Add Nvidia to the list of evil companies that helped destroy BeOS. They continuely refused to give Be the register specs for their cards so Be could create native drivers. This isn't exactly surprising though if you look at Nvidia's Linux drivers. Nvidia are just paranoid about revealing such things.
What other hardware/Technology is on the horizon?
- Thread starter DemoCoder
- Start date
The idea of a "secondary OS" is not a winning business idea. Again, what is the selling point for consumers? I could partially imagine a dual-boot x86 MacOS+Windows, because atleast the MacOS comes with some compelling apps for endusers: iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto. Were there any compelling productivty apps shipped with BeOS that were better than the competition and provided tangible, immediate benefits to the user?
Try to drop the idea for a second that consumers are techies who know what threading is, know what an OS is and does, that they can install their own software or upgrade their own hardware. The vast majority of people who have home computers by a pre-configured system, and hope to be able to launch the web browser (probably AOL or MSN), check their email, and do some small productivity or entertainment stuff.
Now you are expecting people who have problems even setting up an ISP account, for whom AOL is a complex user interface, to master TWO operating systems with very different user interfaces, apps, keyboard and mouse shortcuts, etc.
I personally don't know what the 2D video streaming latency is for BeOS vs Windows, all I know is that I can play full-screen DVD video smoothly on my PC and every PC I've ever seen at Best Buy, Circuit City, Frys, or what have you. Ditto for the Mac.
If it was BeOS's strategy to be a "part time secondary OS" on pre-shipped PCs, then no wonder the big boys refused them. It's an utterly dumb idea. It simply increases the customer support and production costs for Dell, Gateway, etc to do this and there is absolutely zero customer demand or benefit from it.
Let's see what your GrandMother does after she gets a eMachine/Dell computer loaded for two OSes on the bootmenu. She's probably call up customer support immediately and say "my computer doesn't come on, but is stuck with this black screen. Is this an error?"
I mean have any of you guys ever taught a training class to the public or worked in helpdesk/technical support? Do you realize the absurdity of selling this to anything but a small market of developers and techno-geeks who think it is cool?
You know, I was searching the internet to see what other people had to say about the failure of Be, and I ran across this paging saying exactly the same thing I've been arguing with demalion about:
http://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html
Better yet is this commentary from a BeOS supporter in the DOJ Antitrust Documents
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/10/mtc-00009842.htm
And unexpectedly, Slashdot which is usually a hotbed of anti-MS fervor and quick to blame them for anything, had loads of comments about bad Be management strategy, no advertising, bad customer/developer support, including one dev guy from Compaq who said that was one of the reasons they dropped them on the appliance product. There are also lots of comments about bad BeOS bugs (kernel panics), and SecurityFocus.com has a bunch of security alerts related to buffer overflow exploits in the BeOS libraries.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid...amp;mode=flat&commentsort=0&op=Change
I think we can agree that BeOS contained some good ideas (although SMP, multi-threading, journaled file system, and hardware abstraction are not Be inventions) , but technically good ideas are simply not the right way to sell products to peple. You need a story, a message, which puts the technology in a context that matters for the people who will use it.
If you start a company in the future, and you don't learn from Be's managerial mistakes, but instead think all your problems are attributable to Microsoft, you will be doomed to repeat history.
"It's the customers, stupid!"
Try to drop the idea for a second that consumers are techies who know what threading is, know what an OS is and does, that they can install their own software or upgrade their own hardware. The vast majority of people who have home computers by a pre-configured system, and hope to be able to launch the web browser (probably AOL or MSN), check their email, and do some small productivity or entertainment stuff.
Now you are expecting people who have problems even setting up an ISP account, for whom AOL is a complex user interface, to master TWO operating systems with very different user interfaces, apps, keyboard and mouse shortcuts, etc.
I personally don't know what the 2D video streaming latency is for BeOS vs Windows, all I know is that I can play full-screen DVD video smoothly on my PC and every PC I've ever seen at Best Buy, Circuit City, Frys, or what have you. Ditto for the Mac.
If it was BeOS's strategy to be a "part time secondary OS" on pre-shipped PCs, then no wonder the big boys refused them. It's an utterly dumb idea. It simply increases the customer support and production costs for Dell, Gateway, etc to do this and there is absolutely zero customer demand or benefit from it.
