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Issue 3    June 7, 2000 Be In The News June 5, 2000 BeOS 5: Personal versus Professional, Ars Technica return to top Broadband and Internet Appliances How will Broadband Change IAs? by Brennan Spies, Sr. Market Analyst, Be, Inc. In this week's column I'm going to provide an overview of broadband technologies, as well as a perspective on how they will change the Internet appliance market. Since most research points to the dominance of DSL and cable modems in terms of adoption, I'll be focusing mainly on these technologies. The Technology Broadband starts at about twice current modem speeds, 128 Kbps, and ranges all the way up to 10 Mbps (and higher). DSL, or more specifically Asymmetric DSL, offers speeds of 128 Kbps to 7 Mbps. Cable can offer speeds up to 10 Mbps, but in reality averages between 300-600 Kbps. Most anecdotal user evidence seems to indicate that there is no noticeable difference in speed between cable and DSL, except in cases where peak usage on cable is very high. Theoretically, cable is faster, but actual observed speed depends on the number of users on the neighborhood "hub" that are connected at the same time. Both cable and DSL have their strengths and weaknesses. The key strength of cable is its wide availability (over 45% of U.S. homes) and the key weakness is its potential for much slower speeds during peak usage. The key strength of DSL is the fact that it is a dedicated line and the key weakness is its lack of availability (the user must be within 3 miles of a telco's substation, presently the case with about 24% of U.S. homes). This lack of sizeable advantage for either technology is the reason why there is a fairly even split among market research companies as to which technology will eventually lead in the marketplace, but one thing is clear: the broadband market is a two-horse race between them. Adoption of Broadband According to Jupiter Communications, 23% of all online households will have broadband by 2003. The introduction of broadband portals, entertainment services (Internet multimedia), and online shopping enhancements will likely accelerate this trend, as will the expansion of broadband infrastructure, introduction of voice over IP (VoIP) technology, and lower consumer pricing. Recent statistics released by TeleChoice Inc. indicate that in-service DSL lines in North America totaled greater than 880,000 at the end of Q1 2000, and many cable providers are also actively upgrading their infrastructure to handle more Internet subscribers. By the end of 2000, cable modem service will have well over 2 million subscribers, with DSL not far behind. By the end of 2002 total DSL and cable subscribers are predicted to exceed 10 million. While the majority of online users in the next 5 years are going to connect via dial-up, there is definite momentum building behind broadband. A number of specialized sites/portals have already been created to cater to broadband users, including @Home 2000, Snap for High-Speed Users, and Yahoo! Broadcast. More than Just Faster Downloads When looking at the reasons people switched to broadband, Jupiter Communications found that the single greatest reason was faster downloads (followed by its ability to be "always on"). But broadband is more than just speed for speed's sake. As the nature of the Internet itself evolves from being a primarily an informational medium to a source of interactive entertainment, broadband will become an enabler of better, richer content. Most of this content will come in the form of streaming video and audio, 3D graphics, and interactive elements -- technologies for which Be has optimized its operating system from the very beginning. As the Internet evolves, so will Internet appliances. The very first Internet appliances to hit the market were advertised as a great way to use e-mail or to order a pizza. As broadband becomes more widely used, IAs will become a great way to listen to streaming MP3s, watch Internet broadcast video, view 3D graphics, or play interactive games. This means that these future IAs will need an operating system that is stable, responsive, and, above all, media savvy. return to top The Power of Words by Jean-Louis Gassée, Chairman and CEO, Be, Inc. Appliances, sub-PC, post-PC -- we're still struggling with ways to designate and categorize the objects of the emerging "everything-connected", "IP-on-everything" world. Watching the traffic on various forums, on the info@be.com feed, as well as my own inbox, I realize the power of words to create misunderstanding. Before you tell me this is a trite generalization, let me give some specific examples, if not easy solutions. Minicomputers. When Ken Olsen invented them, he wasn't thinking of a smaller version of mainframes. His company had been making logic modules and, one thing leading to another, adding more logic to their product. That's how the Digital Equipment Corporation became the king of minis while the king of "real" computers, IBM, had trouble catching up. There were many pesky upstarts -- DEC, HP, and Data General. There were others now forgotten -- Varian, General Automation (whose CEO fixed machines by the laying on of hands), Computer Automation, InterData, ModComp, Basic Four. All of this is by way of saying that the tumult, craziness, and abundant fertilizer of today's scene has been, in many respects, well-rehearsed. Once in a while we create a legacy-free moniker, such as bit, byte, or MP3. The rest of the time, though, we use derivative naming, and that creates confusion. If something is a minicomputer, it's like a computer or like a mainframe, only smaller. While such redundant thinking is understandable, it prevented many companies, such as IBM, from focusing on what the mini was *not* like and assimilating the mini's essence into something different. You see where I'm going. But I'll make one more stop en route, at microcomputers. A few months after joining Apple I was horrified when IBM unveiled its new product, a 16-bit homage to the Apple ][. They stole our song and called it The Personal Computer. They had learned by then to focus on the essence of the PC. They understood its strong personal appeal -- it's my computer and I can lift it with my arms, my credit card, and my brains. Others missed this point, including Ken Olsen and a neighbor of mine in the Old Country. He built a PC before IBM, Commodore, MITS, and other numerous and colorful entrepreneurs of the previous generation. But he called it a microcomputer and offered it as a smaller, cheaper minicomputer for accounting and other business applications. For many