells the RADAR 24 and
RADAR V, hard disk-based, 24-track professional audio recorders based on
BeOS 5, although the newer RADAR 6 is not based on BeOS.
Magicbox, a manufacturer of signage and broadcast display machines, uses BeOS to
power their Aavelin product line. Final Scratch, a 12″ vinyl timecode
record-driven DJ software/hardware system, was first developed on BeOS. The
"ProFS" version was sold to a few dozen DJs prior to the 1.0 release, which ran
on a Linux virtual partition. See also
BeIA Haiku
ZevenOS Access Co.
bootman Comparison of operating systems
Gobe Productive Hitachi Flora Prius
KDL List of BeOS programs
NetPositive OpenTracker
Pe References
External links The Dawn of Haiku, by Ryan Leavengood,
IEEE Spectrum May 2012, p 40-43,51-54. Mirror of the old www.be.com site Other
Mirror of the old www.be.com site BeOS Celebrating Ten Years
BeGroovy A blog dedicated to all things BeOS
BeOS: The Mac OS X might-have-been, reghardware.co.uk
Programming the Be Operating System: An O'Reilly Open Book
BeOS Developer Video on YouTube U.S. Trademark 78,558,039