At the time BeOS didnt have an x86 version (that arrived in 98)
It was interesting but had many limitations
API’s weren’t stable and changed frequently
And a small established set of their d party apps (in part because of the unstable API’s)
I hated writing software for it becuase each new build would break something that used to work (The joys of being in their developer program at the time)
It had lots of redeeming qualities but it wasnt on par with NeXT
The entire point is: BEOS was never able to fulfill the needs of appple. Next was. An that’s why it was the more interesting part. Starting from it’s graphical subsystem folloewed by the printing system and at the end: a portability BEOS never had in this wise.
Porting BEOS to new hardware is more than implementing the Compiler for it. It is writing Software for the new hardware like heck. Cause hardware in BEOS is not really isolated from Software it makes tons of headache to port it to another hardware. Something that isn’t a problem with Next/BSD. And this makes it to the operating system of apples machines today. Starting from mac and ending somewhere in their mobile devices and tv. That was something not possible to do in a smart way with BEOS. Apple has many CPU systems for mobile and Desktop. From Risc to x86 to ARM64. That’s a broad range. And even for their mobile devices they have more than one mcu. Nobody would realöly try to do that with BEOS.
Atb the And apple did what was the best and most successful. Looking on it today I would say: with BEOS Apple would have ended their business in that time. Because of the system they could grow in that wise.
Well, macOS should tide us over till 2030—by the last estimate I remember, when Copland will ship. 
I guess it will exist much longer than only 2030
oh my gosh Copland, you have opend the pandora box of ghosts of the 90ies…
But it will close also. Copland was a good composer. And apple Copland was never in the market. So nobody harmed
Gershwin anyone ?
Oh you’d be amazed the stuff you got to see as art of the developer betas way back when
Esp when you were working for one of the worlds largest commercial Mac installs
Some fun stuff
But it never made it out of the alphabet/beta cycle
I completely missed the beginning of this thread, so now to address original issue.
Yes, iCloud Drive is removing and downloading files when necessary trying to keep some unknown ratio between volume capacity, number of and size of files and free space on volume. However, if you are sure you have enough space, you can switch that off and still keep Desktop and Documents in iCloud. Go to System settings, click on your Apple ID at the top left, then on the right switch the slider next to the “Optimise Mac Storage” option to off. If you click on iCloud Drive in any Finder window and if you set status bar to be visible, you will see that files are getting downloaded from the iCloud.
What I do to backup all iCloud files is that I have another Mac (my old Intel MBP from 2017) with enough space fetching files from iCloud, then I use Carbon Copy Cloner “Remote Mac” source option choosing “~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs” folder as source and external drive connected to my current laptop as destination. CCC is doing that daily for me automatically.
Additionally, that external drive is also getting backed up to Backblaze.
Ironically that is exactly what I use, CCC and Backblaze.
I’ve just shut off ICloud regarding “desktop” files as I have plenty of local disk space, but I imagine your solution would work too. My way should have fewer moving parts or potential for something to decide to intervene.
I’m late here..
(all imho…)
Not good: Having data exclusively on a cloud instead of on a local machine / local drive
Not good: After macOS updates and after new install, macOS sets some user folders to iCloud
Good: iCloud as a storing device, controlled by the user (as far as possible)
Good: Having iCloud-Sync for personal SwiftData applications. Phantastic - but not yet matured
My data is on a local RAID system connected to my main workstation (macOS, MacMini). Using ChronoSync, all data is synchronized to 2 local NAS (backup, too slow for working on bigger files (Photoshop, FileMaker, etc.)). Yes, there are backups on external drives in a save on a Bank here in town.
(I can not access my local network from outside - but I can access the data from inside the local network).
If I need some files on several machines out in the wild (MacBook, iPad, iPhone,) I copy those files to a folder on iCloud, removing them after work
We do have a stable ‘internet-connection’ (fibre) - but there are possibly times where the connection fails or is slow (just think about that AWS hiccup this week..)
I am really happy with that configuration - and I never would have my data exclusively on a external, foreign storage
We got some wonderful customers, running wonderful small shops in really nice down-town places. Two of them had set the storage to iCloud, just because it is/was a default setting (they didn’t even realize). Both had big problems running their business (local FileMaker databases). One had a disk-full (iCloud) message during Christmas sales and the employees didn’t know how to deal with that. Terrible situation!
iCloud is often used here and over the years, there weren’t problems (knock on wood). And Yes: Apple was better some years ago…