05/07/98
Windows is like oxygen to the modern computing world -- taken for granted,
omnipresent. Although there are at least half a dozen serious operating
systems available that work on the plain vanilla x86 hardware sold at your
local CompUSA, Fry's, or neighborhood shoestring computer store, you'd
hardly know it by reading the ads in the Sunday paper. People argue over
which HTML editor or video card is the best, but operating system wars --
to the extent that they still exist -- are practically moot in the public
eye. The population, for whatever reason, does not tend to consider
alternative operating systems as viable. After all these years,
Linux is finally beginning to get a little mainstream press, and that's
mostly a direct result of Netscape's recent endorsement of the free
software model.
There are reasons for this, of course. For one thing, it's convenient when
your neighbors and coworkers speak the same language. If Windows had never
been born, the public (in concert with forces of natural selection) would
have chosen another system around which to grow the computer industry. It
probably would have been MacOS, but who knows? OS/2? FreeBSD? Linux?
NextStep? Solaris? Something else entirely? To most people, it just
doesn't matter. Most people use computers as a means to an end, to get
their jobs done so they can go home and enjoy more interesting pursuits.
Their needs are general, not specific, and Windows is the world's general-
purpose operating system of choice
But there is a population out there that welcomes the opportunity to run
multiple operating systems on a single hard drive. To them, operating
systems are choices, and choice is a good thing. Just as one may keep
several word processors laying around, each of which serve different
needs, these people may boot alternatively into NT, BeOS, or Linux as
needs dictate. Each operating system has its strengths.
Rather than competing in the arena of the general purpose operating
system, which would be pointless (if not suicidal), Be has chosen a niche
in which no other OS truly excels -- multimedia and audio/video content
creation and consumption. Here is a processor- and bandwidth-intensive
arena where existing operating systems most clearly show their
limitations. In other words, by excelling at multimedia (which, by the
way, dovetails nicely into all the DVD, cable modem, 1,000-MHz full-screen
-video computing tasks of the coming decade), Be provides a good reason
for users to power down and reboot into an A/V-optimized OS.
None of this, of course, implies that BeOS is incapable of also being a
good general-purpose system, just that that's not their target. No one can
live in an OS devoid of e-mail, spreadsheets, and word processors. There's
an obvious market for those applications on BeOS, and in fact enough
general productivity applications exist on BeOS right now that many people
(including myself) get their daily work done just fine. But no matter how
painless Be ultimately makes the installation process, most people will
never install an alternative operating system out of simple curiosity.
What's needed now are "tractor apps" -- applications so compelling that
people will carve out a new partition on their hard drives because it's worth it. Applications that make people say, "I didn't know a
personal computer could do that!" Applications that are unambiguosly
unique, with features not available on any other platform simply because
no other platform includes the infrastructure necessary to support what
they want to achieve. These are the applications that will pull Be out of
the "geeks only" realm and into the future. Rave reviews of raw
performance and a logical, untangled "fresh start" approach aren't
themselves enough to keep the company in high-earth orbit.
Smarty-pants naysayers are fond of insisting that Be will never make it
unless Adobe ports Photoshop or some such. Wrong. While the endorsement of
big brandnames are undeniably important to continued success, a port is a
port. Photoshop was architected for a different -- and far less capable --
environment, many moons ago. Very little of its code would take advantage
of the unique features that BeOS has to offer. Don't get me wrong -- I'd
love to be using Photoshop on BeOS -- but why would someone repartition
their hard drive just to run the same software they've already got? They
wouldn't. Not in statistically significant numbers, anyway.
To seduce users into trying on a new operating system, you've got to show
them something that's never been done before, on any OS. You've got to
show them that the computing world hasn't become boring simply because the
industry has reached an evolutionary plateau -- it's become boring because
we've maxed out the technical capacity of our existing operating systems.
So who's going to build the apps that have what it takes to make customers
regard BeOS as a relevant alternative?
Go to a trade show or users' group and watch a 15-minute BeOS demo. Have a
look at what pioneering companies like
Adamation are doing with multimedia. Their StudioA package is bringing
real-time editing and video rendering to CompUSA hardware. Check out their
ImageElements and AudioElements graphic- and sound-processing packages,
which enable users to build sophisticated networks of transformative media
effects as if they were hooking up Erector sets. Like a hybrid of
scripting and sculpture, Adamation tools are as powerful and useful as
they are fun to use.
Go have a look at what Gobe is doing
with their Gobe Productive integrated suite, combining spreadsheet,
imaging, word-processing, and presentation software into a single, simple
interface, playing the chainsaw to Microsoft Works' Swiss Army Knife.
Check out BeatWare and the
interface innovations coming to their high-end producivity applications --
users will be able to tweak the appearance and function of their
products' sliders, dials, widgets and knobs on the fly, the UI flexing to
accomodate the user's creative process.
Check out the SoundPlay audio file player, which lets you stack half a dozen (or more) sound
files of differing formats on top of one another and play them
simultaneously. Slow some down while you speed others up. Play your MPEGs
backwards. Fade them in and out with independent volume controls. Save the
whole collage to disk for posterity, then reboot into Windows and try the
same thing.
If you're a developer, don't miss the demonstrations of the new
BDirectWindow API, capable of bypassing almost all operating system
overhead to write vast amounts of data directly into the guts of the video
card while simultaneously utilizing practically zero CPU cycles.
Be still has a long row to hoe, but they've constructed a mighty appealing
platform on which the next wave of innovative developers can strut their
stuff. Every indication is that you're going to start seeing the fruits of
all this labor in a much more public light before long. Who's going to
build the tractor app that convinces you that BeOS is worth a partition? I
don't know, but it's worth keeping an eye on
www.be.com to find out.