Jean-Louis Gassée (born March 1944 in Paris, France) is a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He is most famous for founding Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. After leaving Be, he became Chairman of PalmSource, Inc. in November, 2004.

Gassée worked for Hewlett Packard before becoming head of Apple France. Later, Apple's CEO John Sculley personally appointed Gassée to Steve Jobs's old position as head of Macintosh development. Gassée introduced several Macintosh products on-stage in the late 80s including the Macintosh Portable in 1989, and also the Macintosh IIfx. In his product introductions, he was often very comical. Gassée was less formal than many executives. He wore tailored suits when necessary, but he often addressed employees wearing a black (lambskin) leather jacket and a single diamond-stud earring.

When the idea of licensing the Mac OS for other companies use was brought up by various members of Apple, Jean-Louis refused to give in to the idea, maintaining that the Macintosh was more powerful than any other computer at the present, and had a superior architectural roadmap for future expansion than any other computer. Although many of the companies were interested (such as AT&T, for the use of the OS in their own equipment—they were so interested in this idea that the then-CEO of AT&T made a personal phone call to Sculley), Gassée would have none of it, and so the idea of licensing the Mac OS was shelved.

Jean Louis (born Jean Louis Berthault, October 5, 1907, Paris, France – April 20, 1997, Palm Springs, California, USA) was a French-born, Hollywood costume designer and an Academy Award winner for Costume Design. Louis worked as head designer for Columbia Pictures from 1944 to 1960. His most famous works include Rita Hayworth's black satin strapless dress from Gilda (1946), Marlene Dietrich's celebrated beaded souffle stagewear for her cabaret world tours, as well as the sheer, sparkling gown Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy in 1962.

In 1993, four years after the death of his second wife, Louis married former client Loretta Young (married until his death in 1997).

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.

Benoit Schillings is a Belgian software engineer, who until recently was the chief technology officer at Myriad Group,. He is known for being one of the lead developers of the Be Operating System (BeOS) and is a noted amateur astronomer.

Schillings' association with Be Inc. began in 1990 when, as a developer of software for the Apple Macintosh, he visited the Apple Expo in Paris and met Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée, who had just left Apple Computer to found Be, asked Schillings to become the second engineer at Be where he would work on the operating system for a new computer called the BeBox. Schillings accepted the offer and, starting in March 1991, developed a file system (now known as the Old Be File System or OFS) and an associated user-space database application (called Zookeeper) that indexed the metadata in the file system. The file system was fast and efficient, but was later replaced by Dominic Giampaolo's Be File System.

Schillings also developed the graphics system for BeOS (known as the App Server), as well as programming frameworks such as the Interface Kit and Application Kit that are used by software developers to write software for the operating system.