Let's see what your GrandMother does after she gets a eMachine/Dell computer loaded for two OSes on the bootmenu. She's probably call up customer support immediately and say "my computer doesn't come on, but is stuck with this black screen. Is this an error?"
I mean have any of you guys ever taught a training class to the public or worked in helpdesk/technical support? Do you realize the absurdity of selling this to anything but a small market of developers and techno-geeks who think it is cool?
You know, I was searching the internet to see what other people had to say about the failure of Be, and I ran across this paging saying exactly the same thing I've been arguing with demalion about:
http://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html
Better yet is this commentary from a BeOS supporter in the DOJ Antitrust Documents
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/public/10/mtc-00009842.htm
And unexpectedly, Slashdot which is usually a hotbed of anti-MS fervor and quick to blame them for anything, had loads of comments about bad Be management strategy, no advertising, bad customer/developer support, including one dev guy from Compaq who said that was one of the reasons they dropped them on the appliance product. There are also lots of comments about bad BeOS bugs (kernel panics), and SecurityFocus.com has a bunch of security alerts related to buffer overflow exploits in the BeOS libraries.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid...amp;mode=flat&commentsort=0&op=Change
I think we can agree that BeOS contained some good ideas (although SMP, multi-threading, journaled file system, and hardware abstraction are not Be inventions) , but technically good ideas are simply not the right way to sell products to peple. You need a story, a message, which puts the technology in a context that matters for the people who will use it.
If you start a company in the future, and you don't learn from Be's managerial mistakes, but instead think all your problems are attributable to Microsoft, you will be doomed to repeat history.
"It's the customers, stupid!"
Colourless said:
This is quite common in the Linux world as a mentioned a few messages ago, but it is also quite common that Linux developers are able to reverse engineer things quickly. (BTW, ATI stopped releasing source/specs for their newest chipsets and plan to produce binary drivers like NVidia. The last open specs released were for the Radeon 7500)
Be complained that one of the reasons they couldn't port to the G4 was because they couldn't get the specs, but Linux developers had ported to the G4 already without the specs. Why didn't they just grab the source to G4 Linux?
Sure, Be had limited resources to do this kind of stuff, but that was exactly their problem. You can't take on Apple, Linux, or Microsoft with a handful of developers working on your OS. At that size, you need a niche. If they had gone after the setup-top box (they could have been inside Tivo/Replay/DirecTV instead of Embedded Linux) in the very beginning, instead of wasting resources on BeBox, and then Apple, and then x86 strategy, perhaps millions of PVR and Cable boxes today would have BeOS in them.
I thought this report is relevant to the discussion at hand:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/12/05/sproject.hs02.cheap.pc.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/12/05/sproject.hs02.cheap.pc.reut/index.html
Geeforcer said:
This type of positioning seems exactly the type of thing Microsoft's policy of penalizing a computer maker on pricing for offering alternative OS solutions has hindered. It might be reasonable to say it also illustrates how it might have had an impact on BeOS's success on x86 as well (as BeOS could have fared well in an environement where it could have found a PC maker not hindered by that Microsoft penalty to be packaged in a similar way).
What do you think?
I think... if one thing is really that good, it won't have problems finding someone to sell it.
Considering the strategy for a low-cost computer... what is your target market? The Wal-mart $199 computer is clearly targeted for novices who just want to browse the internet, check e-mail, watch some streaming media, etc. These jobs do not really need Windows compatibility. Therefore, you can sell a Linux based machine to lower the cost. If BeOS went for similar way of marketing, they may be able to create a new market, perhaps not very big, but should be big enough for survival.
Fighting a monopoly is very hard. However, monopolies are there. You can't really blame everything on them, especially if you didn't fight them hard enough.
Considering the strategy for a low-cost computer... what is your target market? The Wal-mart $199 computer is clearly targeted for novices who just want to browse the internet, check e-mail, watch some streaming media, etc. These jobs do not really need Windows compatibility. Therefore, you can sell a Linux based machine to lower the cost. If BeOS went for similar way of marketing, they may be able to create a new market, perhaps not very big, but should be big enough for survival.
