Be's Hardware Plans
January, 1997
Dear Be Developers,
We've taken the decision to focus purely on software development and to
cease production of the BeBox. We want to explain what led to this
decision and what this implies for you, our developers.
Be's goal is to make the BeOS the premier platform for digital content
design. To that end, the BeOS was designed to take advantage of
high-performance hardware and to take particular advantage of
multiprocessor hardware. Until recently, low-cost MP machines have been
scarce, and they were scarcer still in 1990 when the original BeBox was
conceived. The BeBox, in its various forms and revisions, was designed to
prove the point that you _can_ build an MP personal computer, and we'd
like to think that it succeeded in doing just that.
In 1996, we ported the BeOS to the PowerMac architecture, and began to
see the advantages of running our OS on widely-available, mass-market
hardware. With the advent of MP PowerMacs from Apple, Power
Computing,
DayStar, and others yet to come, we've been
able to run the BeOS on some
pretty impressive hardware, ranging from very low-cost 603-family
desktops through to hulking testosterone devices like the quad 200MHz
604e DayStar machine.
It's very hard, actually impossible, for a small 50-person company like
Be to keep up with the hardware engineering resources of the entire
PowerMac market. At Macworld in San Francisco last month, it became very
clear that almost all the developer and future user interest was in the
BeOS for PowerMac. Sure, if we could build a quad 604 BeBox and ship it
this quarter for $3,000, or even $5,000, we'd have a winner on our hands.
But, our investigations revealed that products like this take a lot of
time and money to develop, and cost a lot to build, especially in low
volumes.
In addition, a very large part of our, and our developers', target market
of digital content designers uses PowerMacs and applications running on
the MacOS. By offering the BeOS on PowerMacs, we allow them to run on
their existing hardware (with greater performance, functionality and
stability) and to run their existing MacOS apps, either by dual-booting
or by using VirtualMac technology.
Finally, we faced an ethical dilemma: as we license hardware vendors to
bundle the BeOS, we have a potential conflict of interest. How do we
optimize between our hardware sales and making the BeOS available on
other manufacturers' hardware? This conflict of interest faces any
company that sells an OS on its own hardware while licensing it to other
hardware manufacturers. We've chosen to avoid the conflict in the
simplest way possible.
So, what does this mean for current BeBox owners?
We will honor the warranties on all the BeBoxes that we've sold, of
course. We'll make best efforts to keep spares available for as long as
possible after the last warranty has expired. Remember, most of the
content of a BeBox is off-the-shelf PC hardware and should be
maintainable for many years. Releases of the BeOS planned for the next 3
years (changed 1/31/97 -- see below) will support
the BeBox and we'll make best efforts to continue
support beyond that.
And what does this mean for all Be developers?
Most of the people using the BeOS today are already using it on
PowerMacs. Given the availability of exciting low-cost UP and MP
PowerMacs from Power Computing, Apple and others, the cost of entry to
developing for the BeOS is lower than ever. However, in the spirit of
lowering this cost even further, we're preparing some special developer
packages that we'll announce shortly.
The BeBox's unique i/o capabilities are becoming less unique as
media-rich i/o becomes more accessible on mass-market machines. We're
already working on video and audio drivers for emerging and existing
PowerMac hardware.
However well-reasoned and reasonable this decision is, we know that all
such transitions can cause pain and inconvenience. As a company and a
team that knows in its bones how important it is to work closely and well
with our developers for our mutual success, we want to ensure that we do
our best to make this transition as smooth as possible for our BeBox
owners. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Alex Osadzinski, for the Be team.
Dear Be Developers,
I made a mistake. We've been made aware (thank you) that promising to
support the BeBox with future releases of the BeOS for only 12 months
with "best efforts" after that isn't sufficient.
There is an easy way to redress this mistake: to strengthen our
commitment to future support.
Current "Rev 6" 66MHz BeBoxes and 133MHz BeBoxes will be supported by
releases of the BeOS for at least the next three years, ie at least
through the end of 1999.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to correct this situation.
JLG
Copyright © 1999 by Be, Inc. All rights reserved.
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