Pro Tools for BeOS

[Mark Grundon]

I've been looking through the mail about BeOS on your site. What I was hoping to find was lots of people writing to Digidesign urging them to port their products to this OS. What I found was a lot of people arguing about the pros and cons of Microsoft or Apple Operating Systems. Surely they are missing the point?

As musicians we all want to get the best tools for the job we are doing. Whilst both Microsoft and Apple Operating systems are excellent general purpose platforms (I use both regularly), only BeOS has been designed from the ground up to be optimised for audio and video work. A look through the BeOS API (you can download it free from their site) confirms this. The experience of those who have used or reviewed it is that it is unquestionably the best tool for the job. The problem is that 1) there isn't much pro-audio software, such as that written by Digidesign, available for it and 2) there are very few drivers available for the hardware required to support these applications. Digidesign however, are in an ideal position to change all that because they produce a complete package that includes both the software and the hardware.

Just think for a minute on the advantages of providing a BeOS based Pro Tools package.

You get instant support for multiprocessor machines (up to 8 CPU's).
You get an OS optimised for processing real-time audio, midi and video events with next to no latency.
You get a 64bit journaling file system that eats up massive video files.
You get a GUI that’s as intuitive to use as any other so no steep learning curves here.
BeOS is available free for private users so Digidesign could bundle it with their software if they wished. If you are working with a Microsoft platform, for general purpose computing, BeOS will sit on you hard drive just like another file until you open it, at which point it shuts down the MS OS and starts up it's own system. It can even read FAT16/32 & NTFS file systems elsewhere on the hdd. In other words you can have the best of both worlds.

The point I'm trying to make here is that for any OS to be a success you have to have someone brave enough to invest time and money porting apps to it. BeOS is (probably) the best OS for the work we do as musicians and Digidesign is undoubtedly best placed of all to provide us with a working package.

So Digidesign: Be brave. Don't wait to see if people rush out and buy the OS - they won't. Give us it free with a recompiled version of Protools (personally I’d be happy to pay extra). I'll lay odds on it being the best performing package we've ever seen even on a machine with one CPU. Then watch Steinberg, Emagic and the rest fall over themselves to catch up.

[aquavit]

i hope that this will not devolve to a silly dbate but.....

im curious how apples os 10 will compare to be os in regards to multi media apps.

will be os's strongpoints be minimised if the new apple os also has them and is already the platform of choice for multi media?

...so how does os 10 stack up to be os i wonder?

[Mark Grundon]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">quote:<HR>Originally posted by aquavit:
i hope that this will not devolve to a silly dbate but.....

im curious how apples os 10 will compare to be os in regards to multi media apps.

will be os's strongpoints be minimised if the new apple os also has them and is already the platform of choice for multi media?

...so how does os 10 stack up to be os i wonder?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd be interrested to know too.

[mike connelly]

I think most people gave up on Be when they announced that they would focus on internet appliances. No major music software companies have announced support for BeOS (and even if PT was ported to BeOS, I'd be shocked if any of the plugin companies would port to it).

With OSX on the horizon (not to mention the many flavours of windows), I'd assume digi has their hands full. And from what I've heard, OSX holds much potential in terms of audio and midi.


Mike

[VanEdge]

actually, it's a crying shame that there isn't more support for the Be OS.
it's really an amazing piece of work.

even the mighty pro tools would be enhanced beyond anyone's expectations on the BE platform.

it outguns any other OS for audio/video in absolutely every imaginable way.

[VanEdge]

go here for a great article to begin to understand...
http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20001229S0001

[Jesper Giovanni]

Hmm...interesting topic! I´ve been playing around with BeOS for a while, and find it truly amazing. And now i see this thread here, and also read the article posted above. And it makes me think things. If Digi were to port ProTools to BeOS, it would really benefit the OS. It would also benefit us, because we would get a more productive platform, and at the same time forcing the MS & Mac-programmers to do something about their own native code, just to catch up with what we could have wit BeOS. As it is now, Mac is primarily being used for graphics and sound-apps, because it is the best for those situations. But as times are, Mac isnt having a good time on the market. Sales falling and all, not looking good and all for the future to come. So why not look into this porting to BeOs as an investment for Digi, and at the same time, promote an OS that was really made for what we do. I cant see why this shouldnt be a shining star in Digi´s eyes. Also, in the above article, BIAS is told to be ported to BeOS, which is truly interesting. Also the possibility to use VST-plug-in´s as a part of the system, and not only in a specific application. They can interact between any open sound-apps, because they now work with the core-system, and not only the sound-apps, when opened. But, hey, read the article, if u havent done so already! The future could be very interesting, if Digi wants it to be. I want the future to be bright and shiny! Dont you?

