The PDF-based Beyond Magazine issue 2 is out, an interesting weekend reading. It includes articles about the *BSD, Rebol, Amiga, Games and old platforms, multimedia, an interview with Scot Hacker (author of “BeOS Bible”, today an OSX user), Linux, OpenBeOS, a review of BeOS Max Edition 3.0 and more. Additionally, the German Technoids issue #3 is out too.
Beyond Magazine Issue 2 Out
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
remember me of the old multiplatform 8bit magazine (in a good way
)
Scot, you seem bitter to no end! Not even want trying OBOS, not even by curiousity!! That is blindness and short minded. Especially that a PPC port is planned.
Congratulations to itBUG!
I wasn’t expecting much, but I got surprised. I didn’t read issue 1 and this really was cool
As for scott hacker, for someone of went from Be’s way to the Think Different way, he’s very narrow minded. I guess he has to be proven wrong.. again
Gein
That a bunch of new Amiga and BeOS products were unveiled this week, as well…
; )
New Amiga, Linux, BeOS Hardware and Software
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper
Jaysus, Scot Hackers gotten bitter in his Mac days. As happens to a lot of people it seems. I gave up on Macs in the early 1990’s, but I’d be willing to try one again. I admit to having never booted an OS9 or OSX machine in my own home, but…
Come on Scot, lighten up a bit! Try using BeOS again for a while – just wait a few months until OBOS have something a little more usable or yellowTAB actually have a release *not* filled with crud.
>he’s very narrow minded
I wonder who‘s the narrow minded here, Gein.
i have not read that article yet but i’ll just point out that there are a lot of bitter people out there regarding beos. Some of them lost quite a bit of cash by supporting beos and felt betrayed.
I understand that but OBOS is not be, inc. so i don’t see the need to carry the bitterness on to them, which a lot of people are obviously doing.
it’s not about who’s bitter and who’s the happy camper.
It’s however very to the point and a bit realistic too.
BeOS has about ~3000 users tops, whereas most of those are hobby users who boot into it from time to time, myself included, and as Scott says, “Be Inc had about a snowballs chance in hell” (not exactly what he said to the letter but alas) Linux based systems are making inroads because of its ubiquity and to some extent the bsdx’s .
MacosX is one of the new os’s , it’s what you’d call a leading edge os, much the same as BeOS _was_ back in ’97 – ’98 .
Yellowtab is a company that are out to sell BeOS , I have yet to see any solid marketing strategy from them (mind you, I might have missed it)
Whereas Apple aim for the lifestyle people, persons between 25-40 earning around $300k/yr .
If you look at the marketing and design that goes into the apple brand and compare it to the marketing/or lack thereof/ coming out of yellowtab you’d realise that the chance is about less than a snowballs chance in hell, this is just marketing and brand value.
Technical value, beos has… live queries? most other systems are getting that as we speak , so there went that feature, what else is there , a solid rendered teapot? it sure as hell isnt the font subsystem.
what Yellowtab would be wise to do is hire a ad agency to profile them and make them into a lifestyle company, that way they can survive in a niche market.
I think someone said the “apple of the x86 world” but i think msft might be covering that with HP in the coming years.
so, no, scott isnt being rude or “unfair” at all, it’s called being , realistic.
HOWEVER, it’s fun to have a hobby
Cheers!
Eugenia wrote:
“I wonder who’s the narrow minded here, Gein.”
Did you read the interview? or just linked to it?
Scot simply refuses to use new versions of anything BeOS related because he is happy with MacOS X. He simply states that MacOS X is all he needs, he even has a x86 machine but won’t use it.
This if fine, and it’s the kind of attitude that I came to know from macos users (i’m not flaming…). It’s a strange paradox. You go with the Think Different attitude, you encourage people to change but somehow… you also lose the ability to consider a change yourself.
Don’t you think this is being narrow minded?
Gein
P.S.: maybe I’m using stronger words then the ones I meant. Sorry, it’s just that I’m not a native english speaker, and all the english I know comes from public school, movies and the internet
I should’nt really have to point this out, BUT, it seems i have to.
analogy: computer usage is’nt about whats right, whats wrong, who’s the biggest macdaddy or who has the coolest zipdrive.
It’s all about the tool, a professional carpenter has other tools than joe schmoe down the block, same goes for IT professionals, we use the best tool for projects we work on.
We’re coming towards a paradigm shift, where the underlying OS does’nt matter anymore, the applications do, .net , java, python all these languages are “cross-platform” it’s up to the various vendors to realise this or they will be out of business.
MacosX is a great tool for the moment.
Longhorn (got my msdn copy here) is the first version of windows i’ve ever installed.
Fedora Core is definetly a step in the right direction for Gnome /and linux/ on the desktop.
it’s got nothing to do with what you’re aiming at at all, it’s just an understanding of the marketplace in the coming years.
Ah! Robert, I almost choked when I read this line:
“Whereas Apple aim for the lifestyle people, persons between 25-40 earning around $300k/yr.”
