The naming of the BeBox
How and when did the BeBox get its name? One would think that might be a
relatively simple quesiton to answer. There seem to be, however, some
conflicting ideas on the issue.
Henry Bortman, on page 33 of the BeOS
Bible, claims of the original Hobbit Be Machine developed in late 1991
"This model, the first to be dubbed the BeBox, had not two, but five processors,
all from AT&T ..."
A photo of an early
version of BeOS, dated 1994, and running on a Hobbit Be Machine doesn't
serve to support this view. The title of the about window is "About Be
Machine", not "About BeBox".
Additionally, in an interview with BeNews, Joseph Palmer made the following comment:
The Hobbit / DSP machine had been called the Be-1, and for a time we were
calling the PPC machine the Be-2, and sometimes the BeBox, and over time
'BeBox' just stuck."
So it seems more likely that the BeBox name didn't arrive until the PPC
machines were well and truly on the scene.
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