Be Inc. was an American computer company founded in 1990. It is best known for the development and release of BeOS, and the

BeBox The BeBox is a dual CPU personal computer, briefly sold by Be Inc. to run the company's own operating system, BeOS. It has PowerPC CPUs, its I/O board has a custom "GeekPort", and the front bezel has " Blinkenlights". The BeBox made its deb ...

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive

Jean-Louis Gassée Jean-Louis Gassée (born March 1944 in Paris, France) is a business executive. He is best known as a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He also founded Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system ...

with capital from

Seymour Cray Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996
) was an American

Menlo Park,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, with regional sales offices in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The company later relocated to Mountain View,

for the duration of its dissolution. The company's main intent was to develop a new operating system using the

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

programming language on a proprietary hardware platform. BeOS was initially exclusive to the BeBox, and was later ported to Apple Computer's

Power Mac The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006. Described by ''MacWorld'' as "the most important te ...

s despite resistance from Apple, due to the hardware specifications assistance of

Power Computing Power Computing Corporation (often referred to as Power Computing) was the first company selected by Apple Inc to create Macintosh-compatible computers (" Mac clones"). Stephen “Steve” Kahng, a computer engineer best known for his design of t ...

. In 1998, BeOS was ported to the Intel

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

architecture, and PowerPC support was reduced and finally dropped after

BeOS R5 BeOS R5 is the final version of BeOS from Be Inc. It was released in March 2000, and came in two varieties: Professional and Personal. R5 was the 4th major release of BeOS for a public audience, and the 6th since it left developer-only stages ...

. It inspired the open source operating system,

Haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or s ...

History

Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive

in 1990 with

Steve Sakoman Steve Sakoman is an American computing executive. He retired from Apple Computer in 2005 and is now an independent consultant. He originally worked at Hewlett-Packard as a manufacturing engineer and project manager for the industry's first battery ...

after being ousted by Apple CEO

John Sculley John Sculley III (born April 6, 1939) is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) ...

. Soon joined also Erich Ringewald, lead engineer in Apple 'Pink' OS team, as CTO. According to several sources including ''

Macworld UK ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macint ...

'', the company name "Be" originated in a conversation between Gassée and Sakoman. Gassée originally thought the company should be called "United Technoids Inc.", but Sakoman disagreed and said he would start looking through the dictionary for a better name. A few days later, when Gassée asked if he had made any progress, Sakoman replied that he had got tired and stopped at "B." Gassée said, " 'Be' is nice. End of story." Be aimed to create a modern computer operating system written in C++ on a proprietary hardware platform. In 1995, the

personal computer was released by Be, with its distinctive strips of lights along the front that indicate the activity of each PowerPC CPU, and the combined analogue/digital, 37-pin

GeekPort The BeBox is a dual CPU personal computer, briefly sold by Be Inc. to run the company's own operating system, BeOS. It has PowerPC CPUs, its I/O board has a custom "GeekPort", and the front bezel has "Blinkenlights". The BeBox made its debu ...

. In addition to BeOS and BeBox, Be also produced BeIA, an OS for

internet appliance An Internet appliance is a consumer device whose main function is easy access to Internet services such as WWW or e-mail. The term was popularized in the 1990s, when it somewhat overlapped in meaning with an information appliance, Internet com ...

s. Its commercial deployments included the Sony eVilla and

DT Research DT may refer to: Arts Music * Dt. (band), a Japanese dance/rock group * "D.T.", an instrumental song on ''Who Made Who'', AC/DC's 1986 album * Dark Tranquillity, Swedish melodic death metal band * Dream Theater, American progressive metal band ...

, during its short lifespan. In 1996, Apple was searching for a new operating system to replace the classic Mac OS. Eventually, the two final options were BeOS and

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...

NeXT Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

was chosen and acquired due to the persuasive influence of Steve Jobs and the incomplete state of the BeOS product, criticized at the time for lacking such features as printing capability. It was rumoured that the deal fell apart because of money, with Be Inc allegedly wanting US$500M and a high-level post in the company, when the

deal closed at US$400M. The rumours were dismissed by Gassée.

Dissolution and litigation

Ultimately the assets of the Be, Inc. were bought for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

11 million in 2001 by

Palm, Inc. Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...

, where Gassée served on the board of directors, at which point the company entered

dissolution Dissolution may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books * ''Dissolution'' (''Forgotten Realms'' novel), a 2002 fantasy novel by Richard Lee Byers * ''Dissolution'' (Sansom novel), a 2003 historical novel by C. J. Sansom Music * Dissolution, in mu ...

. The company then initiated litigation against

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

for aggressively

anti-competitive Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws differ among state and federal laws to ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usuall ...

and monopolistic business practices. Joining a long history of antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, Be specifically contested Microsoft's prohibition of

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

s to allow dual-boot systems containing both Microsoft and non-Microsoft operating systems. The suit was settled in September 2003 with a US$23.25 million payout to Be, Inc. Palm subsequently spun off a wholly owned subsidiary

PalmSource ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. (formerly PalmSource) is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS. PalmSource was spun off from Palm Computing, Inc. P ...

to develop its Palm OS and related software, with the Be assets being transferred to PalmSource which was subsequently acquired by Japanese-based

ACCESS Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...

Legacy

The open source operating system

resumed BeOS's legacy in the form of a complete reimplementation. Beta 1 of Haiku was released in September 2018. As of then, there is an active development team with nightly releases.

References

{{BeOS 1990 establishments in California 2001 disestablishments in California Companies based in Menlo Park, California Computer companies established in 1990 Computer companies disestablished in 2001 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct software companies of the United States Home computer hardware companies Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area