years he complained bitterly that he wasn't getting proper recognition for inventing the microcomputer. Today, when we discuss IP on everything, we're facing similar trouble. I could use the Microsoft We, when they call their Palm homage a Pocket PC after the even more "complimentary" Palm PC. But they are not converted to the degree that IBM was when they called their new product "Personal." In our case, it's dangerous to call something a sub-PC, because it obscures what IP-enabled devices are *not* like. I personally fell into this trap and it took me a while to disengage from derivative PC-based thoughts. In particular, early in our appliance development efforts, I failed to recognize the role of a strong client-server relationship for the user as well as for our partners. Describing Internet appliances as post-PC isn't as bad as calling them sub-PC. Post-PC points to the fact that while the PC is still today's Internet client, we must look beyond the PC when contemplating uses of the Internet that will enrich tomorrow's education, commerce, or entertainment, or even factory-floor programming of industrial robots. In the past, I've expressed that hope that we'd forge a noun or an acronym. Just as PDA has gained acceptance, I hope we'll find something like IPE or IPED, for IP Enabled Devices. It doesn't capture everything, in particular the role of HTML or XML, but it is in less danger of being captured itself by the PC and its legacy. return to top Marketing Communications at Be by Frank Boosman, Vice President, Marketing Communications Spend a few minutes looking at messages about Be posted in Web discussion groups and you'll quickly see just how many questions the outside world has about how we promote our company and our products. How is Be making itself known? Why don't I see ads for Be plastered on buses and billboards? And why doesn't Be issue a new press release every day, anyway? Read on for the answers. If you haven't noticed Be advertisements on television, in magazines, on buses, and in a variety of other locations, there's a simple explanation: they don't exist. This is because we don't sell directly to consumers. For BeOS, we license publishers around the world -- Gobe, Hitachi, Koch Media, and Apacabar -- who understand their customers far better than we ever could. Each publisher uses marketing techniques appropriate for its location and for the kinds of buyers to whom they sell BeOS. This gives us much better visibility than we'd get by trying to do everything ourselves. For BeIA, we work with Internet appliance vendors -- such as Compaq, Qubit, solopoint, and others -- who typically work with third parties to deliver complete appliance solutions to their customers. As with our partners who publish BeOS, these companies understand their customers better than we do, so we believe it's far more effective to work with them than to try to go it alone. For both BeOS and BeIA, a key advantage of our approach is increased marketing resources. Instead of one company -- Be -- promoting our products, we have a variety of companies serving many different markets in countries around the world. Diving deeper into BeIA for a moment, our target market consists of the companies who are building or delivering Internet appliances, or who contribute significant components of the total solution for such appliances. We think we have a reasonably good idea of who these companies are. Given that, we can reach them through much more targeted programs. For example, I'm writing this column from my hotel in Taipei, where we have a team of seven people attending COMPUTEX, Asia's largest computer trade show. It's a great place for us to meet companies who do the early work of designing and prototyping Internet appliances. In fact, most of our target partners are located in just one hall of the convention center here. By spending a relatively small amount of money to bring a team of people here, we can make sure that every appliance designer in Taiwan knows who Be is. Of course, that's just the first step -- but it's a big first step. Of course, being Be, our presence here at COMPUTEX is as no-nonsense as possible. Instead of a trade show booth, we have a suite at a nearby hotel. This allows us to focus our attention not on the tens of thousands of attendees, but rather to have private, productive meetings with just those companies who count. Tragically, our lack of a booth on the show floor means no magicians, no mimes, no cars on display... but it's a sacrifice we're prepared to make. :-) Since the beginning of the year, we've attended events such as Demo 2000 (where we launched BeIA to great fanfare), Vortex 2000 (another invitation-only industry event), CeBIT (based in Germany, the largest information technology show in the world), and others. Look for us to keep attending events where we can reach companies in our target market. Attending events such as COMPUTEX is one of the two major components of our marketing communications strategy over the coming year. The other is public relations. The first step in public relations is hiring a great PR firm. Imagine that you took a look at the last few years of the computer industry, trying to find a great example of a small company bringing a new platform out of nowhere to take the industry by storm, fighting off behemoth competitors along the way. Imagine that you found just the right example, then tracked down the PR firm that helped that company make it happen. That's just what we did. We found the PR firm that has helped Palm get its message out, A&R Partners, and brought them aboard to work with us. When you think about some of the PR battles Palm has fought in the last few years, it's hard to imagine a better firm than A&R to help Be. The first thing we asked A&R to do was to help us relaunch Be as an Internet appliance software company, with our desktop efforts an important part of the strategy. Given the perception of Be as a company solely focused on alternative desktop operating systems, this was a big task. Judging from the coverage we receive, however, we think we've accomplished this. When the press writes about us these days, they typically describe us in relationship to Internet appliances. So far, so good. The next step in our public relations strategy is to show the world that we're building the right set of relationships in the Internet appliance space. This means making announcements with our partners -- easily the most visible aspect of marketing communications at Be. This year, we've announced relationships with a variety of companies, including Intel, Proxim, FIC, solopoint, and others. So