Oliver Thylmann

It was nagging me for some time and now I found back the pages about the wonderful BeIA. Remember the time Apple bought Next? The other company that was in the pitch was Be, Inc. At the time Be, Inc. had BeOS as a Desktop operating system and was getting ready to release the first versions of BeIA, a tablet OS.

Source: Be to be on Web Tablets

Just check out this little bit from the BeIA FAQ:

Why won’t everyone just use a computer to log on to the Internet?

The PC, although it is a wonderfully expandable and open device, has several drawbacks as a dedicated Internet device. First, it takes an inordinate amount of time to get on line. It requires a large amount of knowledge to use it. It is not responsive and stable like a consumer electronic device. The PC forces people to work in ways that may not be right for the task at hand. For instance, you do not have to “boot” your television or “shut down” your CD player. PCs are often in the wrong part of the house to accomplish what you want to do. In order for the web to truly become ubiquitous, new classes of devices, with purpose-built user experiences, will be created. The PC is great for business style applications, but it isn’t the right tool for every use.

You can look at other parts of like the BeIA Datasheet and find more things. I could have pasted more things but I presume you can read it yourself.

It has already been said that Apple did not think about using the iPhone OS on the iPad otherwise they would not have named it iPhone OS. What Jobs might have thought is that Jean-Louis Gassee had a nice idea with BeIA but wanted to wait for a time when hardware is ripe to really allow for this kind of tablet to exist. Be was seriously too soon with it as the device itself would have been too clunky and ugly, but still. See the icons on the screen? The simplicity? Always on? No boot times?

Not bad for an idea of 2001 ey?

I am starting to wonder if people have no clue or if I am just clueless and I seriously do not want to believe that. The thing is that everybody is complaining that Apple’s iPad is not doing multitasking. Fine by me. Most things do not really need multitasking though and if the modal screens for push messages is improved you can stay online in your skype account or do other things. Sure it would be nice to be able to move a video to a small screen and continue browsing the web, but we will survive.

What drives me nuts though is people starting to speculate that Chrome OS will kill the iPad because it has multitasking or doesn’t have flash? What?

First the multitasking. Yes, Android does multitasking, but Chrome OS is a browser and you can do multiple tabs, but that is not multitasking and something the iPad can do just fine. So this is really a non-point. Chrome OS is first still in development and second focussed on all being in a browser and hence not multitasking as such.

As for flash, yes some sites will not run but Youtube is already working as they are making special iPhone versions of videos and many others will try to incorporate HTML5. Just check out the SublimeVideo Player to see what is possible. Amazing stuff.

Oh and one thing for everyone: Not everyone has to or will buy an iPad and it is not the end-all device and not built as such. I actually chose a Mac because I wanted it to work after hacking around in servers and linux and windows boxes for ages. The iPad is just taking it one step further. Talk to people who have an iPhone. Most of them stopped hacking them because it is fine as it is or you move to e.g. Android. And Android is multitasking.