OS/2

From: Steve Mastrianni <stevemas_at_persys.com>
Date: Fri May 26 23:47:40 2000

>>So I don't get how they managed to lock out IBM.

Simple: its the apps. Businesses and individuals don't run operating
systems, they run applications. Trying to sell the OS on its merits as "the
integrating platform" was not enough. Sure, it could multitask DOS and
Windows apps, but users wanted much more than the old, tired real-mode
applications. The wanted a flat address space to run those huge apps, and a
file system with enough capacity to hold their giant databases. Cooperative
multitasking is plumbing, and while some users could appreciate it, it was
mostly a selling point for early adopters, geeks, and developers.



At 10:13 PM 5/26/00 -0400, you wrote:
>On Fri, May 26, 2000 at 01:29:32PM -0400, Technoid Mutant wrote:
> >The market is so steeped in MS-generated ignorance and bigotry against OS/2
> >that
> >most people in this group have little or no experience with it.
>
>I really don't get how that happened. I jumped on OS/2 when V2.0 came out
>(after reading a really positive review, in Comp Shopper I think), but
>then felt burned by the bugs in V2.1 beta (how on earth did they break my
>text mode "hello world" program?!?!) and bailed. Then, a while later, M$
>released WNT and everyone acted as if it was the second coming -- "at last,
>a 32-bit GUI-based OS designed for PCs, with true pre-emptive multitasking".
>Hmm, where had I seen one of those before, that ran faster in less memory,
>came from a more competent vendor, and had a lot more miles on it?
>
>The weird thing is, M$'s absolute stranglehold on the marketplace has really
>only been for the last few years. Or at least it seems that way, because
>each new height of predatory behavior they get away with makes the previous
>rounds seem insignificant. So I don't get how they managed to lock out IBM.
>I can understand why early OS/2 didn't make much of a splash, it was a lot of
>weight for the relatively wussified 286 CPUs to support. Early Windows was
>too big for the PCs of the time too, and it was largely ignored as a result.
>But OS/2 V2.0 and the 386+ machines were a very good match for each other.
>It deserved to succeed, and at the time Windows was only just starting to
>snowball, so OS/2 should have been there in time to really get some market
>share.
>
>John Wilson
>D Bit


- Steve Mastrianni
Received on Fri May 26 2000 - 23:47:40 BST