Be Demonstrates BeOS For Intel PCs

RELEASED AUGUST 4, 1997

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Alex Osadzinski, alex@be.com
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BE DEMONSTRATES BeOS FOR INTEL PCs
Developer conference demonstration is prelude to the next
BeOS product release and expansion of developer opportunity.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (August 4, 1997) - Before an audience of software developers at the Be Developer Conference in Boston today, Be, Inc. demonstrated for the first time the Be Operating System (BeOS(tm)) running on Intel-based personal computer hardware. The company went on to announce that it will simultaneously release Intel and PowerPC versions of its widely acclaimed OS with its next release in January.

"Our goal is to meet the needs of customers doing digital content design - no matter what hardware platform they may be using.", said Jean-Louis Gassée, president and CEO of Be, Inc. "BeOS for Intel opens the door for an even broader customer audience to take advantage of our technology. At the same time, we will expand the market - the business foundation - for BeOS software developers. BeOS for Intel represents an acceleration of our company's strategy, and we're looking forward to the opportunities the move represents."

During the conference's general session, Be engineers and marketeers demonstrated identical functionality on both Intel and PowerPC processor platforms - from performance characteristics through user interface and experience. Company officials explained that the main differences the user will see will have to do with the relative performance characteristics of the individual processors, and the cost of the underlying hardware.

To further make the point, Be engineers demonstrated the ability to take source code for an application and recompile it for both the Intel and PowerPC platforms. Once compiled, the application operated identically on both types of PCs. In addition, Be demonstrated the BeOS running on multiprocessing hardware for both Intel and PowerPC platforms.

"Our goal is to ensure that software developers can easily produce applications that will run on either Intel or PowerPC platforms, and the portable architecture of the BeOS is a tremendous advantage in achieving that goal.", said Erich Ringewald, chief technology officer at Be, Inc. "Our ability to move the BeOS to the Intel processor architecture has been further enhanced by the encouragement and assistance of the folks at Intel. Working with them has been an excellent experience and we look forward to further collaboration in the future."

The demonstration and pending introduction of BeOS for Intel processors continues the company's strategy of delivering products designed to meet the high-performance needs of digital content design and Internet communications. The BeOS is a new operating system environment that removes 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.

Be announced on July 16 that it had begun shipments of the BeOS Preview Release, the first release of the new operating system available to the general public. Customers can purchase the BeOS Preview Release for PowerPC via the company's web site at http://www.be.com. In addition, the company has announced that leading Macintosh/PowerPC magazines in six countries would be bundling full, unrestricted copies of the BeOS with issues distributed in August and September. These include MacUser (US and Canada), MacPower (Japan), UniversMac (France), MacUP (Germany) and MacUser UK. The distribution agreements mark the beginning of an aggressive year-long campaign to seed the market and to build a business foundation for BeOS software developers.

At Macworld Expo, which begins Wednesday, Be and its developers will be demonstrating am array of newly announced and introduced software applications written specifically for the BeOS. The Be booth can be found in the Boston World Trade Center (booth number 5119.) Complete details on the features of the BeOS Preview Release, and a complete list of BeOS capable hardware systems, can be found at http://www.be.com/products/.

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.