Perhaps I should have waited a day to report Be Inc.’s deal yesterday:
Less than 24 hours after the tiny OS company announced a strategic alliance with Motorola, Be has announced similar deals with Mac clone-vendors Umax and DayStar. Both companies, like Motorola and Power Computing, will offer the BeOS as an alternative to the MacOS. At this point, virtually every manufacturer selling Macintosh-compatible computers has signed on with Be, except for Apple itself.
Both companies view the deals as insurance in case Apple fumbles in its plans to produce the next generation Macintosh operating system, code-named “Rhapsody.”
In a somewhat related story, Apple has suddenly turned on the Macintosh clone makers. The company will hold a seminar this month called “Why Apple branded vs. the Clones” where it will explain to customers that Apple hardware is a better choice than clones. Mac clone makers responded with surprise, for the most part
