Win9x did actually have multiuser support -- it didn't enforce permissions between users locally, but it could at least have multiple profiles with different settings, and could restrict network share access to user accounts with NetNTLM style authentication. The important part is the API was "multiuser aware".
MacOS was inferior to basically every other alternative but it got by because of backwards compatibility with a really large catalogue of Mac software. I don't think an OS like MacOS classic could have made it from scratch.
I didn't mean to sound so negative about BeOS, I just think it could have had a better chance if it had a more solid technical base, especially for an OS made from scratch in the mid 90s. Especially when Linux and BSD were accelerating. I like to imagine something like NeXTSTEP but based on a FreeBSD or Linux core with a from-scratch userland/runtime and API... mmm...
MacOS was inferior to basically every other alternative but it got by because of backwards compatibility with a really large catalogue of Mac software. I don't think an OS like MacOS classic could have made it from scratch.
I didn't mean to sound so negative about BeOS, I just think it could have had a better chance if it had a more solid technical base, especially for an OS made from scratch in the mid 90s. Especially when Linux and BSD were accelerating. I like to imagine something like NeXTSTEP but based on a FreeBSD or Linux core with a from-scratch userland/runtime and API... mmm...