[Fredrik]

I totally agree! It IS an amazing OS. It is specially designed for multimedia purposes. It's good to musicians... It supports disk with astronomical storage-size. It handles large files fast and easy. It can read CD-audio tracks as aiff or wave. Others have mentioned the vast multiprocessing abilities. I also want to point out the stability that comes from running different processes in protected memory areas. Very hard to crash an OS like that!
The only thing that it lacks is a wide range of software (and hardware) support. Not a small drawback, I agree. As someone pointed out, there is a free version to try out for anyone that's interested. Check it out at: http://www.be.com/
I think that it would just take one of the major music software manufacturers to get the ball rolling.
They have a version for the PowerPC as well, but not for the G3 or G4. Here's a snip from their site that explains why:

<snip>
That said, I still haven't answered the Apple question. If Apple is selling respectable quantities of PowerPC hardware, how come we don't support the latest G3 and G4 machines? As I said above, it boils down to a chipset issue. Intel doesn't have an operating system to defend. In their best interest, they profess to be "OS-agnostic," the more options, the better. In Apple's case, it's different. They own and operate an OS and, like Microsoft, see no reason to help a competitor. Linux provides access to classical Unix applications and, therefore, is little competition for Apple's multimedia heritage. The same can't be said of BeOS, and I can see the logic in Apple's decision not to help us with access to chipset technical data for a G3/G4 BeOS port.

Some have suggested that we look into the Linux sources for such data. Perhaps, but I see little reason to open ourselves to possible accusations of reverse-engineering. We're welcome on x-86 hardware, we're not welcome on Apple G3/G4. We respect the logic and that settles it for us.
<snip>

Computer-based recording and music-making use basically the same hardware components, regardless OS. What we need is an OS that gets the best performance out of the hardware (and software). Recording engineers and home recording musicians should be screaming for BE!

Sorry for the length of this.

Regards,
Fredrik Lidin.

[SteveTyler]

A Quick History Review:

- Be, Inc. came out of Apple a few years ago.

- Be's focus has always been on Multi-media, and actually still is in terms of what it is doing with BeIA..go to http://www.benews.com to read about HARP.

- The kind of functionality that Apple has been showing off recently with OS X was working in BeOS years ago (the rotating cube, for example).

- Above, someone states that there are no companies using BeOS since the "focus shift". This is simply not true, Bias Peak is soon to be released with Deck in active development. Also, iZ Technology, the company who created the Radar as sold by Otari has released the Radar24, a hard disk recorder based around....BeOS. There is also a company who's name escapes me at this moment, who uses BeOS as the core of a live sound/lighting system for Theatre use.

- When Peak (and eventually Deck, along with dBe when it gets audio support..) is released we will finally get to see the performance advantages.

- Which leaves plugin support, VST plugins work now. You can use them with SoundPlay, the BeOS equivalent of the MediaPlayer.

- The argument of MS or Apple or anything else is an eternal one based more on preference than anything else in most cases. However, it is clear to me that BeOS is in advance of Apple by at least three to four years. From what I've read, in terms of multimedia support, MS is actually getting closer to what Be provides with what they're doing with DirectX, etc.

OK, I've been rambling quite a bit now so I'll summarize then shut up:

The bottom line has nothing to do with Technical issues, it's got to do with a companies commitment to providing a product to it's customers based on what customers want. Sadly, there are not many people who are aware of all the advantages that Be has to offer, therefore not enough for Digidesign to take a look.

Finally, look how long it Digidesign to commit to supporting MacOS and Windows NT?

Thanks for listening if you got this far!!

Steve

By the way, I've used Win XX, MacOS, Dec UNIX, VMS, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2, QNX and BeOS.......and I have to say that BeOS does what it states it should...the best.