how do we know when to make an announcement? How do we know what to say? It's actually fairly simple: we make announcements when we have real news to share with the world, and what we say is exactly what we're doing -- nothing more, nothing less. Our belief is that being careful and only announcing real news -- as opposed to hyping ourselves -- helps the press understand that when we say something, it's significant and worth covering. return to top YASFC: Yet Another Settings File Class by Jean-Baptiste Queru, Software Engineer / Graphics My articles usually demonstrate some generic techniques, but this one will provide you with a class that you'll be able to use directly in your code. What prompted the design of this class? Three things: I needed a class that I'd be able to use by just putting settings into it and calling some kind of Save() function. I wanted it to be as easy as possible to initialize and use. The existing solutions I had looked at weren't always easy to use, or were severely lacking in other areas. I noticed that the contents of a /boot/home/config/settings folder became messy after a while, with files scattered inconsistently all over the place. This class tries to automate the generation of subdirectories under that folder, to keep it reasonably organized. I needed a class that would give the user some ability to edit some of the settings. I discussed that feature with our Human Interaction guru, and we ended up with the scheme used in this class, which we thought was the best we could reasonably do. Let's check the API first: class SettingsFile : public BMessage { public : SettingsFile(<some parameters>); virtual ~SettingsFile(); status_t InitCheck() const; status_t Load(); status_t Save() const; private: <some private members> }; I tried to keep the API as simple as possible, because I'm a lazy programmer, so I didn't want to have dozens of functions to call or hundreds of error codes to check. The class inherits publicly from BMessage. BMessage is the one-stop shopping place for storing arbitrary data in an organized fashion under BeOS; every developer has seen one and knows how to use one. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. You'll be able to use your favorite AddInt32, FindString, and ReplaceData to store all your nice settings. Even AddMessage works... If you can't guess what InitCheck(), Load() and Save() do, please feel free to send me an-e-mail, and I'll gladly explain them to you. If you also know the question whose answer is 42, I'd like to hear it. What are those weird constructor parameters? OK, there are three parameters: char const*leafname=NULL char const*basename=NULL directory_which dir=B_USER_SETTINGS_DIRECTORY These are used to construct the path to the settings file. They should be read last-to-first: First, the path defined by the directory_which constant is created. A special value of -1 can be used to mean "/", which allows you to enter an absolute path. Then, the basename is added to that path, and a special value of NULL means to construct the basename from the application signature (this feature can only be used when there is a valid BApplication). Finally, the leafname is added to that path, and a special value of NULL means "Settings". The basename is created from the signature by removing the "application /x-vnd." prefix (or simply "application/", if that's what you're using), and by replacing each "." by a "/" (or the first "-" by a "/" if you're using an old-style MIME signature. How are the settings stored in the file? First, they are stored by simply flattening the BMessage into the file, which is what most similar classes also do. Storing data in the file itself (as opposed to putting it in the attributes) is important, at least as a fall back, because the content of the file is preserved when using plain unixish tools (like ftp, cp or tar). Second, some of the fields from the BMessage are stored into the file's attributes. Since messages can contain submessages, and since several fields in a message can have the same name, the mapping between message fields and attribute names is a little bit tricky. The important detail to remember is that the colon ":" is used as a separator. This obviously means that a colon can't be used in a BMessage field. This is as much as feature as a bug: it means that any field that contains a colon in its name will not be replicated in the attributes, so the user will not be able to edit those settings. Uh, where is the code? Right there: ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/samples/support_kit/SettingsFile.zip return to top Statements contained in this Newsletter that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" including without limitation statements regarding the demand for, future market penetration and market acceptance of BeIA and BeOS, the shipment dates of Be's products, and the future operating results of Be Incorporated. Actual events or results may differ materially as a result of risks facing Be Incorporated or actual results differing from the assumptions underlying such statements. Such risks and assumptions include, but are not limited to, risks related to competition, market acceptance and market penetration of Be's products, ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships, the benefit of Be's products to OEM and Internet appliance manufacturers. the continued availability of third party BeOS applications and drivers, and the ability to establish and maintain strategic publishing relationships. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the "Risk Factors" and other cautionary statements included in Be Incorporated's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1999, and other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The BMessage Copyright (c) 2001 by Be, Inc. All rights reserved. Be, Inc. 800 El Camino Real, Suite 400 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (650) 462-4100 Fax: (650) 462-4129 Web: http://www.be.com/ Be, BeOS and BeIA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Be Incorporated in the United States and other countries. Other brand product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. All rights reserved. The BMessage is sent to subscribers of one or more of the Be mailing lists. For more information about subscribing/unsubscribing, see the Be web site: http://www.be.com/world/mailinglists.html. The Be web site also offers a complete set of current and back issues of Be Newsletters: If you have any comments about The BMessage, please e-mail them to:newsletter@be.com.

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