An overview of some of the announcements that will be made this weekend at the Be
Developer Conference.

At the conference we will:

* demonstrate and talk about the advanced developer copy of the 
  BeOS Preview Release in public for the first time.

* host nearly 800 developers from all over the world at the 
  developer conference.

* announce that Netscape will be porting their FastTrack Server 
  to the BeOS.

* have Mark Andreessen from Netscape and Greg Galanos from 
  Metrowerks give talks.

* announce that NeoLogic has ported its NeoAccess Object Library 
  to the BeOS and measured speed improvements of 300% to 500% 
  relative to the MacOS on similar hardware.

* ship the Advanced Access Preview Release to all 3,300 registered 
  Be developers so they can start developing software which takes 
  advantage of the new features in BeOS Preview.

* announce Release 3 of CodeWarrior for the BeOS including its 
  Java tools.


As you can see, it will be a very busy Mother's Day weekend.

-------------------------
THE BEOS PREVIEW RELEASE

The web site will be completely updated on Saturday morning and will include a number of new documents in the products section including;

* the Media OS white paper
* What's New in Preview
* BeOS Datasheet
* A Tour of the BeOS

Here are some highlights...

At the conference we will begin distribution of advance copies of the Preview
Release to developers attending the Be Developer Conference, being held this
weekend in Santa Clara.

Developers at the conference are receiving an "advanced access" CD containing the
BeOS Preview Release and the tools needed for development of applications,
drivers and other software. Be is releasing this advance developer release of the 
BeOS Preview Release to accelerate software development, and to gain feedback
prior to finalizing the public CD of the Preview Release. This CD is being 
released ONLY to software developers - not to end users.


In addition, Metrowerks, Inc. is issuing a preliminary version of Release 3 of 
CodeWarrior for BeOS, including support for the Preview Release, new versions of
the CodeWarrior IDE and debugging tools, and the first versions of Java tools for 
the BeOS. The final version of Release 3 will be available concurrently with the 
public version of the BeOS Preview Release.

The BeOS Preview Release will be the first version of the BeOS to be made 
available to the public. It contains a wealth of new features, and represents the 
most significant revision of the software to date.

The BeOS is a new operating system environment designed to meet the 
high-performance needs of digital content design and Internet communications, 
removing the limitations and complexity of the aging architectures of current 
mainstream operating systems. The engineering team at Be didn't start with an 
existing OS and transform it, they started with concept called the "Media OS" 
() and optimized every portion 
of a new OS - the BeOS - for handling digital media. The BeOS is the first new
operating system designed to unlock the door to much more powerful personal 
computers, and extract more performance from the systems we use today.


Among the new features of the BeOS Preview Release:

* New Be File System. The Be File System (BFS) is now a full 64-bit 
  system, allowing the BeOS to handle files and volumes measured 
  in petabytes (a thousand terabytes). The BFS is fully 
  multithreaded, allowing it to take advantage of multiple 
  processors, and is a "journaling" system, ensuring that the 
  file system is always in a consistent, uncorrupted state -- even 
  after power losses -- and reducing system boot up time to a few 
  seconds. And the BFS is faster than its predecessor found in the 
  DR8 release. 
  
* New Graphics Capabilities. The BeOS graphics capabilities 
  have been vastly expanded. Among the new capabilities are 
  anti-aliased fonts, full network and direct printing support 
  including Postscript and AppleTalk printer support, and the 
  first software-based version of the industry standard OpenGL 
  3D graphics libraries. 
  
* New Inter-application Services. The messaging 
  capabilities of the BeOS have been enhanced and the first level 
  of object scripting capabilities makes its debut. Internet 
  MIME type identification is now used throughout the system, 
  improving integration with Internet applications. In 
  addition, the Preview Release introduces Be's "Replicator" 
  technology, a new object messaging model which allows you to 
  embed active pieces of data and code -- called "replicants" -- 
  from one application into documents and into other 
  applications. Replicants represent the next step in modular 
  BeOS software. 
  
* Enhanced Internet Capabilities. The native TCP/IP 
  capabilities of the BeOS are improved and expanded, with 
  increased network performance, integrated FTP file server 
  and personal web server capabilities, and mail client 
  support, and remote access capabilities. The integrated BeOS 
  web browser, NetPositive, is enhanced and integrates the BeOS 
  Replicator technology. Using this, you'll be able to install 
  active web pages onto the BeOS desktop. 
  
* New Java Support. With the release of Metrowerks CodeWarrior 
  Release 3, the first versions of the Java runtime for BeOS, and 
  Java development tools become available to application and 
  web content developers. 
  
* New User Interface. The BeOS user interface has undergone a 
  complete upgrade and transformation. With the Preview 
  Release, the desktop is controlled by the BeOS Tracker, a new 
  modular and unobtrusive way of getting at your disks and 
  frequently used applications. Icons can now be placed on the 
  desktop. Mac OS HFS volumes can be viewed and manipulated, and 
  support will be added for DOS and NFS volumes, among other 
  formats. And a wealth of new preferences allow you to customize 
  the BeOS. 
  
* New Hardware Support. The range of PowerPC-based systems 
  capable of running the BeOS has been expanded. PowerPC 603 
  based systems such as Power Computing's PowerBase, new 604 
  systems from Power, Apple and others, and Motorola's StarMax 
  line are a few of the newly capable systems. In addition, the 
  BeOS provides full true symmetric multiprocessing support 
  for dual and quad processor systems from Power Computing, 
  Daystar and Apple. 
  
