Well, if we look at this at a larger scale...
When Steve had to go from Apple back in the days, he came back to the computer world with both a new OS and new hardware (proprietary): NeXT was born. The OS was _so_ great. The hardware, although tricky in some aspects, was nice too. Much too pricey, but well... It then went down. OS was ported to other hardware, NeXT's own hardware department died completely. As an OS/application/development environment only, it didn't really survive –*until Apple bought NeXT.
Be was similar. They had hardware and software (proprietary) at the beginning, although they also had the software running on PPC Macs quite soon (after all, the Be hardware was also PPC-based). After a while, they dropped the hardware and ported the OS to also run on PCs. Then they dropped the PPC version and after a while, the whole project died. (Well, it went Palm's way, much like NeXT went Apple's way...)
I think we should just clearly state that _both_ OSs _failed_ in the market. You can say that they both had their niches and that they lived on in some or other way, but NeXT's OS never really had a wide audience before Mac OS X came along. And let's get something clear here, also: Even Mac OS X is not really the leader in desktop operating systems today.
Would BeOS have been the better thing to buy back at the time? I don't think so. I actually don't think so at all. NeXT had it all prepared. It needed some brushing up (although Apple probably overdid this task 'slightly'...), but it was all there. It's not only about how quickly an OS can do 5 things well. It's also about scale, and I'm not sure that BeOS would've brought it all together as nicely as OpenStep/Rhapsody/OS X did.
Mac OS X, today, has a *LOT* of potential. Let's hope Apple makes sure that developers both inside and outside of Apple are aware of this and actually make use of it...
Now back to topic, please.
(We're in the opinions forum here. I guess RacerX really has already said everything there is to say about the _subject_ of this thread. Hasn't he?)