Remember about a year ago when the Mac world was abuzz with the "sure thing" that Apple would buy Be and use the fledgling BeOS as the basis for the next Mac operating system? According to Macintouch, Be was only offered $75 million by Apple during its negotiations, despite the fact that NeXT was eventually purchased for $400 million, instead.

So did Apple pass up a bargain by trying to lowball Be on price? We're not so sure. Think for a moment about what Apple got for its $400 million: NeXTStep was a completed, working, and mature OS with most of the modern features that Apple wanted for their successor to the Mac OS, while Be still couldn't print; how much longer would we be waiting for the OS now known as Rhapsody if it had been based on the BeOS instead of NeXTStep? Plus, Apple got WebObjects, which forms the framework for its new Apple Store, and--most importantly--Steve Jobs, who has proved instrumental in Apple's current turnabout.

And speaking of Steve Jobs, it would appear that he's none too thrilled about competing with Be on the Powermac hardware platform; Be is claiming that Apple won't provide them with the necessary hardware specs in order for Be to make the BeOS compatible with the Powermac G3 systems. Be's not too worried, though; they're more than happy to be an Intel-only OS. (We at AtAT, however, think that would be a shame.)

Meanwhile, thessaSOURCE points us to a SoftTrends press release which shows that Mac OS 8 beat out Windows 95 in unit sales last August. Mac OS 8 apparently captured over 35% of total sales, as opposed to Windows' almost 28%. Nice!

Although, we're not sure that really says much. After all, Windows 95 has been out for two years; you'd think that anyone who was going to run it would have bought it by now. Mac OS 8, on the other hand, debuted in late July, so you'd expect the sales to be huge in August. Still, early sales of Apple's latest OS revision surpassed even Apple's wildest expectations, topping 1.2 million units in the first two weeks. That is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Interesting... Mac OS Rumors has a source who reports that Apple has gotten an implementation of Quicktime running on an eMate 300. This source claims to have seen Apple's "Think Different" commercial running on the eMate's standard greyscale screen.

It seems logical that if a vanilla eMate with upgraded system software can run Quicktime, then perhaps a MessagePad could, too. And that leaves the door wide open for someone to hack together something we've wanted for a long time: a way to use our Connectix Quickcam with our Newton MessagePad. The MessagePad has a serial port, and if it ran Quicktime, it should be possible...

Rumors also reports that the next eMate revision, the eMate 1000, is due in February or March, after making a debut at MacWorld Expo San Francisco in January; the "business-class" eMate, code-named "Santa Fe," may surface next summer.