The other half lies in the fact that when you decouple your data from proprietary structures and formats, you open the door to all kinds of funky capabilities. When you combine a filesystem bearing truly useful attributes, a powerful Querying GUI, and the share-ability of these new file formats, you've just turned your hard drive into a mini AltaVista. When you use BeOS, you begin to see your entire hard drive as a database to be mined for valuable information, rather than just a collection of quasi-related files and folders. And since queries are automatically saved, you can create collections of links to customized views of your data based on just about any criteria you choose. Closed systems are dead ends.
Open systems thrive.
Oh, and by the way, don't be surprised if you see PalmPilot HotSynch software for BeOS uploaded to BeWare around or before Release 3. Many thanks to Be's Michael Alderete for sharing his notes and ideas for this article. Be Feb. 9-12 at Software Developer's Conference '98 . WallPaper lets you tile images instead. DeposIt is handy and stays out of the way.