They didn't have much of a choice, they were held off shipping PCs due to MS licensing so were not going to make anything, they had enough money for a year left so they spent it on BeIA because they thought it might make them something. It didn't, but had they remained on course they would of most likely had the same fate.
I might be a little off topic, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents.
Another thing that killed BeOS was Microsoft "marketing". And I don't mean through normal channels... When I was head of IT/IS at AST Computers in Los Angeles we decided to launch two new Pentium-III lines (500MHz was as fast as they went at the time) with some nifty options: we decided to give the buyer the option of choosing which operating system was installed from the factory. Windows 98, Windows NT, Linux RedHat, or BeOS. (We were the first major manufacturer to even think about offering that choice.)
It took 2 weeks for Microsoft to hold a meeting with us and in no uncertain terms say "If you continue to offer those other operating systems with your new PCs, you will find there is a sudden shortage in the supply chain for ANY Microsoft operating systems for you." And, of course, since MS OSes comprised 99% of every PC system we (or Dell, or Quantex, or Gateway, or Micron) sold, we dropped BeOS and Linux as options. MS does the same thing to every manufacturer. You can't argue with them when you're selling 50,000 units at a time and you're told you might not be able to buy 50,000 Windows liscences... (this was before the class action lawsuit against MS by a group of linux users who demanded a refund for being forced to buy new pc's with windows already installed when they were not going to use it anyway)
Bastards. You can do anything when you have that much money. :-x
