be'n here before 18 of november, 1996 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

As Don Crabb of MacWeek said, if you do not know about the rumors of Apple aquiring the "Be OS" then you must have been "sleeping under a rock". Well, if you have not heard of this grand new OS, do not worry too much about it, because you have not missed anything. It is safe to say that this wanna-"Be OS" is finally an attempt for the Macintosh to play catch-up with Windows 95 and NT. And it does not even successfully accomplish that.

Earlier this year when Apple was suffering all of it’s financial woes the company decided to come out of the closet about it’s plans for the next big Macintosh operating system. Essentially, they said it was never going to get here. The official reasons were made to sound like we WANTED Copland to be two years overdue, hoping that Apple would abandon releasing a new OS in favor of small incremental upgrades that give nothing. The truth was that Copland was proving nearly impossible to create in any timely fashion.

At the same time a future Apple employee was working on what he believed the next Macintosh OS should "Be". It did not take long for us Mac owners, who were hungry for a real operating system, to start looking seriously at this OS being created in a non-Apple house. Eventually, Apple started looking at the OS, too, and seems to now be concluding that the Be OS could take us to the Copland that never was.

If Apple goes through with it’s aquisition of Be, it will be the first OS of it’s kind from Apple. Not because it was not created at Apple. Not because it could be the first Apple OS to arrive on time (since most of it is already done). Not even because it was originally designed for non-Apple computers. The reason it will be so new for Apple is because it represents nothing new. Yes, new for the Mac, but old hat to nearly every other system.

"Nothing new?!", you say. "Look at all of these new features! Protected memory, virtual memory, object oriented design, pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, and even symmetric multi-processing." Wow. Golly, gee. That brings the Macintosh up to 1995 standards in 1998 or whenever they release this thing.

What is dissapointing is that previously when Macintosh owners were looking forward to a new operating system they were looking forward to a revolutionary, state of the art system. This time, Mac owners are looking forward to features everyone else already has. Hardly a morale boost to Mac owners who have been waiting so long for reasons to continue to praise the Macintosh.

Many of you might be thinking I am making up my assertion that there is absolutely nothing new in the "Be OS". So, to convince you, how about a report from MacUser? Point your browser to: MacUser Article. There you will find a lengthy report of what this grand new OS offers to Mac users in 1998 (or whenever it sees the light of day). You will not find anything listed that is not already available on the Windows system of your choice.