Transformation of Be

January 07, 2001

I have been a big fan of Be since its early beginnings running on PowerPC based BeBoxes. The small company founded in 1986 by some ex-Apple engineers from the original Mac development team built an OS that is incredibly fast, unix based, and platform portable long before Apple even had an OS strategy. Be was considered a contender as the future of Apple in 1997 until they bought NeXT and embarked on the borg based OS X.

With the loss of Apple and hardware support from that company, Be went to Intel and embedded systems like cable boxes. Both those efforts have floundered in the face of poor marketing and extreme difficulty in convincing developers to port software for the BeOS.

It looks like the little company that could just got a break from Sony to use Be's new embedded operating system in a proposed internet appliance that is under development. This is good news for Be.

I often pass by Be's offices on the El Camino in Menlo Park on the way to work. Every time I drive by I think of what could have been. Unfortunately the Valley is littered with examples of could've beens. They range from MagicCap, Xerox PARC, Be, and Taligent. Maybe this one will have a happy ending.