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The Sad Parable of OS/2
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Mar 17, 2002 05:30 PM
from the only-a-flesh-wound dept.
from the only-a-flesh-wound dept.
Still-in-Mourning writes "IBM's first 32-bit version of its advanced PC operating system was released 10 years ago this month. It was better than anything around, yet it failed. Its hopes were pinned on many of the same things we hope today will bring Linux to the forefront. What lessons are to be learned? Will we learn them? A glimpse of a sorry chapter in computing history."
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OS/2 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Funny)
Oh yes, the Windows Registery is just SOOO much more managable!
::reachs down to pick eyes up off of ground::
Sorry, then just rolled right on out!
Windows 95 Killed OS/2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I wish OS/2 took over and we were all using it instead of windows, I think we'd be far better off.
Hopefully the linux world can learn something from that. If Microsoft ever gets the upper hand in the areas where Linux excels, it will be very bad for Linux. Not as bad as it was for OS/2 though, if for no other reason than the price of Linux.
Windows 95 applications killed OS/2 (Score:3, Insightful)
How they survived those intervening 5 years is a long story, but it has a lot to do with IT people committing massive fraud and computers being horribly unreliable.
Heh, and now that MS has a stable OS, the apps have all gone down the shitter. You just can't win. Keeps the IT folks employed, though, so you win if you're a MSCE.
You all act like people purchased Windows?! (Score:3, Redundant)
No one went to a store and saw a box with OS2 on one side, and a box with Windows on the other.
No, you went to buy a PC and Windows was on it, you had NO OPTION to buy OS2 at all.
You had no option to buy BeOS.
The only way to compete with Windows is from your own platform, because Microsoft has a monopoly on OEM contracts.
How can any OS no matter how good it ever becomes, compete with an inferior OS thats packed in on every machine?
Face it, if a person buys a computer and it works, theres no reason to ever buy a new OS.
Sales of Windows95-98-2000 werent from people going to stores and buyingg boxes or the upgrades, most of the sales came from people buying PCs which came with Windows included.
Perhaps there should be a law, no more OEM contracts period.
Then let the user actually choose their OS, I guarentee that Windows95 wouldnt have beaten OS2.
I didnt want Windows95 when i got a computer, I thought OS2 was cooler in every way, but when I got a computer, it already had Windows95, there was no reason to get OS2 because Windows95 worked.
Re:You all act like people purchased Windows?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows 95 applications killed OS/2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Err, what apps? When Windows 3.1 came out all you got was a pretty GUI interface to start your character cell based program. Lotus, Wordperfect and co were both sitting on the fence waiting to see whose GUI O/S would win the battle.
Ten years ago IBM was considered the big monopolist threat in both hardware and software. When OS/2 launched IBM gleefully told the world that it intended to tie the O/S to its increasingly proprietary hardware systems.
Microsoft offered the hardware manufacturers a GUI O/S that was not controlled by a competitor. They also cut through the problem of waiting for the applications by writing their own GUI wordprocessor etc.
Re:Windows 95 applications killed OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)
What apps? Just about every commercial application on the market five years ago has been replaced by a Microsoft clone.
He's right, and the exception that proves the rule is Quicken. The only reason Quicken still exists is that the FTC (for reasons that are still unknown, given how merger-happy it seemed then, and still does) nixed the MS buyout of Intuit.
Parent
Re:Windows 95 applications killed OS/2 (Score:3, Funny)
Compared to what? Developing for Linux? I take it you haven't checked your portfolio at finance.yahoo.com lately....
I'd still rather be Macromedia or Adobe than any of the corporate Linux development houses, what few there are.
Win95 didnt kill OS2, Microsoft did. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people always ignore the illegal practices of Microsoft? IE is on top because it came with Windows.
Windows is on top because it comes with every PC.
Its IMPOSSIBLE to compete with a product which comes with the OS itself, and its IMPOSSIBLE to compete with a product which comes with the PC itself.
A user is not going to spend money on something they already have. Thats why OS2 didnt sell, why buy OS2 when you already have Windows?
Now, if Linux can manage to get OEM contracts, Linux can actually compete.
Apple couldnt / cant get OEM contracts so they sell their own Machines, Linux may have to sell their own box's to be successful, Sun did it, SGI did it, Apple does it, Linux may have to do this if they cant get OEM contracts.
The key is OEM contracts, thats the key.
