Begräbnis für Be Inc. (Ja genau die mit BeOS) (17.01.2001 / The Register)
2002-01-16 19:46
Popcorn
A Silicon Valley funeral for Be Inc
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 17/01/2002 at 10:36 GMT
In the movies, it always rains at funerals. In Silicon Valley yesterday, Be Inc held its liquidation auction and although not a drop fell from the heavens, it was fucking cold.
But that didn't lessen the sense of occasion, as the most romantic of all Silicon Valley start-ups finally ran into the auctioneer's hammer. The big freeze didn't stop several hundred geeks, gawkers, dreamers and vultures (where else could I be?) from attending to pick over the bones.
Auctions aren't so much funerals as autopsies, where you really do get to rummage through the personal bric-a-brac.
And there it was: from the cubicle partitions and the trade-show props to the coffee machine. Or as the liquidator's catalog described it, a "coffee machine with supplies".
You could bid for the Be company shredder, too. While most shredders take one sheet at a time, this one could take five sheets in one go, or as the auctioneer put it, "it's the Richard Nixon Model!" (The "Arthur Andersen model" might have been more topical.)
So more bodies were crammed into the upper floor of Be's Menlo Park premises than safety limits allow, and a collection of former staffers, recent and distant were arriving by the minute.
"Benoit's here!," called out the receptionist.
You see, the Be liquidation wasn't any old auction. The great Be adventure deservedly makes geeks go misty-eyed with sentiment, for a couple of very big reasons.
For a start, it set out to do what we now know is impossible: create a great personal computer operating system from scratch. Be created the "media OS", or "the Mac for Intel", or even the "poor man's SGI" with such elegance and style that even burned-out losers of previous OS wars, like the author, were converted. And we think today exactly what we thought we first used BeOS. Firstly, hey - this is pretty neat…. Then, this is really great, and really quite useful. And forever after… how did they make Windows/Linux/MacOS/[your OS here] suck so much? Why is this computer so slow? Can I have a real file system, please?
Ganzer Artikel unter: http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/23718.html
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 17/01/2002 at 10:36 GMT
In the movies, it always rains at funerals. In Silicon Valley yesterday, Be Inc held its liquidation auction and although not a drop fell from the heavens, it was fucking cold.
But that didn't lessen the sense of occasion, as the most romantic of all Silicon Valley start-ups finally ran into the auctioneer's hammer. The big freeze didn't stop several hundred geeks, gawkers, dreamers and vultures (where else could I be?) from attending to pick over the bones.
Auctions aren't so much funerals as autopsies, where you really do get to rummage through the personal bric-a-brac.
And there it was: from the cubicle partitions and the trade-show props to the coffee machine. Or as the liquidator's catalog described it, a "coffee machine with supplies".
You could bid for the Be company shredder, too. While most shredders take one sheet at a time, this one could take five sheets in one go, or as the auctioneer put it, "it's the Richard Nixon Model!" (The "Arthur Andersen model" might have been more topical.)
So more bodies were crammed into the upper floor of Be's Menlo Park premises than safety limits allow, and a collection of former staffers, recent and distant were arriving by the minute.
"Benoit's here!," called out the receptionist.
You see, the Be liquidation wasn't any old auction. The great Be adventure deservedly makes geeks go misty-eyed with sentiment, for a couple of very big reasons.
For a start, it set out to do what we now know is impossible: create a great personal computer operating system from scratch. Be created the "media OS", or "the Mac for Intel", or even the "poor man's SGI" with such elegance and style that even burned-out losers of previous OS wars, like the author, were converted. And we think today exactly what we thought we first used BeOS. Firstly, hey - this is pretty neat…. Then, this is really great, and really quite useful. And forever after… how did they make Windows/Linux/MacOS/[your OS here] suck so much? Why is this computer so slow? Can I have a real file system, please?
Ganzer Artikel unter: http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/23718.html