“Breadbox Computer Company LLC has completed and released to company distributors, its new flagship desktop software suite, Breadbox Ensemble. Ensemble offers a full productivity and internet suite, including Web Browser and Email. Other essential programs such as word processing, spreadsheet, flat file database and graphics applications are integrated into this easy-to-use package”. Read the rest of the news over at BreadBox.
GeOS Lives through Breadbox Ensemble
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s GEOS, not GeOS…
Origanlly was Graphical Environment Operating System
But just became GEOS (not standing for anything) for trademark reasons
Glad to see GEOS alive and kicking…
…now if we could get a 32 bit version in this millenium…
I can’t find a product page for BreadBox Ensemble, but they do have one for NewDeal Office. Did BB acquire NewDeal and rebrand it, or is this something that was developed independent of it?
Man, GEOS rocked. Back in the days of Windows 3.x, I used to use GEOS (and DesqView or DV/X when I needed to actually multitask) in place of it. Man, Windows sucked even more back then, kids don’t appreciate that these days.
In any case, they had a lot of apps for GEOS Ensemble back then, everything a normal dude would need, even AOL had it’s client working in GEOS.
I’m happy to see that GEOS is still around in some form. At that time I was only programming in Pascal and Prolog, but I heard that GEOS programming was a pretty interesting experience. C-based object model and all.
Wow,
anyone remember GEOS on the good ol’ C64? The feeling when the program came up after 4-5 minutes of loading with an unaccelerated drive? The sound of the 9pin matrix printer? Using joysticks as input? Waiting for data from the 1581 drive?
Nice to see GEOS is still alive.
any screenshots?
Is This the same GEOS that i used on my C64 ten to fifteen years ago?
Is that the same GEOS as i used on my Commodore64 13 years ago?
Same outfit, different platform. Used Ensemble 1.0 on my Tandy 1000TX (originally with a daisy wheel printer, then an Epson). Gave the machine to a friend and he was still using it 10 years later. He refused to downgrade to Windows.
Interesting to see that the GEOS is still around under the Breadbox name. I first used GEOS on a 286 with 1 meg of ram (!) and it FLEW. The GEOS also had a beautiful GUI and a very fine word processor…certainly, the combination of its GUI, GeoWriter, and killer code (it was stable!) made it far better–more reliable, easier to use–than Windows 3.0 and whatever word processor struggled to stay afloat of Windows before crashing. Several people who saw the GEOS on my machine became instant converts, on the spot, and bought copies of Ensemble.
And yet: old story. GEOS just couldn’t compete as it couldn’t remotely match the money behind MS. The GEOS is an interesting product to ponder merely because it was, years ago, “ready for the desktop” but had little market traction.
Steve
I I too used GEOS on My Commadore 64, . Get this, my wife still uses it for her school newsletter on an old 386sx. It had tear off menus way back then. And who said BeOS was dead?
>>…even AOL had it’s client working in GEOS.
Yup. It sure did. In fact the client for GEOS (aol.exe) was the first AOL client. The Windows client (waol.exe) was a port that came later.
Personally, I find strange the parallels between GEOS and BeOS. Kinda creepy.
That site looks like it was put together by blind children in india with broken fingers who had never seen a computer.
And what’s with the little icons all over the place? 1993 called, they want their graphics back!
I’m joking.
That site is worse than that!
At least BeOS didn’t get stuck in a 16-bit version.
I knew that Frank Fisher got the rights to GEOS from Geoworks, but almost like BeOS you ask yourself whether it’s still worth marketing / supporting it. GEOS is worse off than BeOS in that its SDK isn’t for the faint-hearted and hasn’t been updated (officially) in ages. It’s still 16bit, which puts massive brakes on real computing, and applications are still on the thin side. If there are more than 20 active GEOS developers (using the SDK) in the world, then it’s a lot, so thinking of competing with anything else out there is just… loonacy.
However, it’s MORE than enough for 80% of the computing population, especially those who can’t afford the latest hardware gizmos, and who are grateful for just having a decent computer. With Breadbox Ensemble, this could really be a 286 with 2MB RAM. The problem there, though, is that these machines, incl. 386 and 486 are at the end of their natural lifespan, if not beyond it, so even if the software works, the hardware is bound to cause endless troubles. And if you have a Pentium, then you can run Win95 or Linux.. or even…. did I say the word? …. BeOS!
So let’s with Frank and his crew luck and good fortune, for that GEOS was and in many ways still is better (faster, more consistent UI, keyboard navigation,…) than anything else out there.
Helmar
>>At least BeOS didn’t get stuck in a 16-bit version.
No it didn’t. It gets stuck in a 32 bit version, at the dawn of the 64 bit Intel era.
“it’s MORE than enough for 80% of the computing population,”
This must be a typo. I’m sure Helmar meant it was more than enough for the computing population of the ’80s.
Can you imagine explaining to a happy grandparent that using their iMac for editing digital video of their family at Christmas is “too much” and that instead from now on they can have a 286 with GEOS?
Don’t worry kids, although the cell-shaded Internet capers of Mickey and friends are no longer accessible now that we have GEOS and no 3D acceleration, you can play with this DOS-era puzzle game instead.
Dad? I’m sorry, but you won’t be watching any more porn videos on your PC now, I’ve put a 286 running GEOS in its place. They don’t make 16 color 320×200 porn video any more so you’ll have to make do with “more than enough” GEOS spreadsheets of supermodel “vital statistics” (but not too many cells please, GEOS won’t like that)
Mum? I know on-line tax filings are mandatory in two years time, but you’ll have to go back to using a spreadsheet because proper modern accounting software won’t run on GEOS, and certainly not on a 286.
===========
I would have thought that angry messages from BeOS users made it obvious that at least 80% of the “computing population” demand to write letters, scan (or import digital camera pictures) and print from cheap color hardware, draw pictures, surf the web and send/receive email, chat and share files, do their home accounts, play their favourite type of games, create audio CD compilations, and much more. They will not pay any extra for this functionality on top of their perceived “base price” for the computer.
Practically speaking, GEOS needs millions of dollars of work before you could give it away. The same, to a lesser extent (less millions) applies to BeOS. These are not products you can sell to today’s customers.
We are still a couple of years from widespread 64-bit desktop systems even if you believe optimism from Intel/AMD. Linux went 64-bit so early (late 1990s) because it runs on bigger iron these days, much bigger than the branch office servers where people run Windows.
Being 32-bit is the least of OpenBeOS’s worries if it is completed by 2003. More desktop users want 3D acceleration or multi-user than > 2GB RAM.
Have you seen the prices that they’re charging for some of that GEOS software? I had it on the C64 too. Would my old C64 disks work on a modern system (assuming they were transferred to 3 1/2 inch disk)? Can you still actually buy GEOS itself. I couldn’t see it on the site, unless Ensemble is GEOS. If they want people to develop for it surely they should make GEOS itself opensource – and allow people to sell the apps they develop. How is it even going to sell now? $99 for something on a 10 year old OS? I can’t see many people paying for that – certainly not that price. Still, I hope it succeeds…