Why is the BeOS so great? Why would I want to run or develop for the BeOS? What are the key features of the BeOS?

Performance

• The BeOS was built from the ground up, without layers of legacy baggage
• The BeOS supports multiple processors (symmetrical multiprocessing)
• The entire BeOS and Be apps are extensively multithreaded to take advantage of parallelism on multiprocessor systems
• The BeOS offers preemptive multitasking to efficiently perform multiple tasks at once
• The 64-bit Be file system supports files vastly larger than the typical 4-gigabyte limit of 32-bit systems
• The high-performance Be file system provides journalling which ensures file system integrity and speeds booting after a power failure
• Support for the industry standard OpenGL® 3D language
• DMA support for IDE hard drives provides very fast data transfer

Reliability

• The BeOS supports protected memory, which prevents misbehaved applications from crashing the system or other applications
• The BeOS is built from the ground up with a simplified API, resulting in smaller and more stable applications
• The journaling feature of the Be file system makes disk operations more reliable, ensuring data integrity

Integrated Services

• System database and queries
• System level messaging and scripting
• Built-in Ethernet with FTP, Telnet and PPP support
• Bundled email and web browser software
• Scripting
• Replicant technology
• MIME type file attributes
• Unicode UTF-8 font encoding
• Translation Kit for integrated opening, saving, etc. media data like JPEG, AVI, QuickTime, etc.
• Improved and flexible user interface

Compatibility

• Posix compliant layer
• AppleTalk printing
• PostScript printing
• Unicode UTF-8 font encoding
• Mac HFS and Windows FAT16/32 volume support