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Steve And The BeOS - Jan. 3rd, 1997

This is a partial set of first set of notes. I didn't have enough time to get them all into the day one report, so they will show up this week in other reports.

Table of Contents

Wow!
Hardware Used
Install Procedure
Speed!
Queries
Applications
1. BeMail
User Interface Observations
Not sure about Jaz
I hope the database becomes less falable
Crashes
Summary

Wow!

After waiting for 2 weeks my BeOS CD finally arrived. Let me summarize all the information that will follow by stating that I am a Geek and this stuff really jazzes me. I don't think you'll be buying BeOS this year, but if they continue to listen to developers, they will have a very nice OS on their hands.

Its obvious why Apple had to choose NeXTStep, however. BeOS is simply not ready for prime time, at least not on PowerMacs. Granted, it works amazingly well, but it does crash, seemingly more than System 7.5.5 and with notes about losing all of your email, one has to wonder.

Disclaimer: This is a preview version of BeOS for Power Macintosh. Anything I write about will probably be wrong in 3 months. Use this information as a teething source only. Anything else is not fair to Be.

Hardware Used

I've been using BeOS DR8.2 on a Power Macintosh 8500/120 with 32 megs of RAM, booting from a Jaz and a partition on a 4 gig drive.

Install Procedure

The install process was fairly straightforward. I ran the installer on the Mac, but had not made a Be partition yet, so my only choice was to boot from the CD, which I did. I then restarted the machine using MacOS and ran the Be partitioner to convert my Jaz cartridge into a Be disk. I ran the installer once more which installed BeOS onto the Jaz and booted BeOS.

The only problem I really had was with a dead keyboard. Sometimes, the keys would just not work, though the mouse would. I think this is related to my Apple 1710AV Monitor from hell, which requires the keyboard be plugged into its ADB port. I've noticed that if you just press the power button and not hold it down for a few seconds, the monitor will not initialize properly. Under MacOS, this means only 640x480 resolution. Under BeOS, this means no keyboard. The solution is to hold the power key down for a few seconds.

For kicks, opened the Network preferences "panel" and told it to add a Ethernet driver for the built in Ethernet on my Power Mac. It did so (instantly) so I typed in my IP address, DNS server, subnet mask and router address. I clicked Restart Networking and waited. And Waited. Nothing. Then I realized, "Hey! It already did it!" I cliked Restart Networking again. Instant setup! Wow!

So I ran NetPositive, their Web Browser and sure enough, I was on the net. I can do this since I use Ethernet for my connectivity, not serial PPP which is not included in this release.

Speed!

Right off the bat you notice just how fast a Power Macintosh/120 can be. BeOS flies. Looking up records in its database, opening applications, playing movies, it flies. Most operations are near instantaneous. The power of a fully threaded, preemptive multiasking OS is very evident here.

When the system is pegged, some things can slow down, such as opening a file. If the disk is busy, this also affects performance obviously. Some of the performance issues are probably (though I'm not certain) related to the fact that my 8500 has only one processor and BeOS really likes multiple processors. In other words, with 2+ 604s or 604e processors, I cannot imagine how smooth this OS would be.

I cannot stand the fact that Mac apps lock out my machine now when launching.

Queries

Think of a query as the thing all computers should have. MacOS has a Finder, but what does it really help you find? File names and loose data within files. BeOS has a database as part of the OS. Any number of records in any format can be stored in the database. This allows any application to work on the database.

Ever used Emailer and Eudora? You know they have different file formats and are not interchangable. With BeOS, the idea is that any email application can read and write the same database records! How Be handles variances I am not sure yet, for example, I want to store three email addresses for one Person - The default Person record only has one email field.

Queries are made in the Browser and are saved if you like. So at any time you can open up your query that looks for all email from Mom. You don't filter email into folders like Emailer and Eudora. You apply a query to the database.

I'll be learning the database first, as I want to write a simple import application that takes my Now Contact database and imports it into People records.

My biggest concern with the Database is that its a system level database and is hidden. How, therefore, can I take my email and other data on the road with me to a friends house who has BeOS? With Emailer, I simply put the Emailer folder on a Zip and off I go.

Finally, someone understood that data should be organized on a computer. Newton got the idea a long time ago.

BeMail

BeMail is the simple email application that comes with BeOS. Be also makes the source code available to developers, a nice touch.

Its a very simple email program but thats OK, since its data is kept in the database. This means a better email client can pick up where BeMail left off without you losing data.

The only bug I've found is that I cannot simply reply to email. The reply puts "Steven W. Riggins " which looks right, but my AIMS SMTP server complains about unbalanced brackets. Deleting the name and brackets solves the problem. Since there was a not about making BeMail more friendly with AIMS, this must be an area where the two apps are still battling over the barbeque.

