--- title: Infinite Mac: BeOS | daily.dev description: Infinite Mac now lets you run many versions of BeOS directly in the browser, booting instantly with streamed disk images. The author worked on BeOS support... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/infinite-mac-beos-glzv4oi9o twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Infinite Mac: BeOS | daily.dev og:description: Infinite Mac now lets you run many versions of BeOS directly in the browser, booting instantly with streamed disk images. The author worked on BeOS support... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/infinite-mac-beos-glzv4oi9o og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/GLzv4oi9o.png og:image:alt: Infinite Mac: BeOS og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Infinite Mac: BeOS **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Infinite Mac now lets you run many versions of BeOS directly in the browser, booting instantly with streamed disk images. The author worked on BeOS support using DingusPPC, the PowerPC Mac emulator, fixing bugs like a modifier-key glitch in ADB emulation and a missing little-endian video memory mode. The author believes that with these fixes DingusPPC is the only emulator able to run PowerPC versions of BeOS. The site also gained screenshot and video capture of the emulated screen, and OS CD-ROMs are now mirrored on the author's own Cloudflare R2 bucket because streaming from the Internet Archive has been flaky. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Can you run BeOS for PowerPC in an emulator today? Yes, DingusPPC can run PowerPC versions of BeOS after a series of compatibility fixes made over about a month, including corrections to ADB modifier-key emulation, video controller/DAC notification order, and little-endian video memory support. It is described as the only emulator currently able to run PowerPC BeOS, and it is accessible in-browser through Infinite Mac. _Developers curious about retro OS emulation can follow projects like Infinite Mac on daily.dev._ ### Why did early BeOS Developer Release 8.2 stop booting after April 1997? BeOS Developer Release 8.2, the first version for Power Macintosh, included a time bomb that prevented booting after April 1, 1997, because it shipped with a licensed font renderer that Be could not distribute indefinitely. Developer Release 8.3 addressed the licensing issue, and running DR8.2 today requires hardcoding a working date to bypass the lockout. _Anyone exploring vintage OS quirks can track emulation deep-dives like this one on daily.dev._ ### How did BeOS handle cross-architecture compatibility compared to NeXTStep? BeOS required separate executables for different architectures like PowerPC and Intel, unlike NeXTStep's 'fat' binaries that ran on 68K, Intel, PA-RISC and other architectures from a single file. BeOS also used the host endianness for its BFS file system, so CD-ROM disks written on a PowerPC install could not be read on an Intel machine and vice versa, complicating software distribution. _Developers weighing legacy platform trade-offs can find comparisons like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 56 comments across hackernews, lobsters (as of 2026-10-31). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers less on the Infinite Mac emulator itself and mostly spins off into a deep historical debate about whether Apple should have bought BeOS instead of NeXT, plus nostalgic appreciation for BeOS's tabbed window UI and pointers to Haiku OS as its spiritual successor. **Sentiment:** 35% positive · 55% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - Former Be employees and others praise BeOS's tabbed/magnetic window UI as genuinely novel and still unmatched today. - Several note Haiku OS is a pleasant, surprisingly capable modern continuation of BeOS worth trying. - Some recall BeOS upgrades as unusually smooth and impressive at the time. **The pushback** - Former insiders argue BeOS had poor code quality, lacked printer drivers, and was far behind NEXTSTEP in networking/printing. - Its C++-based API tied it to a specific mid-90s GCC ABI, causing long-term compatibility headaches still affecting Haiku today. - Commenters argue the 'fragile base class' problem in its heavily subclassed API would have caused serious long-term scaling issues. - One commenter reports the emulated VM's mouse click doesn't work for them. