"Technically, BeOS is outstanding, offering performance and advanced features unmatched by anything else available." -- Peter Worlock, Digit Magazine issue #3, August/September 1998

BeOS^® leaves behind the legacies of history...

All the common desktop operating systems -- including MacOS, UNIX, Windows and Windows NT, and even Linux -- were designed before the advent of BeOS®. These older operating systems are based on architectures created during a time when the most important jobs were calculating numbers on spreadsheets, printing documents from word-processors, processing information from databases, or even sending text messages to other users on a network.

However, today's business and computer landscape has changed dramatically. As the industrial age gave way to the information age, so too the personal "computer" has given way to the personal "communicator." The demands of today's rich visual and audio media require a brand new foundation, and these obstacles are what the BeOS has been designed to solve.

Old operating systems have their legacy in the past. Windows was designed on the text-based DOS system. Even Windows NT has its history in the early 1990s. Mac OS was designed before RISC processors became popular. And Linux is an improved version of the oldest common operating system in the world: UNIX. All these systems were created in an effort to be everything to everyone.

But the BeOS was designed only with one intent: To be the ultimate operating system for processor-intensive multimedia and Internet applications.