<story><title>MacBook Pro Launch: Perplexing</title><url>https://mondaynote.com/macbook-pro-launch-perplexing-b47003037b2e#.hs0avj7se</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ndesaulniers</author><text>As someone who knows nothing about BeOS, what was awesome about it?</text></item><item><author>secstate</author><text>I actually really appreciate JLG&amp;#x27;s tone when reporting on Apple. Given his history with the NeXT-BeOS debacle, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect him to be so charitable. Of course, time heals all wounds and I get the impression JLG is pretty well adjusted, but still.&lt;p&gt;Man, BeOS was awesome.</text></item><item><author>dlevine</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple and creator of BeOS.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ashark</author><text>It did scheduling magic to keep the UI responsive and media from skipping even under (at the time) heavy load. This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; lucky. The OS itself also seemed to be snappier than its competitors.&lt;p&gt;Windows on the same machine? MP3 playback would stutter when you hit refresh on a webpage (bearing in mind those were one hell of a lot lighter than the ones today) or any number of other minor actions. Hourglasses constantly.&lt;p&gt;Linux? Window-smearing-on-drag as far as the eye can see. Even worse media performance than Windows(!), though maybe with some ricing&amp;#x2F;tweaking it was better.&lt;p&gt;Macs at the time? Oh god. I don&amp;#x27;t know how they got a reputation for being more stable than contemporary Windows machines. Fewer system crashed maybe, but apps crashed constantly. Multitasking performance mediocre. Disk swap all over the place.&lt;p&gt;BeOS? Buttery smooth UI and MP3 playback while running the Teapot 3D demo and browsing the web, all at the same time. It was &lt;i&gt;awesome&lt;/i&gt;, and had the Unixy bits coupled with a good and consistent UI that we wouldn&amp;#x27;t see again until OSX. Faster booting than the competition. Neat extras like a built in web server (Poorman, IIRC) that could be run with a few clicks, too. I think BeOS was known for having an unusually pleasant and sane API in addition to performing so well, though I never wrote any software for it personally.</text></comment>
<story><title>MacBook Pro Launch: Perplexing</title><url>https://mondaynote.com/macbook-pro-launch-perplexing-b47003037b2e#.hs0avj7se</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ndesaulniers</author><text>As someone who knows nothing about BeOS, what was awesome about it?</text></item><item><author>secstate</author><text>I actually really appreciate JLG&amp;#x27;s tone when reporting on Apple. Given his history with the NeXT-BeOS debacle, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t expect him to be so charitable. Of course, time heals all wounds and I get the impression JLG is pretty well adjusted, but still.&lt;p&gt;Man, BeOS was awesome.</text></item><item><author>dlevine</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple and creator of BeOS.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ksherlock</author><text>We used to say: BeOS combined the UI of Macintosh, the stability of Unix, and the Minesweeper of Windows.</text></comment>