Re:Win95 didnt kill OS2, Microsoft did. (Score:3, Informative)
Dell tried to sell Linux workstations. Their endeavors failed and they dropped the program altogether. They still sell servers with Linux preinstalled but that's it.
Sun is failing as a hardware/os/software company due to Linux. SGI isn't in much better shape though they have one of the most lucrative industries in the world clammoring for their machines - Hollywood. Apple is doing well though they are having a tough time climbing out of their niche market. Be, well, be was, and won;t be anymore.
Re:Win95 didnt kill OS2, Microsoft did. (Score:3, Insightful)
Judge Jackon is the same Judge Jackson who got the latest case and was he pissed to see what Microsoft did with the first decree.
Not a monopoly? With billions in cash there seems to be no law you are accountable to. Or so it seems.
Did you know that USAG Ashcroft received more money from Microsoft than from Enron?
LoB
Re:Win95 didnt kill OS2, Microsoft did. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not forget that in Nov 1994, at COMDEX, HP had 50% of their PC's running OS/2 the night before the show opened. Bill Gates made a phone call and by morning, NO HP computers were running OS/2.
The list goes on. I blame IBM 10% for OS/2 not gaining more market share and the other 90% was Microsofts anti-competitive nature to do ANYTHING to prevent the consumer from making the choice.
Speaking of choice, do you remember that Microsoft threatened to pull out of COMDEX because IBM was doing it's keynote speech about choices unless IBMs timeslot was moved to reduce the viewers. I think IBM dropped out of COMDEX the following year and all since.
Think about it. It took MIcrosoft 10 years to build a version of Windows that is close to OS/2 v2.0... well maybe v2.1 is a better comparison since it had better legacy Windows support and the 32bit graphics system updates. TEN YEARS!
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO TODAY??? With Microsoft?
Nyet.
LoB
Parent
Missing the second half of the last century? (Score:4, Funny)
One of these was "warp," which on the television show meant the speed of light or something.
Dear God, how big is that rock you're hiding under?
The Gardener
Warp funeral (Score:5, Interesting)
Honest.
Warp was a thing of great beauty. With Rexx (IBM's in-house Perl-like scripting language), you could do *anything*. Windows still hasn't caught up, although the scripting shell extensions come close. And the multimedia/real-time support... *sigh*
I still remember seeing a laptop (I think 486 based) showing a movie in one window while the GUI remained responsive. There was never a flicker or stutter as windows were moved and resized and compiles ran in the background.
Tossing those CDs left me feeling depressed about the state of personal computing, and then this article shows up just as I was feeling better.
Re:Warp funeral (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course nothing happened when he tried to launch it. It just kind of sat there. He made some excuse about it being a Microsoft problem and quickly moved on to the drawing for the t-shirts (which I won one of) and about 5 minutes later the file manager popped up on the projector, then immediately crashed.
Imitation can be ok in some respects, but making a GUI that imitates what Microsoft has already done on their last release or trying to emulate their underlying API's will never make an OS successfull. You've got to stand out and be better. If you can make the environment a little more comfortable for migrating users then that's ok, but make sure it's just a transition thing and not a design schematic.
Site is very slow (Score:3, Funny)
The Real Linux Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
"It turns out to be a web of intrigue. The reasons for its failure are not singular, but a complex matrix, and I would put Microsoft -- and IBM -- at the top of the list," says John C. Dvorak.
The reason Linux will succeed isn't because it's better, but because it's not owned by a single mega-corp. No single corp can out-compete a public (not gov't) standard, in the long run. VHS beat Betamax for that sole reason.
The Gardener
A Few Ideas... (Score:5, Interesting)
Games and multimedia software were mostly written for DOS because authors needed direct hardware access. OS/2, while having excellent DOS support, it was still too slow and unstable to play Falcon 3.0 or what have you (although, I admit I was able to get CrystalDream II by Triton to run... only after a LOT of hacking).
Aside from that, there were no direct hardware access API's available... ever (as far as I know). When OS had to start competing with Windows 95, Microsoft was introducing the WinG (Windows Graphics) library, the library that eventually lead to DirectX. I'm not saying that OS/2 had no multimedia support (it had a fantastic multimedia model), but it simply was not ambitious enough.
Too bad. OS/2 was never geared towards people with lower end (average at the time) hardware and those who wanted to play games.
