I still have my BeBox … plus a prototype case. When the boxes were first shipped to some developers, the case design had yet to be finalized. When the final case arrived, you swapped the motherboard and cards from the prototype to the new case.
Well, Apple would have gone out of business one way or another, and we'd still be at the mercy of carrier-locked "featurephones". No iPod, either.
And this isn't about BeOS, really; the lack of technical merit was a problem, but Mac OS X didn't ship in usable form for six years, and, you know, in that time they certainly could have ported QuickDraw GX and print drivers, and ported over Unicode support from the Taligent sources. But there's no timeline in which Gil Amelio manages to fully rescue Apple. He and the people he brought in didn't understand the problems.
Is that a better world? Quite possibly, because social media wouldn't have been able to destroy the world quite so effectively. (And I prefer MiniDisc to the original iPod; still have a couple of MiniDisc players and some blank discs.) But probably not better for computing.
https://imgur.com/a/wukfY6B
I should probably use it more. ;)
And this isn't about BeOS, really; the lack of technical merit was a problem, but Mac OS X didn't ship in usable form for six years, and, you know, in that time they certainly could have ported QuickDraw GX and print drivers, and ported over Unicode support from the Taligent sources. But there's no timeline in which Gil Amelio manages to fully rescue Apple. He and the people he brought in didn't understand the problems.
Is that a better world? Quite possibly, because social media wouldn't have been able to destroy the world quite so effectively. (And I prefer MiniDisc to the original iPod; still have a couple of MiniDisc players and some blank discs.) But probably not better for computing.
In my alternative world :
- all the kids want a zune this Christmas which is gaining traction on market leader creative
- general magic is bought by a baby bill post MS breakup to give us iPhone-ish in 2013
- wearables is science fiction
- VR still sux
- Facebook doesn’t happen ( I can dream)
- blackberry is still a thing