|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"The New Mac OS," declared the lead story headline on the February, 1997, issue of MacWorld magazine. OS X? Nope. Inside, the article, by Galen Gruman, was somewhat more equivocal, but suggested that now that the Copland project had fallen apart, the Be OS could very well form the basis for the successor to the classic Mac OS -- at that point system 7.5.5. The theory presented was that Apple probably wouldn't buy the Be OS, but would rather license Be components, possibly entering into some sort of partnership with Be, which was and is led by former Apple Product Development Chief, Jean-Louis Gassee. At the summer MacWorld Expo 1996, clone maker Power Computing had demonstrated the Be OS running on one of its machines, and announced that it would be shipping the Be OS along with the Mac OS , giving users a choice between the two operating systems. The Be OS certainly looked promising, incorporating protected memory, multithreading, pre-emptive multitasking, support for multi-processing, an attractive and stylish user interface, and a thoroughly modern, microkernel underlying it all. On the downside, while it had a dock, the Be OS wouldn't let you put non dockable items on the desktop. The Be OS GUI continued the Mac's familiar iconic metaphors of disks, files, folders, and applications, adding context-sensitive menus, as well as the concept of multiple workspaces -- where you could have several tasks running simultaneously without occupying screen real-estate. Other stated Be OS advantages were that it was easy to code for, even fun, and its API simplicity. A month later, the landscape had shifted dramatically. MacWorld's cover proclaimed the news: " Steve Jobs returns -- Apple buys Next -- and a new Mac OS is born." Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio had announced on January 7th that the company had acquired Next for big $400 million and got Steve Jobs back as an adviser in the bargain. MacWorld's then editor Adrian Mello noted that " The Next OS [for Mac] won't be available for at least a year. Nonetheless, the Next acquisition is important to anyone who cares about the Mac and Apple's future. Apple has placed its bet, and the company's future depends on how it plays its new hand." The rest you probably know. Who would have guessed that it would be four years before the new Mac OS actually rolled out, still unfinished? It kind of makes you wonder what might have been, had Apple opted for the Be OS rather than Next. It would have been starting with a much cleaner slate, and perhaps would have resulted in a more Mac-like OS than OS X has turned out to be, and one that would have been out a lot sooner, but on the other hand, there would have been no Steve Jobs involved, in which case the question might be moot -- or not. Gil Amelio still thinks he could have saved Apple without Jobs. However, another even more tantalizing "might have been" that I discovered, or least rediscovered, while researching this article, is that, according to Galen Gruman, writing in late 1996, way back in 1993 Apple engineers ported the Mac OS to the 80486 chip, and got better performance out of it than with the 68040 chip used in the fastest contemporary Macs. Since this was two years prior to the release of Windows 95, the Mac OS for the PC might have had a shot at wresting OS dominance from Microsoft, perhaps reversing, or at least balancing, the proportional split in the platform wars. Incidentally, if you have a pre G3 PCI Mac with a 603 or 604 processor, you can probably run the Be OS, which is available as a free download for non-commercial users. You can find out more about Be compliant Macs here:
You can download the Be OS here (40 MB):
Be OS "White Paper":
For another perspective on Be OS and the Mac:
|
. |
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
