Buy Now

Now available for Android!

From your Nexus One, visit this link or scan the QR code to download the Buy Now live wallpaper from Android Market. (screenshot)

Operators are standing by.

Buy Now is a screen saver for MacOS X. It is a loving homage to the original Buy Now, a screen_blanker add-on written in 1999 by Ficus Kirkpatrick and included in BeOS R5.

If you used the BeOS and loved it, or read something Neal Stephenson wrote about it, or just want to be a retro-techno-hipster, this screen saver is for you!

Buy Now is perfect for a lab full of lonely servers, or for an April Fool's Day contribution to a demonstration machine. Buy Now is a piece of computing history, lovingly preserved for the modern era. Don't delay, Buy Now!

(Ironically, Buy Now costs you nothing.)

Get Buy Now Now.

Download Buy Now from the BeOS screen savers page.

Screenshot.

I don't think you'll be terribly surprised.

Behind The Saver.

Perhaps you want to know the deep, dark, story behind Buy Now? Here it is:

Lets get this straight.

BUY NOW was my idea.

The kernal was crashing a lot, beos was crashing a lot b4 some big trade show. I said to Ficus, we need a program that will launch when ever some thing goes totaly wrong and we can't finish the demo. I said to Ficus that program should just flash BUY NOW. When I got back to the office that night, all the machines in the lab were running the BUY NOW program. The screen saver came later. For sad stories, look to executive/management decisions.

love/ba

Finally, there is photographic evidence [1] [2] (sort of)of the original Buy Now from the 1999 Be Developer's Conference (BeDC 99).

Remember, Buy Now: your hard work is only as valuable as it is lucrative!