Let me ask something about the BeOS...
According to Be Inc.'s web page www.be.com: "The needs of digital content
design, not to mention physics and economics, are coming into conflict with
current OS architectures. A new definition, the Media OS, can unlock the
door to more powerful media-based personal systems, and extract more
performance from the systems we are using today. .... This digital media is
changing the way the message is conveyed. Instead of static images on a
page, digital media present us with a mix of text, digital audio, digital
video, two-way communications, and 3D graphics and animations."
Don't we already have a digital media OS called IRIX?
Multi-tasking, SMP, digital audio, digital video, communication, 3D
graphics, animation, digital content creation... Isn't that EXACTLY what
Silicon Graphics has doing for years? Be just recently licensed OpenGL for
3D work. Hmm, where did OpenGL come from? Okay, a PC or Mac running BeOS
is going to be MUCH cheaper than buying even a low-end O2 workstation from
SGI. [Then again, you can get a refurbished Indy from www.reputable.com for
pretty cheap these days.] But other than price, what's really new about it?
An easy-to-use, mind-numbing, point-and-click interface? Apple has been
doing that with the Macintosh since 1984. Adding a Macintosh-like GUI to a
powerful Unix base? Nope, NeXT was doing that with NextStep in the early
nineties. Frankly, I am not impressed.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fairly slick OS and a nice GUI [although
closed-source and lacking decent multi-user capabilities], but so what?
If they have done anything really new and interesting, please let me know
because I would want to tinker with it. Caveat on the above rant: I have
only been able to play on an SGI once, although I have done some research on
the machines (because I was thinking about getting a refurbished one for a
while until I realized that I don't have money to burn). However, I have
tinkered with BeOS and NextStep/OpenStep.
Cheers,
Chad
On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Collin McClendon wrote:
> Well I found interesting his comment on how os development is
> done, this is really quite wrong. I have installed beos r4 recently
> and frankly I have been quite impressed. I can use linux, but it takes a
> pretty steep learning curve for your average user. Beos is a unix but
> does a good job of making stuff easy for those average users. If mac had
> adopted this a year ago I wouldn't dislike macs quite so much. What I'm
> saying is that there is a lot of room for improvement in OS's and
> considering beos is younger than linux yet as far as user interface
> friendliness goes its quite a bit more mature. (for the average user).
> In R3 they didn't even have scsi support for the pc and lots of other
> hardware and in one version they now have support for all sorts of
> devices. Hmm I guess what I'm saying is that Linux is by no means done
> with its own development so how can ESR say that os development is done
> period? Quite a broad and erroneous statement AFAIAC.
> -CMc
>
>
>
_______________________
chad.glendenin@yale.edu
chad@glendenin.org
http://promethium.org
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