Funny, and I know it seems this way at times. Apple does attract a lot of yuppies, me too’s, etc. etc. I just want to state, for the record, that many people choose Macs, including myself, and earn a small fraction of your suggested entry salary! Many of us simply prefer the experience on Macs and save our pennies up to buy them, which really isn’t that hard.
yep, but that wasnt what i said, i merely stated the market apple perceives, not how the market perceives apple
There are ofcourse the regular joes who save up a buck and buys a mac for the whole experience.
>>he’s very narrow minded
>
>I wonder who’s the narrow minded here, Gein.
You know if you want this site to seem the least bit professional you should try to keep your opinion(s) to yourself.
is that whAt you think BeOS is good for ?sitting there watching the little teapot spin and twirl?what a lame bubch of thinkers!I use BeOS all the time edit audio there,burn cds,play a few stupid games,do some light graphics work,surf the net,email,edit video,setup drive partitions,on and on,this sitting there watching the teapot spin mentality is what’s really wrong with the BeOS community,if more people would write software for media work for the BeOS platform instead of watching the teapot spin,I’ll bet you could sell a copy of BeOs or Zeta or whatever you wanna call it today,in music stores and catalogs,to damn near every backyard musician in the world would buy one,if they could go home and slap it on their computer and start making sounds,unfortunately the folks at yellowtab are promoting something for office work and most of the remaning software developers are spinning the teapot,and making little linux style geek toys,just take a look at bebits if you don’t believe me,What yellowtab should be doing is trying to win Steinberger back and Tascam and Softjee,T-Racks,Adamation,and the other commercial softwares Be Inc. scared away in their focus shift and subsequent demise,This weekend I have been configuring a multi-boot system on an old Dell 410 twin 400 box,that I picked up from ebay without an OS and amongst
the 6 different OS’s I tried on it BeOS wins hands down for ease of installation and hardware recogntion,as well as being something usable once installed
here’s the scores:
Windows98se: Put me thru driver hell and a mad scramble to the net to find drivers for damn near every peice of hardware I installed
QNX RTOS6 :wouldn’t Boot once installed
NewDeal Office97:installed and worked ok but it’s like win3.1 in usability
Linux Mandrake 9.1: installed and recoginsed all my hardware but took forever and really doesn’t have any serios media tools there,just a lot of bloat
BeOS:install fast but had to swap the graphics card to get a color display,very usable and easy to work with one installd
SkyOS: hung on the installation wouldn’t install
BeOS is the winner,with mandrake second!
You have hit the nail on the head. This is what I want BeOS/Zeta for, audio and entertainment. I have a semi pro audio workstation based on Win2K and I hate using it. The user experience on Windows sucks and it does on OS/X which I have used quite a few time for my work in Pre Press work.
BeOS has been the only pleasent OS user experience I have had. I also hate the amount of time one has to waist on Windows just to keep it up and running efficiently.
Fck the spinning tea pot and get some real media apps working on Zeta. Then watch the hords stampeeding for Zeta. The combination of a nice and simple (did you read that Zeta people?) OS with kick-ass apps for media is what the market wants. Look at all the digital entertainment systems coming into the market place. Milk it and give them someway of co-ordinating all that technology from the one box.
Now when will my MSI K7D Master motherboard,1gig ram, GF4 and Hoontech C-Port get some decent BeOS support, in Zeta? I’m still waiting and I would also like SATA support especially for the Western Digital Raptor drives.
The trouble is that in my opinion there’s no-one at Zeta with the talent of those Be Inc engineers,and I don’t think they even have the complete sources to much of the software,
Just imagine a new 3DmiX with vst support,a transport control and onboard recording,and eq settings,this little app is already better than a lot of expensive windows app in many ways,but XRS is beginning to take shape as a very nice rthym track creation tool with it’s vst and vst-i support and the drop down keyboard for writing the notes,very cool!also on the subject of badmouthing Scott Hacker,actually it was he that helped me get my sound up and running properly on my very first BeOS audio station,and it’s too bad he lost much of the enthusiasm that he showed me,when I was about ready to give up because none of my hardware was woking for me in BeOS,thanks Scot whereever you are these days!I cant help but get a little dissillusioned yself these days but the OS is still doing the job for me.
Hey guys, lighten up a bit!
It seems to me that you only read the interview, and with high expectations for the words of Scot (perhaps too high?!!!)
Right at the beginning of the interview I wrote that his opinion might be not what the beOS users were waiting for, but also that his opinion were straight as usual.
Those are his<> opinion, and rightfully so!
This is not an apology, ’cause he doesn’t need one, but I would like to made a point clear: everyone’s opinion must be respected, whatever that may be; doing otherwise (in a not constructive way, of course) leads to zealotry, which leads to damage the community instead of helping it.
Now Scot works with Os X, makes a living out of it and relish in the pleasure of its user experience (again, it felts right for him, as it is for me and for thousands others): he said he has no time to try again some other OS, called BeOS, OBOS, Zeta or otherwise, because his free time is devoted to something more important for him.
This is ABSOLUTELY right!!!
