The BeBox: BeOS Hardware, Photos, and the Apple Deal That Wasn't

While I would have rather seen a future where OS X is BeOS based, another desktop platform having C++ as key language, not being another UNIX clone, the reality is that without the reverse acquision of NeXT and Steve Jobs for the ride, leading to the iPod and iMac G3, Apple would have crashed really hard with what was left on the bank account.

Very enjoyable article. Never had a Be box, but used beos a bit around 2000 - when it was free to download. It felt great, shame there were no apps. Maybe if vibe coding was available then, it would have done much better. Loved the hardware part of the story - I just got a mac studio on sale and after many years of laptops, remembered how much fun it is to have things on a desk, permanently connected. I was cleaning up my vintage hardware, selling some old MBs after all full PCs were gone - had two dual processor pentium pro and pentium II workstations. Connected a USB to SATA/IDE/floppy connector, went through all old HDDs before recycling them - was such a joy to have desk space, not just my portable do-it-all.

Anyway, computers should be fun and this story definitely brings that across. Thank you!

I remember a visit by Gasseé and a team of BeBox engineers to the PowerPC design center in Austin, where they demo'ed the yet-to-be released early version of the BeBox and OS. We were all duly impressed by the speed and responsiveness of the system. At one point they were demoing that it really was running multiple processors by opening a control panel that showed the processor activity, and clicking a button to disable one of the processors, which instantly doubled the load on the other processor. Someone in the crowd asked "What if you disable the other processor, too?", and they said "I don't know -- let's see." The system promptly crashed ;-)

Before R3 was PR1 and PR2, hence the 3. It didn't jump from DR8 to R3 like the article says. The discs were labeled "Preview Release" and "Preview Release 2" and they're common to find on eBay.

I got my start with the R3.2 demo disc. This was a free CD you could order for the cost of shipping. It was a live CD that booted directly into BeOS (maybe with the help of a boot floppy, in those days). I was hooked as soon as it booted (fast, even from CD!) and I clicked around for a few minutes.