Be Releases BeOS Preview Release To Developers

RELEASED MAY 10, 1997

For more information contact

In the U.S. and Pacific:
Alex Osadzinski, alex@be.com
+1 (650) 462-4126

In Europe:
Jean Calmon, jcalmon@beeurope.com
(33) 1 49 06 73 75

BE RELEASES BeOS PREVIEW RELEASE TO DEVELOPERS
Release at the Be Developer Conference gives developers an
advance look at the public release and tools to complete
software development.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (May 10, 1997) -- Today, Be, Inc. announced the latest release of the Be Operating System (BeOS ) - the BeOS Preview Release - and began distribution of advance copies of the release to developers attending the Be Developer Conference, being held this weekend in Santa Clara.

Developers at the conference are receiving an "advanced access" CD containing the BeOS Preview Release and the tools needed for development of applications, drivers and other software. Be is releasing this advance developer release of the BeOS Preview Release to accelerate software development, and to gain feedback prior to finalizing the public CD of the Preview Release. In addition, Metrowerks, Inc. is issuing Developer Release 3 of CodeWarrior for BeOS, including support for the Preview Release, new versions of the CodeWarrior IDE and debugging tools, and the first versions of Java tools for the BeOS.

"With the BeOS Preview Release, we're on the verge of making the BeOS available to hundreds of thousands, if not a million, users.", said Jean-Louis Gassée, president and CEO of Be. "We believe the BeOS will provide digital content designers with a new, high-performance platform on which to express themselves, and we're excited by the potential. With the developer advanced access release, no doubt we'll still have a number of bugs. But we think it's important to give our developers a chance to look over our work before it becomes publicly available."

The BeOS Preview Release, which the company expects to release next month, will be the first version of the BeOS to be made generally available to the public. It contains a wealth of new features, and represents the most significant revision of the software to date.

"The Be engineering team knew that the Preview Release would be the first version a wide audience would receive.", said Erich Ringewald, chief technology officer at Be, Inc. "Because of this, we've made sure that the foundation of the BeOS would be as complete as possible. This meant adding a great many features, as well as reimplementing some - such as the new Be File System - for even better performance. When released to the public next month, our intent is that for developers, the BeOS will be"open for business.'"

The BeOS is a new operating system environment designed to meet the high-performance needs of digital content design and Internet communications, removing the limitations and complexity of the aging architectures of current mainstream operating systems. The engineering team at Be didn't start with an existing OS and transform it, they started with a concept called the Media OS (http://www.be.com/products/beos/mediaos.html) and optimized every portion of a new OS the BeOS for handling digital media. The BeOS is the first new operating system designed to unlock the door to much more powerful personal computers, and extract more performance from the systems we use today.

Among the new features of the BeOS Preview Release;

• New Be File System. The Be File System (BFS) is now a full 64-bit system, allowing the BeOS to handle files and volumes of terabyte size and larger. The BFS is fully multithreaded, allowing it to take advantage of multiple processors, and is a "journaling" system, ensuring that the file system is always in a consistent, uncorrupted state - even after power losses - and reducing system boot up time to a few seconds. And the BFS is faster than its predecessor found in the DR8 release.

• New Graphics Capabilities. The BeOS graphics capabilities have been vastly expanded. Among the new capabilities are anti-aliased fonts, full network and direct printing support including Postscript and AppleTalk printer support, and the first software-based version of the industry standard OpenGL 3D graphics libraries.

• New Interapplication Services. The messaging capabilities of the BeOS have been enhanced and the first level of object scripting capabilities makes its debut. Internet MIME type identification is now used throughout the system, improving integration with Internet applications. In addition, the Preview Release introduces Be's Replicator technology, a new object messaging model which allows you to embed active pieces of data and code called replicants from one application into documents and into other applications. Replicants represent the next step in modular BeOS software.

• Enhanced Internet Capabilities. The native TCP/IP capabilities of the BeOS are improved and expanded, with increased network performance, integrated FTP file server and personal web server capabilities, and mail client support, and remote access capabilities. The integrated BeOS web browser, NetPositive, is enhanced and integrates the BeOS Replicator technology. Using this, you'll be able to install active web pages onto the BeOS desktop.

• New Java Support. With the release of Metrowerks CodeWarrior Release 3, the first versions of the Java runtime for BeOS, and Java development tools become available to application and web content developers.

• New User Interface. The BeOS user interface has undergone a complete upgrade and transformation. With the Preview Release, the desktop is controlled by the BeOS Tracker, a new modular and unobtrusive way of getting at your disks and frequently used applications. Icons can now be placed on the desktop. MacOS HFS volumes can be viewed and manipulated, and support will be added for DOS and NFS volumes, among other formats. And a wealth of new preferences allow you to customize the BeOS.

• New Hardware Support. The range of PowerPC-based systems capable of running the BeOS has been expanded. PowerPC 603 based systems such as PowerComputing's PowerBase, new 604 systems from Power, Apple and others, and Motorola's StarMax line are a few of the newly capable systems. In addition, the BeOS provides full true symmetric multiprocessing support for dual and quad processor systems from PowerComputing, Daystar and Apple.

In response to the overwhelming interest in the BeOS in Japan, Unicode support now appears throughout the system. A feature originally planned for late 1997, the Preview Release utilizes the Unicode UTF-8 format (the format used by Java) within all text objects and within the font system. This support is a major step towards a fully international version of the BeOS, and further enhancements in this area will be introduced through 1997.

Complete details on the new features of the BeOS Preview Release, and complete list of BeOS capable hardware systems, can be found at http://www.be.com/products/.

The advanced access CD is being distributed to developers who are attending the Be Developer Conference. In addition, it will be delivered next week to developers registered in the Be Developer Program. More information on this release, and on the Media OS concept, can be found at http://www.be.com. Developer Release 3 of CodeWarrior for BeOS will be distributed to all registered CodeWarrior for BeOS users. More information on CodeWarrior can be found at http://www.metrowerks.com.

About Be
Be, Inc., founded in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gassée, 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 1997, Be is publishing the first public releases 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.