Technowize

With Apple Inc.'s announcement that they would buy NeXT the bubble burst and it became clear that Be Inc. wasn't to be part of Apple's new operating systems strategy. Be has had a lot of media coverage recently over its state-of-the-art operating system BeOS. This slim, powerful and advanced operating system supports multiple symmetrical processors and is geared for high-powered multimedia. It certainly seemed like the future for Apple users desperate to find something to use on their PowerPCs.

The BeOS is young, it hasn't even reached Version 1.0 so Apple went for an older, more mature technology - NeXT. But this has left Be as a fast moving startup with a top team whose expertise and creative spin is hard to beat. At the MacUser convention Be revealed that version 1.0 of the BeOS would be available at the end of this quarter. Also a third party is offering a reliable and fast System 7.5 emulation package by mid-97. All Power Computing computers are having a Developer's release bundled with them and several pieces of software will be ready for version 1.0 including multimedia authoring and office productivity.

Most importantly of all, Metrowerks is soon going to be supplying a CodeWarrior for the BeOS providing one of the best development environments to BeOS developers. What does all this mean?

A full version of the new Mac/NeXT OS won't be available until early 1998 at best. In the meantime many people might convert to Windows NT 4.0 but Be can offer an operating system that outperforms NT, is available almost a year before the Apple solution and can run users' Mac software now! If you have a PowerPC or are thinking of buying one, there's no better time to have one! By the time Apple finally gets its next generation operating system out of the door it'll be too late, we'll all Be converted!

Jeep

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