Musings on the OS scene.

I find it rather amusing when I think back a few years ago, when I was ardently opposed to the idea of owning a Macintosh. It wasn’t that I was anti-Apple, or a PC-fanboy, but rather that I didn’t like the user-friendliness of MacOS and the insane pricetag that went along with it. Nowadays, though, it seems that Microsoft is constantly dumbing down their OS for the computer illiterate also, and in an age where MacOS is half-Unix, I can’t help but drool at the idea of owning a brand new PowerBook.

From time to time, someone writes in with a request for BeOS news, usually after checking out our fancy article on the free BeOS R5 distro. Unfortunately, I’m sad to say that BeOS went out-of-business some time ago, which is why instead of shouting about how great BeOS is, I’ve taken up the OS X flag and wave it around from time to time.

Maybe I shouldn’t stop preaching about BeOS after all, however, especially after reading news bits about OpenBeOS, not to mention that the BeOS community is still somewhat active, especially in regards to niche software and other development projects, which only tend to make me wonder about alternative operating systems.

This, of course, brings me to recent news about AmigaOS, which is kind of creepy, given that it isn’t yet another OS, but a rehash of an early OS that most of the world forgot about. Even scarier is the fact that if it’s not someone bringing back the BeBox, it’s someone doing the same with the Amiga.

All this craziness strikes me somewhat familiar, especially considering precedent concerning Apple and its niche markets. Really, with the way things are heading, who knows where the future of operating systems are going?

In my opinion, OS neutrality is still the best advice anyone can give, especially now.

Tagged as: mendax.org