Hello All,
First off, some impressions on the BeOS in general and the BeBox in specific. The OS is very elegant to use once you get used to it. It seems to combine the best of the mac with some PC stuff. The Dock on the left of the screen that allows you to store files and apps is pretty cool (reminds me of my NeXT programming days), but I realy want to be able to clutter up my desk top and I told as much to the engineer responsible for such things. He nodded politely.

The overall response of the system is very quick. No waiting for screen redraws. When you drag a window, the entire window goes with you as well. Pretty impressive. There are no pauses when you open file dialogs etc. Quite a change for a mac user.

All in all, the user interface is well suited for the demands of digital audio.

Now, for the meat and potatoes and audio.

There are a few cool audio apps that showcase the BeBox but nothing that you would need to do serrious work. Rather, the cool audio apps show what will be possible as soon as the developers either finish their programs or more join the platform.

I spoke at length to the developer support guy as to what I as a developer want to see internally in the OS so that audio folk can develop in harmony with the OS and not in constant conflict. I suggested an OS feature that would allow for arbitrary mix channels and buses at an OS level. This would allow developers to focus on the product specific features while keeping the mixer completely open. This will save a great deal of time for the plugin developers (ummmm, like me) since we would then only need to develop a single plugin standard that meshed with the OS level mixer. This would work for all host based processing with any arbitrary i/o card combintation. Kinda like what the sound manager is suposed to do.

Ofcourse, dedicated busses like TDM will have to do their own thing but I can not see a way around that one.

The company is very willing to hear what users want and I urge you to make your voice heard. Go to http://www.be.com and let them know you are alive.

Anyway, the BeBox and BeOS looks to be a very promissing platform. It is very developer friendly (I got a blue window up and running with a real time effect in one day of work), and very fast. The great news is that it will be available for 603/604 macs very soon now and this will allow you to preview the system and will give us developers a decent sized potential market out the gate.

On the down side, there are still many things left to be done. Certainly, there needs to some complete integrated audio/midi apps to get the ball rolling, but even as we speak many are slaving away on these problems. Hopefully, these programs will show up soon.

Anyway, go buy a BeBox or install BeOS on your mac so I have an excuse to go buy a BeBox and write programs for it.

-chris
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Chris Weare
// Arboretum Systems
// http://www.arboretum.com
// "Hyperprism is a wonderful invention" - Brian_ Eno
// Hyperprism demos including Reverb and the Pitch-Time Changer
// now available on our web site.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

---

[reviews]

[news]

[downloads]

[general info]

[Links+Lists]

[digital chat ]

---

---