From: Tony Maxwell <tony@...> >What I found appealing about the BeOS was exactly this idea of a custom OS >dedicated to the program. Just as stand-alone hard-disk recorders, samplers >and synths have their own OSs, Logic and other programs could have used Be >as something approaching a proprietary OS, designed specifically to run the >program alone. Taking this idea to extremes, programs such as Logic could >come bundled with their own OS (isn't that just another description of >various hard-disk recorders?) - but I realise that this will probably never >happen due to the complexity and costs/relative to market size of building >an OS that can run a full-fledged computer. That's precisely what Be is saying! Their whole marketing point is that stand-alone "appliances" are where the money is (they point to the VS-880 as an example in our industry, and to the DVD iMac as a general public example). Of course, there's also the small potential matter of there being little money in a "media OS"... In any case, all we really want is low latency host-based audio, and that's also starting to happen under other operating systems. Extreme efficiency may not be such a big deal as computers get faster. Or am I wrong? ___ Nick Batzdorf, editor - Recording magazine The magazine for the recording musician www.Recordingmag.com. editorial: US 818/905-9101, fax -5434 subscriptions, address changes: 800/582-8326, 281/261-2581