So stop complaining (but be rightfully critic,’cause your opinion are right too!), perhaps he will try again, for in the and this is a matter of love, and he still love BeOS.
Regards
Andrea “hawksmoor” Scatena
errr… sorry haven’t close the bold tag right after the first – his –
I humbly beg your pardon 🙁
Andrea “hawksmoor” Scatena
Scot said exactly what needed to be said. The few remaining BeOS zealots seem to think that the world is theirs for the taking because of responsiveness, but responsiveness isn’t an end in itself. It’s how well it enables you to do useful things, and quite frankly, you can do a heck of a lot more on other platforms than you can on the BeOS. The only people still using it are because they find it fun to use in itself, and don’t mind limiting themselves to have that fun. That’s fine for them, but I can’t believe they don’t realize that the rest of the world simply isn’t the same. They want a tool, not a toy (and a responsive OS is a probably pretty lame toy for most people).
Things like what sasquatch666 said really make me sigh:
to damn near every backyard musician in the world would buy one,if they could go home and slap it on their computer and start making sounds
Why would this be? There is a ton of great audio software for Windows! A ton! Ditto for the Mac. There’s not a whole lot for the BeOS. Somehow installing a new OS and having a much, much more limited selection of tools would be better for these musicians? Hell, professionals seem to get their work done using Macs and Windows; I imagine most backyard musicians wouldn’t feel too limited.
These people want to believe that people are just dying for a new OS. Ok, there are some people who might be. Those who love playing with an OS as a toy and don’t mind limitations. Scot clearly isn’t one of those people. He always liked the BeOS for the possibilities he felt it could bring, not merely to salivate over live queries and responsiveness. Those possibilities never materialized, and it’s extremely clear to all but the most hopelessly optimistic that they never will. So he’s moved on.
He’s said it exactly as it should be said. The competition has more polish, ever-increasingly more features, and commercial support. Why should he limit himself if he doesn’t find it fun to?
I find most people’s definitions of “bloat” to be pretty selfish. It boils down to what that person does not use, which is a pretty stupid definition because everyone uses different programs. Bloated implies a lack of grace and difficulty in moving. How exactly is a distro bloated if you can shed any extra pounds in a split second? Or never install all the extra stuff in the first place…
“Why would this be? There is a ton of great audio software for Windows! A ton! Ditto for the Mac. There’s not a whole lot for the BeOS. Somehow installing a new OS and having a much, much more limited selection of tools would be better for these musicians? Hell, professionals seem to get their work done using Macs and Windows; I imagine most backyard musicians wouldn’t feel too limited.”
making music on a windows machine is not necessarily the most pleasant experience. I am talking about xp by the way. If you stress the system you lose a lot of responsiveness and frankly it can be a pain in the rear. It is not that hard to stress the system on a 24-36 track mix which is pretty much what most rock/pop bands are going to want. it will of course depend on the number of effects applied overall and to each track but, even if the cpu meter does not turn red, you lose a lot in user experience. Try running a software sampler in there at the same time too and you’ll see why people are interested in beos.
Mac OS X is, from what a i’ve heard, a good deal better than XP (don’t even bother talking about 98, or me cause that is a joke). However, the mac’s price starts higher. it used to start at 1599 which was a nice single channel mic preamp, compressor, or a suite of software plugins more expensive than the windblows xp stuff.
that is why people are interested in beos. They want to get every last drop of value and stability out of the OS and hardware. XP does not deliver. OS X delivers but the cost is a bit rich for lots of musicians. what they want is the poor mans mac.
Everyone should ofcourse have their own opinion about what they prefer….
Me personally prefer BeOS+MacOSX+WinXP and why not Solaris, QNX or BSD for that part.
Not that I’m interested in using them all but knowing that people have options which suits their needs.
Me personally think style is important to my way of working rather than “just getting the work done”. Hey, I love life and wanna enjoy doing whatever I’m supposed to do. Therefor I think it’s reasonable to say that for desktop usage my preference is BeOS and OS X and then XP.
But of course everyone is entitled to have their own preferences…
can’t wait to get my hands on OBOS =)
Excellent work from the Italian BUG !
IMHO, skip the Scot Hacker interview. It doesn’t contain anything we didn’t already know. He loves his Mac, good for him.
There is a bunch of good articles for BeOS users starting out, especially the DivX one. The rebol article, even makes me want to dabble with it a bit
Oh and Marble Madness … a great game, but anyone else got memories of acting like a spastic using the trackball in your local aracde ?
Anyone ever notice how ex-smokers tend to be the most self-righteously adamant anti-smokers? I guess the same goes for ex-idealists.
I’d be interested in seeing an upddate of the article he did comparing his experiences on OS X and BeOS. Many of the criticisms he made of OS X in that piece still hold true today – I take it those things are no longer significant to him.
A friend of mine commented the other day that she would rather listen to interesting music played less-than-perfectly than bland music played flawlessly. And from where I sit, BeOS is The Pixies to Apple’s Oasis.
-=StephenB=- wrote:
And from where I sit, BeOS is The Pixies to Apple’s Oasis.
that, my friend, ruled
Gein