IBM killed OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)
It's hard to believe, in today's day and age when Microsoft is the "evil empire", that there was once a day when Microsoft was the scrappy upstart and IBM was the "evil empire", but that's what the situation was like for most of the 1980's. In the end it did not matter how good OS/2 became... nobody was going to put their company at the mercy of IBM again.
By the time OS/2 Warp (32-bit OS/2) came out, if you mentioned OS/2 to anybody in the computer industry, they'd say something like "You mean that runs on something other than IBM PS/2 computers?". Unlike what somebody else here mentioned, everybody in the computer industry knew what OS/2 was and what it was capable of doing. But a) they didn't know it ran on anything other than IBM equipment, and b) they weren't interested in putting themselves back into thrall to IBM again.
In the end, politics, not technology, doomed OS/2. The politics of Linux are completely different from the politics that doomed OS/2, and I can't think of any lesson from the OS/2 saga that applies to Linux.
-E
Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I could tell, no one outside IBM was buying the PS/2. At least, I've never seen a single one outside the company. At the height of its popularity, it was estimated that OS/2 had over 10 million users.
IBM could have stayed ahead and taken over the industry, but a lot of factors conspired to prevent it from happening. Much of it was due to IBM attitude. First off, mainframe mentality ruled (And still rules, to a large extent) the company. Upper management still viewed the PC as a toy. Certainly they would never have dreamt that a user might actually want to multitask with it, even though OS/2 featured preemptive multitasking.
Further there was the IBM tendency to do a thing and then sit back and rest on their laurels. They go into maintenance mode and don't continue active research and development of innovative new features. IBM business process is still not geared toward a completed project where live development is still taking place.
As for marketing, well it is said that IBM couldn't market eternal life if they had sole rights. They had no idea of their target demographic and they tried to market the product to Joe Average User. This resulted in Joe Average User getting pissed off with the painful installation process. And the installation was painful. IBM could have done something about that, but they were resting on their laurels (See previous point.)
Furthermore, IBM's own software did not strive to show off the operating system at all. Most of the utilites they shipped were straight windows ports. This resulted in poor performance on the platform. I made a comment in a forum at one point that Netscape for Windows 3.1 actually did a better job of multi-threading than the OS/2 web explorer did. I actually ended up using the DOS version of the document explorer that IBM shipped for documentation because the OS/2 version would block the system input queue while it indexed documents, thus hanging the entire system.
Most people will agree that the death blow was PCCO's refusal to preload OS/2 on their systems (Due to illegal Microsoft bullying.) Since the install process never improved and there was no way to get the system preloaded, that was pretty much all she wrote.
There are still some companies out there using OS/2, and they're paying IBM a lot of money to maintain the product. It's mostly banks or other shops with other IBM iron. OS/2 always did talk to the mainframes very well. But OS/2 lost its chance to be a (or THE) mainstream desktop OS when Microsoft introduced Windows 95. Windows 95 was less stable, still didn't feature preemptive multitasking for all programs and had a far less robust interface, but it was good enough that most people didn't care.
Parent
1.0 vs. 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding IBM and Microsoft and OS/2, I've read some reminiscing by one of the industry pundits who was there at the meeting where IBM blew off Microsoft. Bill Gates showed up with all these charts showing Windows as a little side project on top of IBM/Microsoft OS/2, and IBM blew him off. Yep, that's right, IBM blew off Microsoft -- NOT the other way around. That was apparently when Bill decided that Windows was going to be a totally seperate operating system not reliant upon anything IBM (Chairman Bill does NOT like being blown off by arrogant IBM execs!), and that was when Bill decided he was going to borrow some tactics out of the IBM monopoly handbook, such as bundling, "vaporware", and per-CPU pricing.
Now, I'm not going to argue about whether the Microsoft monopoly on personal computer desktops is good or bad. I'll just point out that an OS/2 monopoly would probably have been even worse -- because IBM is a hardware company as well as a software company, and undoubtedly would have used their hardware muscle to squeeze out the kind of white box clone business that kept Linux alive for many years before the major vendors discovered Linux.
-E
Parent
Re:IBM killed OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
But it didn't work like IBM planned. It was an unmitigated disaster. IBM sold only a few thousand machines, and had been geared up to sell millions. 16-bit OS/2 on a 16 mhz 80286 microprocessor took a half hour to boot, and there were no expansion cards for the new 16-bit MicroChannel Bus. They swiftly rushed their old "PC-compatible" machines back into production (calling them the PS/1 and other names like that to imply that they were only half as good as their PS/2 machines), but the damage was done -- IBM was never again the #1 maker of personal computers. The PS/2 lingered on for another couple of years as IBM continued to try to push it, and was mercifully put out of its misery when the industry migrated from the 80286 (16-bit) processor to the 80386 (32-bit) processor.
