Of the two, I found NeXTSTEP / OpenStep easier to program and a lot more feature rich. BeOS felt like it had better performance, but was harder to program and didn't really have the development tools.
In retrospect, it was good thing Apple bought NeXT, but they sure lost a lot of cool things in the transition to OS X. BeOS seemed like the OS that could have still competed if they had skipped "Internet Appliances" and gone for the sub $500 market. They could be performant on low-end hardware.
In retrospect, it was good thing Apple bought NeXT, but they sure lost a lot of cool things in the transition to OS X. BeOS seemed like the OS that could have still competed if they had skipped "Internet Appliances" and gone for the sub $500 market. They could be performant on low-end hardware.