OSUser: BeOS Journal #7 - Death of the BeBox

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BeOS Journal #7: Death of the BeBox Scot Hacker, ZDNet 05/02/97 One of the first impressions a BeBox demo makes on the uninitiated is the crazy activity of the L.E.D. CPU load indicator lights running up and down the front bezel of the BeBox. Of course, they're a somewhat superficial addition to a truly great operating system -- it's the guts of the system that really rock -- but they're immediately indicative of the absolute coolness of what Be has been working on so hard. Coolness and innovation don't stop at the pulse indicator, either. The handsome navy blue case, the RISC motherboard and CPUs in combination with the extensible array of PC-organ-bank I/O cards, and the funky GeekPort all scream "This is way cool." It takes a developer or dedicated propeller-head to really appreciate how great the operating system itself is, at least at this early stage in the game. But cool hardware appeals to everyone immediately. So it came as pretty tough news when Be made their big announcement last night on comp.sys.be. Be is going to cease production of the BeBox, effective immediately. This wasn't a total shock -- many of us had half expected it for a long time, and most of us well knew that what Be was really bringing to the party all along was its operating system. The hardware, after all, is relatively generic, and could theoretically be made by any number of more entrenched and established factories on the planet. And of course, ever since the BeOS was demonstrated running on PowerMac boxes several months ago, the hardcore Mac community has flocked to the system in a big way, turning what I and others initially saw as a platform-neutral system to being an object of desire mostly to Mac users. So much so, in fact, that in recent months Be has realized that the majority of developers were coming from the Mac side, and that the BeOS really was going to become an alternative primarily for Mac users. All of this makes good sense for Be, which has other fish to fry than competing in the difficult-to-break hardware industry. And I'm glad they'll now have more resources to pour into advancing their state-of-the-art OS. Unfortunately, there are still a large number of us BeBox owners who haven't come from the Mac side. We've seen BeOS as an alternative platform period, not just an alternative to MacOS. And those PowerComputing tower boxes, no matter how great they are, don't have GeekPorts, nor do they have two rows of blinky lights on the front. But more importantly, you can't get a dual-processor PowerMac clone for anywhere near the affordable price of a BeBox. The BeBox was created as a reference platform, proof-of-concept that a multi-processor desktop machine could be built cheaply and effectively. Be had to build the box to launch their OS into the world, and in doing so, they've succeeded beyond many people's expectations, partially due to the massive amount of press attention conveyed by Be's conversations with Apple. Of course, blinky lights aren't all that difficult to make. In fact, since blinkys are software-controlled, it's been proposed that someone create a PCI card that could be installed on PowerMacs that would host the GeekPort and the blinkys. This could probably be done for a couple hundred dollars, and complete the picture for the nostalgic. We'll see. But there are other options with potentially more market impact. What's to stop PowerComputing, DayStar, or another clone maker from creating a BeBox clone? I'm sure Be would be more than happy to sell, lease, or give the blueprints to interested clone makers, to broaden further the availability of BeOS-capable hardware. But it goes even further than that. The BeOS was designed from the ground up to be portable, which is why it ran on PowerMacs so easily to begin with. And if it's portable, that means it can still run on other hardware. I won't get into the feasibility and wisdom of the prospect, but there have been plenty of mutterings about porting BeOS to the x86 architecture. Be has been advertising a job slot on their Web site for a while now for an engineer, and the job description subtly implies that this engineer should be capable of tinkering with an x86 port. And looking forward, Be has always promised that the OS was headed for CHRP-compliance, which means the ability to create boxes that can run BeOS, MacOS, AIX, Solaris, WindowsNT (though NT has recently stopped PowerPC development -- don't know what this means for CHRP development), Linux, and possibly other operating systems as well. But what if you own a BeBox now? Be says they'll officially support the box for three years, but there's a good chance that your box will be effectively supported long beyond that, barring any radical changes in OS design. And the hardware is tough and very expandable too, so there's no reason the machine won't serve you well for a couple of years, at least. Unfortunately, it looks we won't get to see the quad-200MHz machine about which we've been hearing rumors for the past few months, and that's a shame and a disappointment. It's going to be a while before the clone makers can produce a machine that powerful for the price Be could have done it. There's another factor here that BeBox owners can take heart in: you've got a great piece of history sitting on your desk. A collector's item that will possibly be all the more valuable because of its rarity. No, that doesn't mean it'll go up in value like a rare car (if only it worked that way with old computers!), but it does mean the world will know you were there at the beginning, when the whole Be concept began to dawn on the world. There's a certain cache' among owners of classic black NeXT cubes: NeXT didn't make hardware for long before turning into a cross-platform operating system company. But though it's been a good 10 years since the NeXT cube briefly hit, then left the scene, my two friends with NeXT cubes still swear by them, and use them for their daily programming and Internet needs. While those machines are getting pretty long in the tooth, great hardware doesn't obsolete itself overnight, contrary to popular belief. What's more, NeXT went on to achieve even more greatness by focusing on its operating system, rather than on hardware, and reached many thousands more users than it would have otherwise by porting its kernel to the machines already in the hands of the public. The death of the BeBox is a bitter pill to swallow, but I believe it was the right choice. The hardware business is just too hard to compete in, and Be has more important things to do than building blinky lights. More questions? See Be's hardware directions Q&A. Have an opinion on the decision? Stop into our BeBuzz discussion area. |
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