Whenever you think about the eventual fate of OS/2, you have to recall how it originated -- and what IBM was trying to do when it created OS/2 in the first place.
-E
Re:IBM killed OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
The goal was definitely to lock up a new standard, though. At first. IBM offered to license Micro Channel, but at very high royalty rates that effectively left no room for competitiors. OS/2 started out as a vaporware project that relied heavily on Microsoft to manage big chunks of it, and ultimately became IBM's flagship OS and their "open" competition to a rising Microsoft. Windows 3.0, OTOH, started out as a way for Microsoft to hedge their bets against slow adoption of OS/2 - after the first couple of years IBM had opened up to the reality that they needed to support the cloners, too. When Windows took off and the big MS/IBM split happened, Microsoft got to keep the OS/2 3.0 project that was being planned at that point. IBM decided their future was in porting OS/2 to their new Power series chips. Which ultimately fizzled out.
The Microsoft part of the project became Windows NT. OS/2 itself (Warp was a marketroid decision to add the codename to the product) had wonderful Win16 capabilities back in the Windows 3.x days - but Windows 95 came out conveniently after IBM's license to Windows source expired and that was the commercial death of OS/2.
I think the last PS/2 was canned around 1995 or so, maybe a hair later. There were some good products made for the MCA bus, mostly connectivity products. It was a far better bus than ISA, but the market (and IBM) killed it easily.
The legacy that PS/2 left us in the end was mainly the mini-DIN connectors for keyboards and mice. IBM sold a decent number, but not enough to justify a separate line of PC from the mainstream. Apple's really the only folks who have ever pulled off a different standard over the long term.
(This is also a good argument as to why Apple should never go to Intel as chip vendor - IBM had a good alternative OS, a neat box, and a better mousetrap, but couldn't differentiate themselves enough to thrive.)
I may be slightly off on a detail or two, but I think my recollection is fairly clear on this. Feel free to correct specifics, folks!
History (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISA machines in the PS/2 lineup came after some of IBM's major customers refused to buy a MCA version of the computer, I remember them later being re-named as PS/1 computers in an attempt to flog the PS/2. The MCA-based PS2 line did NOT survive until the mid 90's -- it was long dead by that time -- by the mid 90's IBM had migrated to PCI like everybody else, and had computers named "PS/2" but they were just generic clone machines.
I see no reason to do research about something I lived through when you're the only anal twit on Slashdot who cares. I'm sure that nobody else here cares that the PS/2 was released in 1987 rather than 1986. The point is that IBM was trying to hijack the personal computer market -- not that it was 1987 rather than 1986.
-E
OS/2 v.s Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I believe that it would be no different. It would still be open source v.s the big giant. The big giant would just be IBM instead of Microsoft. Don't forget they too are a huge gigantic corporation with no interest except profit just like MS.
Everyone would instead say "geez I miss windows. I wish it had won on the desktop instead of OS/2. Sure the application support wasn't as good. And OS/2 compatibility in win9x got a lot worse over time but it was still a far better OS IMO."
Think about it.
--
Garett
Re:OS/2 v.s Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
I used OS/2 at work from late 1994 until February 2002, when I finally switched to Linux. And damn, Nautilus (the Windows Explorer clone) is just plain sad. It really is just as bad as Windows, maybe even a little worse, if that's possible.
If OS/2 had won, then GNOME and KDE would be copying a good GUI instead of copying a piece of shit. Or, to put it more generally: if OS/2 had won, things would be better, simply because the product was better. Sure, the "political" situation for would be the same (maybe even a bit more intense since OS/2 would be harder for "open source" to beat than Windows was), but the user experience would be about a decade ahead of where we are right now. So yeah, I wish OS/2 had won.
Parent
I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft found it all but impossible to develop a useful multitasking operating system for the 286. This was not Microsoft's fault -- the design of the chip simply wouldn't allow much useful to be done with it.
