references but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations . please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations . march 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message be inc. fate dissolved founded 1990 defunct november 15 2001 headquarters menlo park california united states key people jean louis gass e steve sakoman founders products beos bebox beia website www.beincorporated.com be inc. was an american computer company founded in 1990 best known for the development and release of beos and the bebox personal computer . be was founded by former apple computer executive jean louis gass e with capital from seymour cray . be s corporate offices were located in menlo park california ; as well as regional sales offices in france and japan . the company later relocated to mountain view in california for the duration of its dissolution . the main intent of be was to develop a new operating system using the c programming language on a proprietary hardware platform . the beos ran on the bebox but was later ported to apple computer s power macs despite resistance from apple due to the hardware specifications assistance of power computing . in 1998 the system was ported to the intel x86 architecture and powerpc support was reduced finally being dropped after beos r5 . contents 1 history 2 company name 3 references 4 external links history edit be was founded by former apple computer executive jean louis gass e in 1990 with steve sakoman after being ousted by apple ceo john sculley . 1 be aimed to create a modern computer operating system written in c on a proprietary hardware platform . in 1995 the bebox personal computer was released by be with its distinctive strips of lights up the front that indicated the load of each cpu and the combined analogue digital 37 pin geekport has made it a highly desirable item for collectors citation needed . in addition to beos and bebox be also produced beia an ill fated os for internet appliances . it was however used commercially by sony with the evilla and dt research amongst others during its short lifespan . in 1996 apple was searching for a new operating system to replace the classic mac os . eventually the two final options were beos and nextstep . the deal swung towards next due to the persuasive influence of steve jobs and the incomplete state of the beos product criticized at the time for lacking such features as printing capability . ultimately the assets of the corporation were bought by palm inc. where gass e served on the board of directors for us 11 million in 2001 at which point the company entered dissolution . the company then initiated litigation against microsoft for anti competitive business practices specifically the prohibition of oems to allow dual boot systems containing both microsoft and non microsoft operating systems . the suit was settled in september 2003 with a us 23.25 million payout to be inc. palm subsequently spun off a wholly owned subsidiary palmsource to develop its palm os and related software with the be assets being transferred to palmsource which was subsequently acquired by japanese based access . company name edit according to several sources including macworld uk the company name be had its origin in a conversation between gass e and be co founder steve sakoman . gass e originally thought the company should be called united technoids inc. but sakoman disagreed and said he would start looking through the dictionary for a better name . a few days later when gass e asked if he had made any progress sakoman replied that he had got tired and stopped at b. gass e said be is nice . end of story . references edit pollack andrew 3 march 1990 . apple official says he will leave . the new york times . retrieved 31 march 2013 . external links edit bebits current development v t e beos companies be inc. gobe software yellowtab magnussoft computers bebox sony evilla operating systems beos beia haiku magnussoft zeta community begeistert retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title be inc. & oldid 741529888 categories be inc.defunct computer companies based in californiadefunct computer hardware companiesdefunct software companies of the united stateshome computer hardware companiessoftware companies based in the san francisco bay areacompanies based in menlo park californiacomputer companies established in 1990companies disestablished in 20011990 establishments in california2001 disestablishments in californiadefunct companies based in the san francisco bay areahidden categories articles lacking in text citations from march 2013all articles lacking in text citationsall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from april 2009 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom 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