In response to the overwhelming interest in the BeOS in Japan, Unicode support 
now appears throughout the system. A feature originally planned for late 1997, 
the Preview Release utilizes the Unicode UTF-8 format (the format used by Java)
within all text objects and within the font system.  This support is a major step 
towards a fully international version of the BeOS, and further enhancements in 
this area will be introduced through 1997.

Complete details on the new features of the BeOS Preview Release, and complete 
list of BeOS capable hardware systems, can be found at 
.

The Advanced Access CD is being distributed to developers who are attending the 
Be Developer Conference. In addition, it will be delivered next week to registered 
developers in the Be Developer Program. More information on this release, and on 
the Media OS concept, can be found at . The preliminary 
release of CodeWarrior for BeOS Release 3 will be distributed to all registered 
CodeWarrior for BeOS users. More information on CodeWarrior can be found on 
Saturday May 10th at http://www.metrowerks.com.

We have not yet finalized our pricing and distribution plans for the BeOS Preview 
Release but know that our overall goal is to get the BeOS on as many systems as 
we can. You can expect our rollout plans to be consistent with that goal. Note that
this information will NOT be available on the Be web site until the morning of 
Saturday, May 10. We're sending this Preview Release information out early to the
people who took the time to sign up for Preview Release info; you're finding out 
about it before the rest of the world does.

You WILL be notified via e-mail when the Preview Release is available to the 
general public; in fact, you'll likely know this information before it appears on 
the Be web site. But in the meantime, please try to be patient with us as we 
assist developers during this developer-only release of the BeOS.


THE NETSCAPE SUPPORT
------------------------

At the conference Netscape is announcing its plans to develop and release the 
FastTrack server for the Be Operating System. This will be the first Netscape 
server product available to customers on the PowerPC platform. The Netscape 
FastTrack server will come bundled with the BeOS, the first software product to
participate in a bundling program also being revealed at the conference. This 
bundling program enables developers to provide customers with a turn-key 
solution. Distribution plans for the products will be announced during the 
summer, but it is expected that the products will be made available by CD, 
electronically, and through BeOS OEMs.

The Netscape FastTrack Server is an easy-to-use Web server that installs in 
minutes. Businesses can use FastTrack to quickly establish a presence on the 
Internet. It is a complete solution for creating and managing Web sites on the 
Internet or Intranet and is an open platform for publishing traditional Internet
documents as well as developing and deploying live network-centric and 
media-rich applications.

The FastTrack server will take advantage of a number of capabilities built into 
the Be Operating System. Most significantly, it will be optimized to take 
advantage of the combination of the BeOS's symmetric multiprocessing design and
the system's pervasively multithreaded architecture -- leading to very high 
performance and high data throughput. In addition, FastTrack will also take 
advantage of Be's 64-bit, multithreaded, journaling file system to provide fast 
response times, access to large data files and volumes, and a maximum safety for
stored data. The companies expect that third-party developers will take 
advantage of the Netscape Server APIs (NSAPI) to add additional capabilities, 
including media-oriented features, to the FastTrack server.

"We've designed the BeOS to be a premier media and communications rich 
platform, for both developers and users."  said Jean-Louis Gassˇe, president and 
CEO of Be. "We see Netscape's products and the BeOS as a perfect combination -- 
providing users with an operating system designed for today's generation of 
microprocessors and systems and powerful tools to design and deploy web-based 
content on the intranet or Internet."

Both Netscape and Be indicated that they will continue to look at further 
opportunities for Netscape products on the BeOS platform, and that there are no
immediate plans for additional announcements at this time.

NEOLOGIC PERFORMANCE
--------------------

NeoLogic Systems, Inc. today announced the release of NeoAccess(r) 5.0 object 
database engine for the Be Operating System. Utilizing the BeOS's new 
high-performance file system, as well as the extensive multi-threading 
capabilities, benchmarks are showing that NeoAccess performs from three to five
times faster than under MacOS on similar Power Macintosh hardware, making 
NeoAccess the highest performance object database engine available for 
PowerPC-based applications. And since NeoAccess is a cross platform 
framework, developers can use it to build both BeOS and MacOS applications.

The NeoAccess database technology reduces development time and costs for 
application developers by offering extremely fast storage and management of 
database objects in an easy-to-use class library. Applications currently using the 
NeoAccess engine include Netscape Communicator (for mail and news services) 
and NetObjects Fusion web site construction tool. Now NeoAccess is available for
 BeOS development as well.

NeoAccess provides a real world benchmark that shows what we have always believed -- designing the BeOS from the ground up without legacy baggage results
in a high-performance system.

ADVANCED ACCESS TO OVER 3,300 BE DEVELOPERS
-------------------------------------------

Our developers have been chomping at the bit to start working on the BeOS 
Preview so we will be shipping an Advanced Access copy to all registered and 
updated developers. As you can see, there are a large number of enhancements we
want our developers to take advantage of, so the sooner they can create Preview
Release applications, the better. Of those 3,300 developers, over 800 expect to 
ship their application before MacWorld in August.

We know that you are as anxious to get ahold of the BeOS Preview as we are to 
get it to you but we need to get it right before putting it in the hands of hundreds
of thousands (if not millions) of users. Please understand that the Advanced 
Access CD is being sent out ONLY TO DEVELOPERS and that you will receive 
information about how to obtain the Preview Release as soon as it's available.