What exactly in the in the 286 architecture prevents the use of a multitasking operating system? I seem to remember MS once touted Xenix, and there were also other Unixen out there. There were multitasking versions of CPM before the 286. Is the article writer missing something, or am I missing something. You don't need to have built in multiple instruction pipelines in the proceessor to multitask. It is almost trivial to write that into an operating system. Remember Andrew Tannenbaum's Minix that came on floppies included in his book "Operating Systems"?.
It appears to me that the article writer is trying to excuse Microsoft's lack of skill by pretending that the task was impossible.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)
That was not the problem. The problem was writing a multiasking operating system that would run all the DOS apps (which were important at the time).
When the 286 was in protect mode, some of the instructions worked differently than when it was in "real" mode (8086 compatibility mode). Result: you could not execute DOS apps; they wouldn't work.
So, how about making a DOS virtual machine? Well, the 386 has features that make it easy to spin up multiple real mode virtual machines, but the 286 didn't have those features. A purely software virtual machine would be very slow.
So, how about switching out of protect mode and running real mode code in the 286's real mode? That was the only option, so Microsoft took it. However, Intel had not designed the 286 to do this. There was an instruction to start up protect mode, but no instruction to leave it and go back to real mode! Microsoft wound up programming the keyboard controller chip to actually reset the CPU, many times per second, to switch to real mode.
Because DOS apps ran in real mode, they owned the whole machine: all memory, all devices, etc. So if a DOS app crashed, it would take the whole machine down with it; a crashing DOS app could trash OS/2, and there was no way to prevent it.
Even worse, the 286 did not have features that would let you virtualize the hardware, and DOS apps liked to talk directly to the hardware. All DOS apps liked to write directly to the video card, rather than going through the BIOS, and the 286 didn't really help you solve that problem.
So the OS/2 1.x "compatibility box" could only run a single DOS app at a time.
Meanwhile, Microsoft sold Xenix 286, which worked perfectly well. Alas your Xenix 286 programs either had to be less than 64KB each, or else they had to deal with near/far pointers (yuck), but Xenix 286 worked. Microsoft never tried to do a GUI desktop for Xenix, but it would have been possible.
It appears to me that the article writer is trying to excuse Microsoft's lack of skill by pretending that the task was impossible.
No, it really was impossible to write an OS that would run decently fast on the 286 hardware of the day, would multiask old DOS apps, and would be reliable. The 286 was just too broken.
steveha
Parent
Did you know who wrote OS/2??? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it was (gasp) MICROSOFT (gasp). Think about that before you flame!
Here are googles top 2 links with more information.
and the google search itself [google.com]
Re:Did you know who wrote OS/2??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually this isn't exactly true. Originally IBM did contract MS to write OS/2 however by the time they reached version 3 Windows started to gain in popularity so they focused on that and IBM took over OS/2 entirely. If you read the second link a little more carefully it claims IBM re-wrote everything starting from the 1.x base. That became OS/2 Warp and MS took said version 3 and renamed it to Windows NT.
Parent
Re:Did you know who wrote OS/2??? (Score:5, Informative)
Likewise, you can say IBM wrote Windows.
The really good bits (REXX, IPF, WPS, PM, IFS, Program Manager, File Manager) are IBM stuff. The bad bits (the DOS coffin, 16-bit stuff) are Microsoft's stuff.
IFS forst appeared in the DOS world in PCDOS 4.0. IBM wrote that.
IBM had virtual machines before Microsoft *existed*. File and Program Manager appeared in OS/2 1.1 or 1.2. Microsoft borrowed these for the Windows 3.x shell apps.
REXX and IPF are IBM mainframe stuff, using standard bits in different operating systems.
WPS is IBM's invention: the shell, and even the colours were borrowed by Microsoft. The teal background first appeared in OS/2 2.11, way before Windows.
And more, IBM tried to support existing machines, and not only the latest and greatest. IE they support the idea of using your OS on an old machine.
Parent
lesson learned - use GPL (Score:3)
Brings back memories... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because no-one at Aldus knew anything about OS/2 (they were pretty much all Mac-heads and sneered at PC's, DOS and Windows) they gave me a brand new computer, a bunch of sticks of RAM and a pile of floppies they got from IBM. "Go figure it out." So I did.
The developers (who I was never allowed to meet for some bizarre reason) got Yesler (the codename for OS/2 Pagemaker) running about the time I was getting really bored with playing Reversi (the only real application on the OS/2 distribution I had) and I got started doing what they were paying me for; figuring out how to crash Yesler and/or OS/2 and emailing formatted dumps with my comments to the developers. It wasn't hard to find said bugs, although I was told "You can't crash OS/2, it is too solid." Hah!
