Why is the BeOS so great? Why would I want to run or develop for the BeOS? What are the key features of the BeOS?

Performance

• the BeOS was built from the ground up, without layers of legacy baggage
• the BeOS supports multiple processors (symmetrical multi-processing)
• the entire BeOS and Be apps are extensively multi-threaded to take advantage of parallelism on MP systems
• the BeOS offers preemptive multi-tasking to efficiently perform multiple tasks at once
• the 64-bit Be file system supports files vastly larger than the typical 4-gigabyte limit of 32-bit systems
• the high-performance Be file system supports journalling which speeds booting after a power failure
• OpenGL is supported in addition to the native 3-D Kit
• DMA support for IDE hard drives provides very fast data transfer

Reliability

• the BeOS supports protected memory, which prevents misbehaved applications from crashing the system or other applications
• the BeOS is built from the ground up with a simplified API, resulting in smaller and more stable applications
• the journaling feature of the Be file system makes disk operations more reliable, ensuring data integrity

Integrated Services

• system database and queries
• system level messaging
• built-in Ethernet with FTP, Telnet and PPP support
• bundled email and web browser software
• scripting
• elastic technology
• MIME type file attributes
• Unicode UTF-8 font encoding
• datatypes libraries for integrated opening, saving, etc. media data like JPEG, AVI, QuickTime, etc.
• improved and more flexible user interface

Compatibility

• Posix compliant layer
• AppleTalk printing
• PostScript printing
• Unicode UTF-8 font encoding
• Mac HFS disk support
• Java tools with the Metrowerks CodeWarrior for BeOS IDE