> computer hardware had advanced so much that there was very little demand for a high-performance operating system in the desktop market.
That was kinda the problem. BeOS was built around the 1990s mentality that PC hardware was quite limited, and a light fast OS was more important than security, robustness, etc. It ran like greased lightning, but really wasn't a whole lot more advanced than other contemporary consumer OSes.
Next, on the other hand, was always intended to be a workstation OS (with 'enterprise frameworks') and was a much better fit for the hardware of the 2000s. With MS moving to the NT line, it would have been a huge mistake for Apple to adopt a single-user OS like Be.
Back in the day, I actually used both the NeXTcube and a BeBox (although neither as a primary environment)
The NeXT environment enamored everybody who was introduced to it... for a day or two. Them almost everybody moved away from it because it was so... damn.. slow. The base cube only had 8MB of RAM (a decent amount in those days!) which wasn't nearly enough for the big heavy frameworks it used. NeXT had to retrofit all of the cubes with 40MB SCSI drives just for swap. The display postscript system was elegant (it provided a common display engine for both the screen and the NeXT-brand laser printer, for instance) but ate up precious cycles of the 68030. The magnetic-optical drive that supposedly was the future of personal storage had horrible performance (although the drives mercifully gave out after a few years anyway)
In short, the NeXTcube's we had were the machines everybody loved but few wanted to actually use.
The BeBox by contrast was nothing if not zippy! There were too many missing bits for it to really be my main environment, but you really felt that you were using the future of operating systems. After years of using UIs that always had at least some lag the BeBox's instantaneous response was almost a shocking experience.
When Apple was quite publicly looking for an OS to buy I was certainly rooting for Be. It seemed to fit their needs perfectly: it already ran on PowerPC and its responsiveness would have been great for the multimedia creators that were Apple's bread-and-butter. When they went with NeXT instead I thought it was just another of Apple's classic missteps. I couldn't see why they were hitching their wagon to an OS that was last decade's news.
Clearly I was wrong, even if you ignore the Steve Jobs factor. The hardware advances underway quickly made the amazing responsiveness of BeOS moot; now every OS feels like the snappy BeBox did in 1995. As memory sizes grew the NeXTstep frameworks came into their own (probably if the NeXTcube could have had 1GB of RAM it would have been fine!)
To put it simply, Be built an OS in 1996 that was perfect for 1996. NeXT build an OS in 1989 that was suited for the 2000s.
I don't mean that last bit as a pure complement, by the way. The "too far ahead of its time" is a cliche about failed tech products. Building something that only works with hardware 10+ years in the future is hardly a recipe for success. It's only through the accidents of history that NeXTstep got its chance to shine years after its original failure. 99% of products in that position only get to be footnotes.
"(probably if the NeXTcube could have had 1GB of RAM it would have been fine!)"
That 68030/optical disk/40MB swap drive era didn't last very long.
NeXTSTEP was quite nice with a 16MB 25MHz 68040, and a decent hard drive, as seen in the NeXTStation from 1990. Even the price was competitive if you didn't mind the 2-bit greyscale monitor.
NeXTSTEP 3.3, running in color on a Pentium Pro (or better), or even better a 1994 HP PA-RISC workstation, was SWEET.
> That 68030/optical disk/40MB swap drive era didn't last very long.
And rightly so. But given that the hardware was built (at great expense!) specifically to run that OS, I think it's fair to consider their performance together.
Certainly the gap between "the hardware the OS needs" and "what is readily available" shrunk as time went on. The slabs with more RAM were substantially better than the cubes had been. I think calling NeXTstep with 16MB "quite nice" is still being generous though - my recollections of 16MB NeXTstep was "swaps less". With 32MB it started to get pretty reasonable but, gosh, that was $1000+ of RAM back then.
I knew people who ran NeXTstep on Intel but they tended to turn into early linux adopters. X11+fvwm (or, later, AfterStep) was more responsive on their hardware.
By the time NeXTSTEP 3.3 came out (and NeXT basically left the OS game, instead focusing on OpenStep and WebObjects) the performance gap was a lot smaller, at least if you could afford a really nice computer. When it reemerged as a product 5 years later as OS/X 10.0 that gap had evaporated. Suddenly it was living in its moment, 12 years after its debut.
And hell, now the OS that I used to curse for its unreasonable hardware demands comfortably runs on my cell phone. Technology is funny that way.
That was kinda the problem. BeOS was built around the 1990s mentality that PC hardware was quite limited, and a light fast OS was more important than security, robustness, etc. It ran like greased lightning, but really wasn't a whole lot more advanced than other contemporary consumer OSes.
Next, on the other hand, was always intended to be a workstation OS (with 'enterprise frameworks') and was a much better fit for the hardware of the 2000s. With MS moving to the NT line, it would have been a huge mistake for Apple to adopt a single-user OS like Be.