Fighting a monopoly is very hard. However, monopolies are there. You can't really blame everything on them, especially if you didn't fight them hard enough.
pcchen said:
Unless there is another factor interfering. As I alluded to above, the policy of Microsoft whereby they charged a computer OEM more money for Windows if they offered computer configurations with other operating systems seems to be related to why the (apparent, according to the article) success of this Lindows machine is possible now, and was not before.
Well, if Microsoft is the vast majority of the market, and they will charge you more if you don't only sell Windows configured machines, I daresay it will discourage you to consider other OSes. Do you agree? Do you think it affected BeOS at the time it was competing?
Well, actually, that is what we have anti-trust legislation to address, isn't it?
Well, you "can't" hold them blameless either.
I think there are many ways to work around this. For example, if you are large enough (such as IBM or Compaq), MS may not want to play such trick with you. On the other hand, you can always start a seperate company to sell only "alternative" OS. I doubt MS will charge more just because you invested a company which does not sell MS OS.
MS is not the only one to blame (although they are not completely guiltless). Especially on BeOS. BeOS is nice, but perhaps most people just don't care. The marketing department must have some responsibility for this.
I think you're wrong in this case, MS could tell either of those companies to F off. They need MS OSes on their machines or they can't sell them. It's hard to sell an unproven OS, let alone make a proxy company all for the sake of alternatives, without the ability to leverage your brand name. This of course wouldn't be a problem if all the big OEMs got together and told MS to F off and got their own OS together -- that would have to be done prior of course.
The MS contracts with OEMs caused a lot of problems, it's just that black and white. One of said problems was drastically reducing the chances of other OSes to suceed.
I don't think brandname is that important for a very low cost solution. In such market, people choose for the lowest price. They don't really care much about brandname. If brandname is that important for low cost solutions, Lite-On CD-R drivers wouldn't be so popular.
Some companies tried to sell similar idea (set-up box). However, they failed since they couldn't deliver. Their failure has little to do with MS.
Some companies tried to sell similar idea (set-up box). However, they failed since they couldn't deliver. Their failure has little to do with MS.
Didnt NEC (Packard Bell) try to launch a dual OS system with WinXP and Linux pre-installed but couldnt because of some copyright MS has on its own bootsector or something???
Err I probably got the reason mixed up entirely but NEC scrapped their plans due to some MS limitation.
edit: pcchen lite-on drives are used in the top end CDRW's badged by Sony. Lite-On just decided to make some kind of impact in the retail market directly and have succeeded .. I dont see Lite-On as 'cheap' at all
Err I probably got the reason mixed up entirely but NEC scrapped their plans due to some MS limitation.
edit: pcchen lite-on drives are used in the top end CDRW's badged by Sony. Lite-On just decided to make some kind of impact in the retail market directly and have succeeded .. I dont see Lite-On as 'cheap' at all
As Democoder said, why would one want a dual-boot OS for a low cost solution?
Sometimes you need to create your own market. It is very hard to shatter the well established Wintel architecture. Furthermore, I don't believe that all PC has to belong to this architecture. There must be someway to create some new market, without have to rely on MS.
The Lite-on example is similar: they concentrated on OEM at first, then they believe that they can make some money on the retail market even if they don't have any brandname recognition, because they think there is a low price market for it. It worked, and now Lite-on becomes a brandname.
Sometimes you need to create your own market. It is very hard to shatter the well established Wintel architecture. Furthermore, I don't believe that all PC has to belong to this architecture. There must be someway to create some new market, without have to rely on MS.
The Lite-on example is similar: they concentrated on OEM at first, then they believe that they can make some money on the retail market even if they don't have any brandname recognition, because they think there is a low price market for it. It worked, and now Lite-on becomes a brandname.
Packard Bell machines are not low cost solutions, nor did I imply that a dual boot solution would be a low cost solution. Nor did I say they were for the mass market. However NEC simply had NO CHOICE in releasing such a setup because of MS' License Agreement. That was my only point to be honest. Not making any judgements either. It is just something that HAPPENED.
And Lite-On are involved in many different area's of the components industry.. not just their CDRW drives.. they have been around for a long time.