Just about the time they got Yesler stable enough that I could put together a demo script the marketroids could use to show off the program (they had to follow it exactly or it would crash) I found a way to make OS/2 have a complete spastic seizure. It involved a fairly complex series of actions that had to be followed exactly, but when you did the last one the computer would freeze and waves of color would wash over the screen. Kind of pretty in a psychodelic way.
We called it the Colorshow bug and the developers claimed it was an OS/2 problem. This kicked off a shitstorm of finger pointing that ended with the developers working around the bug instead of IBM fixing it. Remember, at this point IBM was actually pretty happy about the Yesler project because it gave their new operating system some street cred, so it really surprised me that there was so much rancor. An earlier problem with printer drivers was fixed in a day from my reporting it.
But the punchline happened about a week after I found the Colorshow bug. One of the marketroids came by and asked if I could demonstrate the bug for a group of suits that were waiting down the hall. No problem, bring them on (and, yes, I promise to watch my language). So the suits crowd around the desk and I walk the dog and pony (click, click, drag, click, drag, click, colors, "OOOOHH!", nervous laughter). The suits thank me and they leave.
Then the guy sitting across from me leans over and says "You know who that was?" I shake my head. "That was Paul Brainard," (the CEO of Aldus) "and a bunch of Apple executives up here for a visit."
OK...
Jack William Bell
Other lessons - grass roots marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Like Linux, many OS/2 users chose and stuck with their OS because they wanted, and because they changed.
OS/2 users often multibooted, and were quite familiar with Windows systems. Often far better than the Windows users themselves. :) This is in part because fixing the problems up in OS/2 often required a bit of poking around, and this habit passed onto fixing Windows systems.
What we do not really need is this "death threat" thing when advocates turned nasty.
OS/2 trives even now, not because of IBM or Microsoft, but, like Linux, because of the users themselves. It aims at a different market to Linux, but both have vigourous grass roots. No monopolist likes that :).
OS/2: revolution, not evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
The story of OS/2 is what taught me that in the computer industry, revolution is not what the customers want; they want evolution. You can sometimes pull off a revolution (Macintosh) but it is much easier to offer a smooth upgrade path.
OS/2 was not killed by some weird conspiracy by Microsoft. Some of the other causes of death listed were not doubt contributing factors, but the major cause of death was: incompatible APIs.
It was not possible to take a Windows application and compile it for OS/2; you had to substantially re-write your app. It wouldn't be quite as much work as re-writing your app from scratch, but it was close. Microsoft didn't want this. Microsoft wanted to make OS/2's windowing API compatible with Windows, but IBM had some other API they thought was better, and they insisted it be used.
This had the effect of forcing companies to decide whether they wanted to write for Windows, or write for OS/2. That was totally dumb of IBM. If people could have just recompiled for OS/2 and offered an OS/2 version of their app, they would have done so. IBM was asking developers for a revolution, not evolution.
But let's go back to the first version of OS/2. Because it was written for the 286, its compatibility with DOS apps was poor. OS/2 1.x offered a "compatibility box" for running a single DOS app at a time; it worked poorly, and it was often called the "Chernobyl Box" because it would often crash (and it would take the whole OS down with it). So, any company that wanted to adopt OS/2 had to plan on getting new versions of all their applications.
But in 1990, Windows 3.0 shipped. It sold like hotcakes. The article makes some bizarre statements about Win 3.0, but the reality was that it would multitask your DOS applications very well. DOS applications were preemptively multitasked, not cooperatively, and DOS apps could very well crash but usually Windows would not crash with them. In other words, Win 3.0 allowed companies an evolutionary upgrade path: they could keep running the same DOS apps they were using, and then phase in Windows apps over time. The same companies that were unwilling to commit to OS/2 were willing to commit to Win 3.0.
Win 3.0 was what made Microsoft decide to walk away from OS/2. The customers were voting with their dollars, and what they were voting for was Windows. It didn't hurt that Microsoft had covered all bets: they had applications for DOS, Windows, OS/2, and Macintosh. (They even flirted with a few other platforms: my favorite word processor for the Atari ST was Microsoft Write.) When Win 3.0 took off, Microsoft was ready, and sold lots of Word and Excel.
