To anyone who hasn't already: I really recommend checking out Haiku OS [1], the FOSS successor to BeOS. It's so pleasant to use and supports a surprisingly large catalog of software.
Claude built me a meta web/notes/code search engine with IOS and MacOS apps, and for fun I asked it to make a Haiku version [1], which it did in under 20 minutes.
With AI I feel like a lot of these bygone-era OS's could see a whole new ecosystem of modern apps within a very short period of time.
Some former Be employees have commented here in the past saying that Apple made the right decision to buy Next and not Be from a technical perspective, as BeOS had poor code quality and was far behind NEXTSTEP in important areas like networking and printing. They also implemented the OS API directly in C++, which tied them to a specific C++ compiler (some mid-90s version of GCC) due to the ABI getting broken in newer versions. The 32-bit version of Haiku (modern BeOS reimplementation) supports BeOS software, and as a result still needs to be compiled with that mid-90s GCC release.
Beyond that, I'm not sure if buying Be would have fixed the managerial problems at Apple. Would they have been able to add the required features to BeOS to turn it into a production OS without the project turning into another Copland? Would the existing Apple management have slimmed down the massive Apple product line that had dozens of nearly identical models? Would it have gotten rid of dead-end projects like Newton and Pippin? Etc.
Pre-standard C++ is an even worse programming language than C++ 98, but also the big difference wouldn't have been the technology, it was the people. If Apple buy Be Inc they're getting JLG back whereas if they buy NeXT they get Jobs back.
Jobs is what makes or breaks Apple in that critical period. I didn't like him but that's relevant to the success of the company. JLG did not have whatever it was Jobs gave the company.
I loved my BeBox, but what would be the modern equivalent of the GeekPort? I've been using esp32/nRF52/etc boards for uart/spi/i2c/i2s/pwm-type work... it feels like hardware hacking on a desktop is a lost art.
The old school way to do I/O on desktop was via the parallel port, which I imagine would still work if you get a PCIe parallel port card. For a more modern way, the FT232H chip supports UART, SPI, I2C, JTAG and raw GPIO over USB, and there are break-out boards available.
[1]: https://www.haiku-os.org/
With AI I feel like a lot of these bygone-era OS's could see a whole new ecosystem of modern apps within a very short period of time.
1. https://github.com/machiya-kobo/shiori/tree/main#haiku
Beyond that, I'm not sure if buying Be would have fixed the managerial problems at Apple. Would they have been able to add the required features to BeOS to turn it into a production OS without the project turning into another Copland? Would the existing Apple management have slimmed down the massive Apple product line that had dozens of nearly identical models? Would it have gotten rid of dead-end projects like Newton and Pippin? Etc.
Jobs is what makes or breaks Apple in that critical period. I didn't like him but that's relevant to the success of the company. JLG did not have whatever it was Jobs gave the company.
If not, desktop computing would be taken over by C++ as main systems programming language, and UNIX like computing relegated to servers.