BE SHIPS BeOS PREVIEW RELEASE 2
FOUR MONTHS AFTER PREVIEW RELEASE 1
MENLO PARK, Calif. (October 7, 1997) — Today Be., Inc. announced shipment
of the second public release of the Be Operating System (BeOS Preview
Release 2). Preview Release 2 continues improvements resulting from
Developer and End-user feedback with features added as part of the long
term development plan for the BeOS.
“This release adds momentum to the BeOS,” said Jean-Louis Gasse, President
and CEO of Be, Inc. “This is business as usual, responding to Developers
and Customers and building up the BeOS technology platform.”
In just the last two months:
* Over one hundred new BeOS applications have been released
* The number of registered Be developers has climbed 10%
to more than 4,400
* More than 500,000 copies of the BeOS have been distributed to
potential users.
Be plans to deliver three releases of the BeOS next year, and the BeOS
Preview Release 2 is actually being delivered slightly ahead of that
schedule: less than four months after Preview Release 1. The improvements
made in Preview Release 2 primarily focus on application accessibility,
usability, and stability.
Application Accessibility
The BeOS Preview Release 2 CD comes with nearly 40 3rd party applications
currently available for the BeOS. These include: word processing,
spreadsheet, audio, Internet, entertainment, graphics, and developer
applications.
Usability
The BeOS Release 2 offers increased hardware support, user interface
improvements, and application and performance enhancements. Some of the
additions are:
* Hardware support
– the ability to read from and write to Mac HFS partitions
– support for systems with up to 512 MB of RAM
– support for fixed-sync monitors
* User interface improvements
– double-click installation of compressed archives
(.zip, .gz, …)
– editing of saved queries
– live updating of Tracker window columns
– increased keyboard navigation
* Application features
– BeMail’s People application supports e-mail addresses
– the built-in web browser (NetPositive) supports
page updating
– NetPositive launches other apps to handle other
types of files
* Other changes
– broader POSIX compliance
– faster TCP/IP networking
Stability
The BeOS is designed for digital content creation markets where system
stability and up-time are extremely important. A great deal of work has
gone into extensive system reliability testing. The protected memory design
of the BeOS fundamentally improves up-time because even if one application
fails, only that application needs to be relaunched rather than the whole
system. Preview Release 2 up-time is measured in months not hours or days.
AVAILABILITY & PRICING
The BeOS Preview Release 2 will begin shipping on October 20, 1997. You can
order it through DevDepot or Be’s web site.
Pricing remains the same:
* $49.95 for the retail package which includes a printed user’s
guide and the next two releases, on supported hardware, for free.
* $9.95 for the trial package which includes electronic
documentation and no future releases.
Customers who purchased the BeOS Preview Release Retail Package are
entitled to the next two releases, on supported hardware, for free. These
customers will be sent Preview Release 2 CD (as one of the free releases)
in the mail starting on October 20th. Customers who purchased the BeOS
Preview Release after September 1st will be sent the BeOS Preview Release 2
CD without this version counting against their two free releases.
Registered Be developers will be sent the Preview Release 2 starting on
October 20th. A Web downloadable version of BeOS Preview Release 2 is
expected to be available in November from Be’s website,
(http://www.be.com/).
FUTURE RELEASES
BeOS Release 3 is expected in Q1 1998 and will be the first commercial
release to support both Intel Architecture and PowerPC systems. While the
main thrust for Release 3 is support for Intel Architecture machines, it
will also feature a number of other enhancements including significant
performance boosts with support for 3D hardware acceleration and 100
Megabit Ethernet.
About Be
Be, Inc., founded in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gasse, is a software company
focusing on building new foundations for the next generation of digital
content and media design tools. With a team of industry-leading engineers
and business executives in the United States and Europe, the company is
dedicated to removing the limitations of existing computer architectures
and delivering a new level of price performance.
In July 1997, Be published the first public release of the Be Operating
System (BeOS), the core product of this strategy. Additional information on
Be and the BeOS is available online at (http://www.be.com/). Be, Inc. is
headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
For more information contact
In the U.S. and Pacific:
Ed Romson, (romson@be.com)
+1 (650) 462-4176
In Europe:
Jean Calmon, (jcalmon@beeurope.com)
+33 1 49 06 73 75