be os - take the gloves off 8 of janaury, 1997 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

With all of this talk about NeXT and Apple, it would seem that the Mac operating system plans are only one knock-out punch away from being history. Between the recent Apple financial losses, the big bucks required to buy NeXT, and the four year wait on Copland, there is little doubt that Apple is on the ropes. However, most Macintosh owners would not install Windows NT if it was the last operating system on Earth. Therefore, that final jab could not be delivered from Microsoft. Yet there is an operating system waiting in the wings that is questionably better than the proposed NeXT - Apple OS. The Be OS delivers Windows NT features on your Macintosh Power PC system today. What’s more, it will deliver compatibility with your System 7 apps as soon as tomorrow. So the final question remains: When will Be finally stop sitting in the corner and come out fighting?

Apple has announced at the MacWorld Expo their Macintosh plans for future operating systems. We can expect four last installments of the System 7 operating system all delivered before the end of 1998. But, none of us want any of the warn-down yesterday’s news System 7 architecture any longer. We want what Windows NT and even Windows 95 users have been enjoying for the past few years. In order to get those features, according to Apple, we need to get the new NeXT - Mac operating system 8, which will not be available until at least early 1998.

Great. We have waited four years. What is another year, right? Guess again. In one more year you will be able to install the new OS 8 that will NOT be compatible with OS 7. "WHAT?!", I hear you screaming. Well, in order to run your current Macintosh software, you are going to have to wait until late 1998 at the earliest. Chances are, you will not see a System 7 compatible OS 8 until early to mid 1999.

To add to Apple’s woes, it looks as though the new operating system is not going to come free. That is right. One of the few virtues to Macintosh computing, that the operating system updates are free, will no longer be true. Apple has made it quite clear that the new NeXT - Apple operating system is going to cost you a few green-backs.

Do not want to pay big bucks for an over-bloated, over-hyped, and over-due operating system? Can’t wait until nearly the turn of the millenium for pre-emptive multitasking? Neither can I. Which is why many Mac owners, including myself, have been looking longingly at what the Be OS offers today. Granted, it is missing most of the features we have come to expect from a Macintosh operating system. Yet, if we all migrated over, software companies would fill in the gaps they left out. If the Macintosh switched from the main operating system being made by Apple to the new Be OS, suddenly we would have a Windows NT competitor available on our desktop today.

To muddy the waters even further, Be demonstrated a Macintosh within a window by showing the latest Mac System software emulation they have in the works by third party. By mid 1997, you can expect the Be operating system to be System 7 compatible with a little added software. If that does not get your attention, nothing will.

Despite what the kind letters and tame press announcements say, the folks at Be know their position. They are well aware that with a slight nudge of the Macintosh elite, they could have the entire platform switch from being System 7 to Be OS. After all, the Macintosh is comprised of 80% rebel and 20% elitism. None of us wanted to give Microsoft our money, so we bought Macintosh. We wanted the best. We wanted top quality, not mass produced. And the Be OS folks, by playing to the statement that they are only producing an operating system for the Macintosh upper-crust, could end up getting all of us.

How can any operating system manufacturer survive by creating their main software for a small percentage of 5% of the entire personal computer market? They can’t. But the MacWorld’s and MacUser’s will continue to tell you that this is what the Be OS is trying to grab. Do not believe it for a second. They want the entire Mac market. What’s more, I firmly believe that if they play their cards the way they have been, they might very well get it. Why not? They have a better product, and it is available today instead of two years from now.

While the Be folks continue to congratulate Apple on it’s recent acquisition of NeXT (read: gee, thanks for spending another 400 million and hiring the bozo that brought down the Mac in the first place), they continue to keep their old friends while stealing market share. The software already offers the features we have most been longing for, and the remaining issues that we can not live without (compatibility, ease of use) are being worked on as I write this. If this sounds like a software manufacturer just trying to steal a small percent of the Mac market, you have a big surprise in store.

In software development, timing is everything. There is little doubt that the new Mac operating system being developed by Apple will be too little, far too late. It is time for Mac owners to accept reality and make a choice: Do we consider large purchases from Redmond, Washington, or are we going to give a small up-start called "Be" a chance for the big bucks behind door number two? Being the group of elitists we are, I am willing to bet the latter. If the folks at Be have half a brain, they will make certain that our next operating system is their own.