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Firstly, I think I have to say 'define "failed".' The company is sadly dead and gone, swallowed by PalmSource. BeOS tech was used to build the ARM-native, multitasking, media-savvy PalmOS 6 "Cobalt" -- which sadly never shipped on any devices. PalmSource was then in turn swallowed by Access Corp of Japan.

These guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_(company)

Still alive, to quote GladOS. It provides the Kindle web browser, for instance.

Second, BeOS has been reborn as Haiku, which is also very much alive, and includes what Be code it legally can (the Tracker, mainly).

Haiku is IMHO the most complete/most interesting desktop FOSS out there. Haiku is now self-hosting and recently entered beta, after a long gestation. There's very little manpower behind it, so progress is slow, but it is moving.

So, significant influence, I think it's fair to say. BeOS shipped, it sold, I reviewed v5 and it remains my favourite x86 OS ever written. (Yeah, I'm biased. Sue me.)

1 comments

I think you’re forcing your definition of “successful” a little. I’m not going to disagree with you that BeOS was awesome; it still remains one of my all time favourite desktop OSs. But regardless it wasn’t commercially successful and thus isn’t sold to consumers any longer.

Haiku is an interesting one. I’d put it in the same category as ReactOS. It’s successful in the sense that it’s an open source project that’s under active development. However they’re still essentially just hobbiest platforms so I wouldn’t even rank them successful when compared to Linux on the desktop (eg Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) let alone successful compared to commercial platforms like Windows nor OS X.

It really is a great shame BeOS wasnt more successful though, it was an amazing platform (even without framing it in the context of the shit that was around at the time: Windows 9x and Mac OS 9). Sadly for Haiku, desktop computing has moved on and I just don’t think there’s any need for a classic BeOS desktop any more.