And Lite-On are involved in many different area's of the components industry.. not just their CDRW drives.. they have been around for a long time.
demalion said:
Actually, I think it shows that it is possible to be relatively successful in the PC world without Wintel, if you are able to correctly identify a niche and successfully exploit it. A dirt-cheap PC for browsing and light office work targeted as casual consumer is just that, and while it does not sound all too glorious, you got to start somewhere. If they are successful there (and from the sound of it, they are), they can then expend to other segments of PC market. One the number of $199 boxes reaches a critical mass, it will become worth software/hardware vendor's while to ensure that their products work with these machines, as well as create software targeted at them.
Geeforcer said:
Yes, it does show that is possible now. But what about the (now defunct) Microsoft penalty? This apparently successful targetting occurred after this policy was no longer in effect, not before, which is the point of my post. None of your comments address that detail...is that intentional? Here, let me quote the rest so you see I'm not pulling a fast one:
All this seems to be is a list of observations that seem to actually go along with my post's premise, so does that mean all you were meaning to do was agree with me?
demalion said:
demalion said:
Do you know if Be even tried to create/aim for that niche market? And even if they did try, are you completely ruling out the idea that their targeted customers actually chose Microsoft or some other OS (such as Linux) beacuse they really felt it would better suit their needs? You always bring up Microsoft's monopoly whenever you point out the reasons for BeOS's failure, as if their success would have been guaranteed had it not been for Microsoft.
Is it completely out of the question that the market simply chose other operating systems over BeOS?
-dksuiko
dksuiko said:
What niche market? The niche market of the low cost Windows alternative PC? If you do mean that, I'm saying that niche market could not have the apparent success it is having according to this report on Lindows with Microsoft's pricing penalty in place. Which I've said before. A point supporting this: this is occuring after Microsoft's pricing penallty to OEMs is no longer in effect...do you think that has nothing to do with this Lindows PC existing?
Of course their target audience chose another OS. My only assertion is that this was not due to quality of BeOS or what Be had in mind for their OS functionality, but due to Microsoft's monopoly strategies, of which the pricing penalty was a part. If you are saying this pricing penalty had no impact on the existence and success of this "low cost non-Windows PC with basic functionality", please say so.
No, I do not bring it up as if their success would have been guaranteed had it not been for Microsoft., I bring it up as if Microsoft's monopoly strategies directly destroyed the ability of BeOS to succeed by removing opportunities for that success to take place.
Again, there was no successful "Lindows PC at Walmart, except using BeOS" with Microsoft allowed to leverage market control such that volumes and margins of an alternative OS system for an OEM would have to overcome the loss in profit due to Microsoft charging them more for shipping Windows on PCs. I ask you how many OEMs could establish a profitable business model with such a stipulation? Again, if you think this had no impact on BeOS' success, and on why we didn't see that "Lindows PC except using BeOS" in an article such as this, please say so and why. If not, what exactly are you disagreeing with about what I said?
demalion said:
Is that not the same thing?
Well, I don't know if it had an impact on Be's success, because I don't even know if they tried it in the first place. Hence, my question to you - do you know if they even tried to aim for that market? If creating or aiming for that market was not even part of Be's business strategy, then how could that have affected them?
What I am disagreeing with is your claim that BeOS did not fail due to the quality of their products. The claim that is inherent in all of your arguments is that, as you said, "Microsoft doesn't need to compete on quality." While this is true to an extent due to their large established userbase, it isn't grounds to automatically assume that Microsoft never wins on quality.
Your points assume that BeOS is, in fact, a better quality OS than Windows. And that if it had not been for the Microsoft monopoly, the OS which is obviously better in terms of quality (in your case, BeOS) should have 'won.' Many of the points you use to define BeOS as a better OS than Windows are all 'technical' qualities. There other qualities to judge an OS by, such as applications available on the OS, the games people want to play, compatibility, etc. If you take these qualities into account, then is Windows not the better operating system for the majority? I think those qualities make it a better operating system. If you disagree, then lets leave it at that and agree to disagree.
-dksuiko (And damn it, I did it again. The last two 'guests' were me posting these messages, just forgetting to login.
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