So, to review: IBM forced developers to choose whether to develop for OS/2 or Windows, and Windows became a runaway hit. That's it right there. That's what killed OS/2.
steveha
Re:OS/2: revolution, not evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
ROFL! That's so funny because it's so incredibly true. IBM is quietly happy about this, and rightly so. Understandably, Microsoft isn't - but most of their employees probably don't even realize why they've become so widely hated in the computing industry, or why it's well deserved.
IBM reached it's peak as an IT monopoly in the late '80s, then barely survived the backlash in the early '90s. But IBM had kickass hardware and software (still big money-makers), networking (since sold to AT&T and Cisco), and services (faltering, but still viable). IBM is also a very large multinational company (~$70 Billion annual revenue). IBM survived, but it's still a screwy company (I know, as I've worked there).
Microsoft is a much smaller company (under $10 billion annual revenue), and doesn't have complementary lines of business (though they're trying, but not very successfully), so their fall will be faster and harder. The late '90s will be seen as the highwater mark for Microsoft's IT monopoly. Their crash will hurt the US stock market, at least mutual funds in Microsoft. They don't pay dividends, ever. It's a sub-$10 stock.
The essence of the story of OS/2 is this: IBM gave away the PC Operating System to Bill Gates (Microsoft), then tried to recapture the PC platform with MicroChannel (implicating OS/2), but that didn't work out, so IBM tried partnering with Microsoft, which also didn't work, then finally IBM tried to build a real PC OS on it's own (OS/2 V3 and V4), but mis-handled it all horribly, and by then it was too late - Microsoft already had preloads, the political fix was in with the Courts, and the rest is history but still unfolding. But Microsoft's days are numbered....
Yeah, I've still got an OS/2 partition on my system (Warp 4 at Fixpak 15, the last one). It works fine, but I use Linux (Mandrake 8.1) now and that works better. I did the 25+ floppy installs of OS/2, got it working well enough to use it as my normal desktop through several years, even kept it running Lotus Notes shared with Windows partitions on notebooks for work, but now I use Linux almost exclusively. Linux is better.
alive and well (for the moment) (Score:3, Interesting)
Where IBM went wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem was that IBM really didn't have a very clever strategy for dealing with the competition from Microsoft.
Their single biggest mistake was to treat developers as a cash-cow rather than a valuable resource.
I did some development work for OS/2 and it cost me a fortune to tool up with all the necessary compilers, libraries, tools and documentation.
Most developers at the time already had the tools I needed to develop Windows 3 programs so it made little sense for IBM to raise a barrier to developers by charging like a wounded bull for its tools -- but they did.
IBM mistakenly thought that they could just spend $50 million on advertising the product to the end-user and ignore the needs, complaints and hearts of the developer community.
They paid dearly for this neglect -- simply because it resulted in a dearth of good quality "off the shelf" OS/2 applications to rival those offered for Windows.
Even worse, IBM kept touting its great ability to run Windows 3 programs alongside native OS/2 apps.
How smart was that? Not very!
Faced with IBM demanding outrageous prices for new tools (and even more outrageous upgrade fees for the same tools) -- or simply writing Windows code that OS/2 users could run anyway -- the choice was obvious.
Mainstream programmers kept pumping out Windows applications while almost completely ignoring OS/2. Oh sure, there were small groups of devout OS/2 developers who cherished the technical superiority of the operating system -- but that old catch-22 soon popped up.
Despite all that expensive advertising, consumers said "why buy OS/2 just to run Windows 3 software when you can buy Windows 3 for less?" Don't forget that OS/2 really needed about twice as much (expensive in 1992) RAM to properly run a Win3 program than did Win3 itself.
All in all, the public weren't about to pay extra without some real benefits -- and there wouldn't be any such benefits until there were enough native OS/2 apps to rival Windows apps.
And (here it comes) there wouldn't be enough native OS/2 apps until there were more OS/2 developers -- who were not about to fork out the price of a good used car just to write code for the tiny community of OS/2 users.
If IBM had half a brain they would have realised that the hurdle to the acceptance of any new OS is the availability of applications.
In stead of trying to screw big profits out of developers they should have given away their tools, SDKs, etc. This would have endeared them to the developer community (rather than alienate them as they did) and the result would likely have been some damned fine apps that matched Win3 versions for functionality and blew them away from a reliability perspective.
