General Information about BeOS
Some of you might not be familiar with BeOS. This is an operating system for personal computers which was developed in 1991 by the Be Inc Company. This was the big deal back then as many saw this operating system grow. Many of you who do know what BeOS is might remember that it was the first operating system to ever run on BeBox hardware.
So, what did they use the BeOS for? The main purpose of this operating system was to work with digital media work. The way it was set up, this was capable of working with other things such as modern hardware facilities; One of those things being systematic multiprocessing. When it would do this sort of processing, all it needed was the right bandwidth, the ability to use pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking, and a 64-bit journaling file system. This file system is also known as BFS.
People who were in the technology department liked this as it was clean and cut and straight to the point. The format in which it was written in was C++ as it was easy to program. However, it’s not a UNIX derived system, it was compatible with POSIX.
This was originally designed to work with the AT&T based hardware. But as time moved on, it was able to run on any Power PC based processor. It was the hope that as time moved on, Apple would buy the license to this. Apple was up for this until they found out how much the CEO of the Be company wanted for this operating system.
At the time, Be Ceo wanted two hundred million dollars for this. Naturally, Apple thought this was too much and found that another operating system known as NeXTSTEP step was more the operating system for them. During this time, Apple got a new CEO and when they refused to buy it, they didn’t give Be the design of their latest G3 models which Be said they would need in order to make sure that with their next line of computers BeOS would be able to run on it.
PowerPC started offering the BeOS as a way that you can download it. They offered a CD for customers to use. Many say that Apple’s refusal had a lasting impact on how well this company did. As one will note, it didn’t do all that well really. Soon, Intel put this on their R3 processors, but to no avail, this company lost its prestige. That was the end to that. Making money on this system wasn’t going to really happen so they created a free one that personal computers could use. This was known as BeOS PE.
This just goes to show that some times, things are created and thought to really shape the way technology thinks. However, you find that when they come on the market, they don’t do very good at all. That is just the way it works when you are in the technology creating department.