Big Be.!

The future belongs to those who look ahead. Or so they say. But if that was true, Apple Computer would have butchered the PC platform long ago. So it's time to modify that line the future belongs to those who look ahead and conceive a practical marketing strategy. That could be exactly where Jean-Louis Gassée and his company Be Inc. might fall short.

Be Inc was formed in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gassée, former president of Apple's product division. Gassee considered the pace of today's software development too slow and evolutionary. Hardware and software were developed to solve today's problems, and no thought was given to tomorrow's. Be Inc tries to leapfrog this kind of evolution. And the main products of their evolution are the BeOS, a revolutionary operating system and the BeBox, a computer. These two, together, achieve a new level of price-performance and a dramatic reduction in the complexity of software development.

The heart of the Be product line is the Be Operating System (BeOS), a new software system designed for the media and communications-based applications of the next decade. While retaining compatibility with data and network standards in use today, the BeOS jettisons many of the assumptions inherent in older OS architectures to achieve a new level of performance and a significantly simplified programming model.

The BeOS is a true multitasking, heavily multithreaded system, something that can make Windows or OS/2 look like kid's play. The BeOS is designed to divide an application into multiple threads even if the programmer doesn't explicitly do so. The benefits, naturally, accrue in performance and speed. Symmetric multiprocessing is supported, again adding to performance. The BeOS system can simultaneously play multiple movies, audio files, browse Web pages, and render 3-D animation, all in real time. Try doing it with Windows 95!

Best of all, it can run on the PowerPC processors that power the Apple PowerMacs. After running the BeOS on them, people have been thoroughly surprised at the performance unleashed by the processors.

The BeBox is based on standard PC technology, leveraging all of the components and peripherals used in industry-standard computers. The result is a low-cost, highly flexible, and highly expandable personal computer. Together, the combination has the potential to dramatically alter the PC world. Apple is also rumoured to be looking at the BeOS as an option to its slow-to-deliver Copland. Let's wait and watch whether Gassée pulls it through or he will vanish into the history books as another great inventor, born ahead of his time.