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Today's computer platforms have a few things in common.
They're based on technology that's at least ten years old.
They stifle software developers with huge marketing and
distribution costs, intense competition, and saturated
markets. And they do not fully exploit the latest
innovations in hardware design.
Be, Inc. has devoted considerable time, effort, and
talent to creating a fresh alternative. An alternative that
overcomes the limitations of today's tired and bloated
operating systems. One that truly takes advantage of today's
powerful hardware; that makes it easy to write and deploy
advanced applications; and that presents new business
opportunities for your company.
We'd like to introduce you to the BeBox(TM), a
high-performance, low-cost system designed to meet the
demands of sophisticated computer users and developers. It's
the first true real-time, object-oriented system that
features multiple PowerPC processors, true preemptive
multitasking, an integrated database, fast I/O, and a wide
range of expansion options -- all at a price that's
aggressively below that of any competitive offering.
The BeBox is certainly an excellent system for
programming, for classical compute-intensive applications,
for video games, and for personal productivity tools. And
with its combination of raw power afforded by dual PowerPC
processors, an innovative new portable operating system, and
familiar development tools, the BeBox is poised to become a
significant alternative for a wide range of next-generation
applications.
We Need Each Other.
No computing system can succeed without excellent
software; no software development company can succeed
without an excellent system for current and future
development. In other words, we need each other. Be is
strongly committed to making sure we can both profit by
working together.
We understand the pressures you face in determining which
operating systems to support. It's a complex business
decision. Therefore, allow us to present the business case
for partnering with Be.
First, the assertion that independent software vendors
are driven solely by the size of the available installed
base is simplistic. Many other factors come into play: The
potential of market sizes over time; the possibility of
gaining a dominant share in a given segment; the strength
and quality of the competition; and the barriers to entry
and costs of market participation. These are just a few
examples.
Equally important -- perhaps even more powerful -- is the
ability of a system to adequately demonstrate the
capabilities of your application. Painters, sculptors,
architects, writers, and teachers are driven by more than
market share; they consider the "expressive power" of the
medium above all. And anyone familiar with the software
business knows that developers are artists too.
Now For The Specifics.
There are three "Ds" every developer faces in the effort
to succeed in the software business: Development,
distribution, and demand creation.
Development
To facilitate your development efforts, we offer a
powerful, flexible, multimedia hardware architecture with
rich I/O capabilities standard on every unit, a powerful
real-time multitasking kernel, an object-oriented class
library and application framework, and an outstanding
development environment with familiar development tools.
The hardware features two PowerPC 603 processors running
at 66 MHz, room for 256 MB of RAM, and 16-bit CD-quality
sound. It provides a broad spectrum of expansion and I/O
options, including three slots on the very fast (132 MB/sec)
PCI bus for high-speed add-on cards; five expansion slots on
the ISA bus for low-cost, lower-bandwidth cards; four MIDI
ports; a high-speed SCSI-II port; four serial ports, one
"GeekPort," two joystick ports, three infrared ports, and
one parallel port.
Our system software is small, fast, and real-time. It
provides multithreading, preemptive multitasking, and memory
protection. On top of the proprietary kernel, we have
designed a graphics server that delivers ultra-responsive,
continuously updated windows; a database server that
supports live queries of user- or developer-defined
collections of data; and a digital media toolkit that allows
for manipulation of real-time streams of audio/video data.
All of this is accessible from our object-oriented C++
framework. We also ship a graphical browser with every
machine, which shows off many features of the OS and allows
the user to manipulate all of the files and database objects
on the computer.
For application development, we offer the CodeWarrior(TM)
PowerPC development environment from Metrowerks, along with
full technical and user documentation. You can use the
current version of CodeWarrior hosted on the Macintosh for
all of your application development, and soon we'll offer
the entire CodeWarrior Integrated Development Environment --
including a high-speed linker, compiler, and debugger --
native on the BeBox.
The BeBox will begin shipping to selected customers and
developers in mid-October, 1995. The suggested U.S. list
price for a bare-bones system is $1,600. The BeBox ships
with key components such as the CPU board, system software,
and manuals, and allows you to customize your system with
standard components from the "PC clone organ bank,"
including monitors, keyboards, memory, hard disks, CD-ROM
drives, and modems.
The BeBox is only the first member of the Be product
family, which is being expanded to include four-processor
and portable configurations. Future Be products will also
incorporate other versions of the PowerPC processor. This is
a product line that will grow with you.
Distribution
Be offers you an innovative and effective electronic
distribution model designed to maximize your exposure and
your profits. As opposed to the traditional distribution
model, which requires you to provide significant cash up
front for catalog advertising and to support the cost of
distributors and dealers, the Be distribution model requires
minimal up-front investment and eliminates the middleman
completely.
We provide market access to your software through a
combination of e-mail and Internet communications. Be
systems have Internet connectivity built in, and Be will
register every customer's telephone number and Internet
address, so we can supply you with up-to-the-minute
information about each and every one of our customers. That
gives you the opportunity for repeat sales and easy sales of
software updates.
By eliminating the middleman we'll enable you to offer
your software at a significantly lower price and help avoid
the common problems of piracy associated with high-priced
software.
Demand Creation
All of Be's customers and resellers will be connected and
accessible via e-mail, so it's easy to notify your target
market about your products and upgrades. You can circulate
demo versions of your products, patches, documentation, and
price lists via BeMail, or place them on Be's World Wide Web
server where customers can view and download them.
Be is also working to provide cost-effective demand
creation and customer education in a number of ways. We'll
hold or sponsor forums and newsgroups to assist with
interdeveloper and intercustomer relations. We'll also
publish periodicals with information of interest to targeted
groups-developers, A/V professionals, and general customers.
Let Us Prove It To You.
We're confident that the Be architecture delivers a fresh
and exciting alternative for developers who are frustrated
by the limitations of today's computing architectures. We
invite you to take the next step by calling us to request
product specifications. We'll be glad to answer your
questions, and we'll do everything possible to enlist your
support.
Sincerely,
Jean-Louis
Gassée
Chairman and CEO
Be, Inc.
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