techweb
techweb
techweb

IT Training, Power Protection
search advanced
techweb techweb techweb techweb techweb techweb
 
techweb Be Aims OS At Multimedia Users
November 11, 1998 (7:37 p.m. EST)
By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb News


Two years after being jilted by Apple in favor of Next Computer, Be has forged on with significantly less ambition and is ready for the official release of its operating system.

When Be first made news in 1996, the company had its own hardware line, the PowerPC-based BeBox. That quickly fell to the wayside. Be then turned its attention to developing an Intel version of the BeOS, and with the introduction of Release 4 next week at Comdex, the company shows it has focused on a narrow market: real-time audio and video editors.

"The market for something that's optimized for spreadsheets and word processors is pretty much a dominated market that no one is going to break into, and it would be foolish to try," said Scott Paterson, director of marketing at Be. "There's about 1 to 5 million people out there doing work with digital content. They are consuming processing power faster than it's being delivered."

The BeOS is a threat to $20,000 Silicon Graphics workstations because it does real-time editing and manipulation -- which typically require special hardware -- in software. With the BeOS, a $1,500 PC with a generic video-capture board can perform tasks such as page flips, fade to black, and screen wipes instantly without special hardware and hours of rendering time, said Paterson.

Release 4.0 shows three major areas of improvement over 3.2, the last major release. By switching compilers, Be got a 35 percent performance boost across the board. The OS also interoperates better with Windows 9x and Windows NT.

The final major improvement is the Media Kit, which simplifies operations with streaming media. Video can be captured, filtered, and saved from a camcorder to the PC in a single step.

With Unix and Macintosh clients, the two platforms traditionally used for media editing, in decline over the past several years, Be has an opportunity to grow beyond just selling to the multimedia market.

"The opportunity is clearly there for them to do something, the question is what is that something," said Bill Peterson, research manager at International Data Corp. "There is the possibility they could grow, but they don't have the desire to compete with Microsoft."

More BeOS applications are being developed, and not just for multimedia editing. Bochs Software plans to offer an improved version of its Bochs Windows emulation software, which is already on Solaris and Linux. The performance improvements will let Windows applications run with BeOS APIs.

Next month, BeatWare will ship Mail-It 2.0, a major upgrade to its e-mail client for BeOS, with improved contact manager and address book, spell check, and auto-reply to messages. Mail-It 2.0 sells for $49. Also, Opera Software announced it will port its Opera browser to BeOS. No release date is planned, but open betas are expected in the second quarter of 1999.

BeOS Release 4 requires Intel and PowerPC computers with a minimum of 16 megabytes of RAM and 150 megabytes of hard disk space. It can set up a dual-boot partition on both PCs and Macintoshes to co-exist with Windows or MacOS. The price is $99.95, with a special introductory price of $69.95 if purchased from Be's online store.

techweb



spacer spacer spacer
 newsletter
spacer spacer spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer spacer spacer
  define 
this term
spacer spacer spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer spacer
spacer
spacer spacer spacer
 
spacer
spacer spacer spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer spacer
techweb
spacer
 Sponsored Links

•  
•  
•  
•  

Sponsored Site
Of The Week




InformationWeekInternetWeekNetwork ComputingNetwork MagazineSecurity PipelineMobile PipelineServer PipelineSmall Business Pipeline

IT Utility Pipeline Networking PipelineFinancial Technology NetworkWall Street & TechnologyInsurance & TechnologyLinux Pipeline

Storage PipelineBank Systems & TechnologyOptimize MagazineGovernment EnterpriseIT Pro DownloadsIntelligent EnterpriseTransform
spacer
spacer

Media Kit  |  Copyright © 2004  CMP Media LLC  |  Privacy Statement  |  Terms Of Service  |  Feedback

spacer