Hmm, Travis Geiselbrecht of NewOS, Danger and BeOS fame and Brian Swetland of BeOS fame as well? Interesting.
(Not that I'm not proud of my BeOS work, but that was almost 20 years ago now...)
Travis should get credit for work on iOS and WebOS too, if we're keeping score, I suppose!
BeOS stands out to me, and I honestly don't care how long ago it was. WebOS was nice, but Android and iOS don't even register on my personal radar of cool tech. I hope you're not offended by that. For instance, while it was possible to do low-latency audio on BeOS in 1998, it's only possible with a lot of trickery on Android. You can do low-latency audio on Linux and Windows too, but again it needs special tooling and config, though not as hard as on Android's Java-based stack.
Think of it like this: people will remember artists for certain work during specific periods because it touched them in a special way. BeOS was that during my formative years, and you could say it was the Amiga of the 90s. Sadly, there's nothing that replaces the innovative features of it, even though we've improved other parts of the stack.
It's just such a shame that BeOS is locked in some IP locker in Japan (Access Ltd) now.
BeOS got me out on the west coast and doing OS development for a living. I learned a ton of stuff while working at Be and got to work with a bunch of amazing people (some of whom I still work with today).
Warm?