BeMail's implementation (and BeOS for that matter) can be a bit confusing. For example, when you open a email query, thats all you get. You can read or reply to mail, control what columns to see, etc, but from within that menu you cannot write a new message, etc. You either need to launch BeMail or switch to the browser (Which you cannot do by clicking on the desktop) and choose Create Email from the "BeApp Menu" Not very intuitive.

BeMail does not allow you to leave mail on the server nor use APOP passwords, then again, its a simple app.

User Interface Observations

These are just things I've noted and jotted down, so they meant something at the time. :)

When you launch an app, it often brings forward the last window you launched with it, instead of opening a new window. This can mean that if you are using workspaces, you may jump to another workspace. In general, the windowing UI does not seem complete.
The Windowing UI is a window layer UI, like NeXTStep, which I like. This means that windows can be arranged in any manner, unlike MacOS where all windows for one application are grouped into one layer. The disadvantage is that they have no notion (that I have found) of bringin all of an applications windows forward at once. This would be useful for the Browser to be sure.
When saving text documents with Edit, sometimes they jump to a new location in a Browser window instead of staying put.
The Open File panels are modeless and let you rename folders live in line. Updates to that folder in a browser window are instantaneous!
Open File Panels never remember their size or location.
If you change the name of a folder in the Open File panel and then double click to open the folder, it often fails, because the first click signals BeOS to rename the folder and then resort the list. The second click hilites the new file under the mouse.
If you click in white space and hold down the mouse (to simulate pressing button 2) you'll get a change to jump to any folder via a hierachical menu, make a new folder, etc.
Double clicking the title bar minimizes the title bar to the bottom of the screen, like a Copland tab.
If no files are open on a volume, such as a CD, pressing the eject button on the front of the Mac ejects the CD and removes it from the Browser list of volumes.
File system is case sensitive! You can have a Metrowerks AND a MetroWerks folder in the same directory.
Copying files has no UI until the copy starts. On a large CD, this can mean a 20-30 second delay before you are acknowledged that the computer got your command and understood it.
The scroll bars, with their proportional thumbs and two arrows at each end are very nice. Plus, you can change them!
The Browser window's Clean Up command seems to do nothing.
The Browser windows don't appear to have a Clean Up By Name command, which I Love on the Mac.

Not Sure About Jaz

All of the file system type crashes came when I was pounding on the Jaz cartridge. I since moved the system over to an internal partition.

I hope the database becomes less falable

The database is one of the neatest ideas in BeOS. Most data is stored in a system central database as records. That means that every email you receive is stored in the database. This allows every email client you may have to read and write the same data, and it allows other apps to massage the data.

Unfortunately, it also makes the data falable. The Read Me states that if the database becomes corrupted, it will need to be rebuilt, resulting in loss of ALL email and other data in the database. I hope they fix this before 1.0. At the most, a user should lose one record, not the entire database.

In the process of moving my system from the Jaz to the fixed hard disk, I lost my database, as it is not copied during a normal copy. For those Mac heads, its analgous to the Desktop Database, in that its never moved from one volume to another. This does make moving your email to a removable volume quite a problem it seems. When I go to L.A., I take a Zip with my Emailer folder on it and all of my mail.. I'm not sure how I would do this in BeOS.

Crashes

I've had four different types of crashes so far, all resulting in a system reset via CMD-CONTROL-POWER:

The first crash came after selecting 6 files and pressting CMD-T to trash them. I tried to open the trach can to see what was inside and the machine froze. The CPU meter was pegged and while other applications were running, they were extremely slow. I rebooted and used the "hold mouse down on object until menu shows up" trick to empty the trash.

The second crash came during copying the BeOS CD optional folder to the Jaz cart. After you issue a copy command, BeOS does not give any user feedback until the copy actually starts. When copying from a CD, this can take quite a bit of time, say 30 seconds. I did the drag 4 times, then I got four copies going. Copies 2-4 asked me if I wanted to replace or cancel, so I clicked cancel. The machine froze and I could not cancel copy task 1.

The third crash came when trying to use NetPositive to register for DejaNews so I could post news. When DejaNews tried to send NetPositive a cookie, NetPositive crashed.

The fourth crash came courtesy of the Terminal application. I had set the directory in the shell to gui in one of my folders. I then deleted the gui directory via the Browser. I then did an ls in Terminal which is looking in a now deleted directory. Crash. I closed the Terminal window which worked, but then everything else died. I could not launch any application, and Restart just froze the machine.

Summary

Be has a hot little OS on its hand. It crashes too much right now, but this is only a developers release. I'll report on this issue as new releases come out, as it is one of the trumpets Be blows often.

The OS is fast and cool, but still premature. Its obvious why Apple chose NeXT. The beauty is, we Mac hardware owners will now have several methods for making our computers shine. Thats not such a bad deal.