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Steve And The BeOS - Jan. 3rd, 1997This 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
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. 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. 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. 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.
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 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 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.
These are just things I've noted and jotted down, so they meant something
at the time. :)
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.
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.
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.
© Copyright 1997-2002 Steve Riggins. Graphics by
Andrew Duncan. |