Of course this is what's happening now with Linux but I fear that it's simply too late to overtake the beast. Ten years ago there were many more large software companies and competing with Microsoft was hard but not impossible. These days you're sunk before you get your boat to the water.
Maybe 20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing -- but I was telling them this ten years ago -- except they were so arrogant that they felt they didn't need to go out of their way to help developers and that end-users were far more important.
Europe rocks. (Score:3, Funny)
So if I got this right, Europe actually gives a shit about their computers. My plane leaves in five hours ; )
OS/2 Screenshots (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wasn't it obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a great article. Just today, when I pulled up to the ATM machine and saw the beloved TRAP=0002 hex dump black screen of death, and I had to let out a little sniffle for my former fave OS.
Will Linux learn the lessons of OS/2? Who knows? For my time in OS/2, the company and the users were nice, knowedgeable, and professional. There were not many exaggerations and very few of Microsoft-style false promises. The lesson I got out of it is that consumers can't handle a straightforward approach, always going for smoke and mirrors and gold glitter sparkles. It doesn't matter if something exists, only that the something is "just around the corner."
Re:Wasn't it obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Active developent continues. IBM was always terrified of breaking "legacy" application support, which is why there was never a proper fix to the Single System Input Queue problem.
2) There are practically no barriers of entry into Linux development. Compiler's free. Tons of libraries are free. Tons of programmers tools are free. The operating system is free. All the stuff that IBM charged you for and Microsoft charges you for, free, free, free. A 12 year old could afford to install the OS and tinker with it. Many do.
3) Marketing. Well... marketing in Linux is an interesting phenomenon. Largely it's word of mouth between clueful engineers. Linux takes a company over one computer at a time and management never has a clue. They just blink in their bovine way and ponder their managerial effectiveness which must be why no one ever complains about the file server crashing anymore...
4) Installation. Redhat install is pretty much point and click. The OS/2 install was painful. I did it for a living for a while. We had a document which specified the exact order in which you had to install our company's assorted software. Deviate at all from that order and you'd trash the Workplace shell and never get any icons, forcing you to fdisk, format and reinstall. The installation process was guaranteed to take 8 hours. I'd prefer Linux installs any day of the week.
The main thing is the system keeps evolving, bugs keep getting fixed, Linus doesn't mind doing major revisions if he thinks a design isn't right and if you ever have a question, you can always ask the guy who wrote the package you're having trouble with (Assuming you can find him.) Other factors might potentially kill Linux (I could see it getting made illegal in the current legal climate) but repeats of OS/2's mistakes will not be a factor.
Re:OS/2 Still In Use.. . (Score:5, Informative)
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another little known fact. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was at the MIS center for Designs by Levi, I saw them configuring OS/2 1.0 text mode for one of the cash registers.
While on a contract job in 2000 for a cash register company, some of their cash registers still run under OS/2. And, they run their central control systems under OS/2.
and Windows in an Elevator is a scary thing! (Score:5, Funny)
Last week the marquis application crashed and had a blue screen of death on it....NO ONE USED THE ELEVATORS until the building management rebooted the display software and sent out a notice that windows was only used for the marquis, and NOT in the operation of the Otis elevator
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Re:My favorite quote. (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I tried to distance myself from that stuff. Same thing with the fact that I use linux today. Too many groupies and wild eyed zealot fanatics foaming at the mouth really helps denigrate an operating system.
All through these OS fads, I've still used BSD. BSD will outlive all of this crap. Good ol' low-key BSD.. it's always been there for me.
Re:OS2 failed for the same reason MacOS failed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Go back in time a bit, to when OS/2 was released.
There was no illegal monopoly. IBM was the giant - not MS.
IBM screwed up and MS buried them.
So you can claim "period" all you want. But its not period. Nothing is ever "period".
Re:I really liked OS/2 (AND USED IT) (Score:4, Interesting)
Boy did he shut up 10 minutes later when it was running along with my web server and about 30 other processes.
I even told the group to start printing thru my OS/2 box because the Windows for Workgroups dedicated print server machine was GPF'ing so much. Never a problem from then on.
Just think of where we would be today if Microsoft did prevent consumers from making the choice of OS/2? Rmember, OS/2 v4.0 had speech navigation and recognition builtin in 1996......
LoB
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Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember dropping the GUI all together and using a text based switcher to run my BBS in.. didn't need a gui, just a alt-tab interface to the os2 cmd prompt so i can run PCBoard 15.1 and play sierra games at the same time.