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Largely diverges into a detailed, fairly skeptical historical debate about Apple's Be-vs-NeXT decision, mixed with nostalgic praise for BeOS's window-tabbing UI. - lobsters (positive): Brief, upbeat thread mostly pointing newcomers to Haiku OS as BeOS's successor, with one minor technical gripe about VM mouse clicks. **Hottest debate:** Whether Apple would have been better off acquiring Be instead of NeXT, with insiders arguing BeOS's technical and management shortcomings make that counterfactual unlikely to have succeeded. **Open questions** - Would Be's management have been capable of turning BeOS into a production-ready OS without repeating Apple's Copland failure? - How would BeOS's C++ ABI fragile-base-class problem have been resolved long-term if it had become Apple's main OS? **Highlights** > Some former Be employees have commented here in the past saying that Apple made the right decision to buy Next from a technical perspective, as BeOS had poor code quality and was far behind NEXTSTEP in important areas like networking and printing. They also implemented the OS API directly in C++, which tied them to a specific C++ compiler (some mid-90s version of GCC) due to the ABI getting broken in newer versions. The 32-bit version of Haiku (modern BeOS reimplementation) supports BeOS software, and as a result still needs to be compiled with that mid-90s GCC release. Beyond that, I'm not sure if buying Be would have fixed the managerial problems at Apple. Would they have been able to add the required features to BeOS to turn it into a production OS without the project turning into another Copland? Would the existing Apple management have slimmed down the massive Apple product line that had dozens of nearly identical models? Would it have gotten rid of dead-end projects like Newton and Pippin? Etc. > — [ndiddy on hackernews · 8 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50310477) > Pre-standard C++ is an even worse programming language than C++ 98, but also the big difference wouldn't have been the technology, it was the people. If Apple buy Be Inc they're getting JLG back whereas if they buy NeXT they get Jobs back. Jobs is what makes or breaks Apple in that critical period. I didn't like him but that's relevant to the success of the company. JLG did not have whatever it was Jobs gave the company. > — [tialaramex on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50310818) > Former Be person here. Excellent summary. To further elucidate the management issue, some of the Be management went to Palm and they weren’t super effective there either. A fun alternative universe would be Apple buying Be, Apple going bankrupt or eaten by the clones, NeXT powering the internet with WebObjects, Microsoft crushed by antitrust and we are all running Linux using Eazel/GNOME. > — [diskzero on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50312307) > Haiku made them magnetic. In classic BeOS you had to manually position the windows on top of each other, then hold shift and manually drag the tab over from the left. And they wouldn't be tethered together: moving one window wouldn't move the other. It was annoying enough that I never bothered. By the end of BeOS's life I was mostly using the Mac OS 8 titlebar style (accessed by holding down all the modifier keys and pressing the Be menu). > — [electroly on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50312987) > I suppose most of you know about the open source successor to BeOS, Haiku OS. But in case you don’t, here it is: https://www.haiku-os.org/ > — [m\_eiman on lobsters · 10 points, 2 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/fskctn/infinite_mac_beos#c_olyfgt) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309029) · 120 points · 51 comments - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/fskctn/infinite_mac_beos) · 31 points · 5 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [My favourite PowerMac is a Nintendo Wii](https://daily.dev/posts/my-favourite-powermac-is-a-nintendo-wii-tsttuscr5) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The PC OS That Would Have Blown Your Mind Back In 1984](https://daily.dev/posts/the-pc-os-that-would-have-blown-your-mind-back-in-1984-7gqt0h1rq) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The BeBox: BeOS Hardware, Photos, and the Apple Deal That Wasn't](https://daily.dev/posts/the-bebox-beos-hardware-photos-and-the-apple-deal-that-wasn-t-9zhykzgp5) · Two Stop Bits · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Classic MacOS for non-Apple PowerPC kit rediscovered](https://daily.dev/posts/classic-macos-for-non-apple-powerpc-kit-rediscovered-elzp9un95) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#retrocomputing](https://daily.dev/tags/retrocomputing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/infinite-mac-beos-glzv4oi9o) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Infinite Mac: BeOS","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/infinite-mac-beos-glzv4oi9o","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/infinite-mac-beos-glzv4oi9o"},"datePublished":"2026-10-30T21:41:50.508Z","dateModified":"2026-10-31T03:57:59.431Z","description":"Infinite Mac now lets you run many versions of BeOS directly in the browser, booting instantly with streamed disk images. 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