Re:OS/2 2.0, Summer ’91 Edition
by tzs on Sunday April 09, 2017 @12:35PM
(#14073064)
> The superior OS that was eventually killed by the inferior Windows 95.
I'd say it was more killed by IBM's woefully inadequate developer support and indifference to serious marketing. Windows 95 just happened to be the first thing better than Win 3.1 that came along and was actually supported and marketed, and so by default took the market that could have been IBM's.
Some examples of how poorly IBM handled developers and marketing.
• A columnist in Byte (if I recall correctly...probably Jerry Pournelle) wrote of visiting a major trade show where both Microsoft and IBM had booths. This was after Warp launched, and before Windows 95 launched.
He went to the IBM booth, where they were promoting Warp, and asked what he needed to do in order to develop for it. They told him he needed to become a registered developer to get access to the tools and documentation, and give him an application to fill out. The application required explaining in detail what you proposed to developer for Warp, and your business plan, and so on. Fill all that out, and if IBM deemed you worthy you would be allowed to spend a lot of money to buy the SDK.
He then went to the IBM booth and ask what he needed to do to develop for Windows 95.
Microsoft handed him a CD with the tools and documentation on it.
• Later, once both operating systems were out, Microsoft continued to make it much easier for developers to get on board. I remember walking into Egghead (a major retail software store in the '90s for those too young to remember when we actually bought software from brick and mortar stores) and seeing for sale at retail Microsoft's Visual C++ and MSDN. You could just walk into Newegg, put down some cash, and walk out with everything you need to get started writing software on you Windows 95 box.
How about for OS/2? Nothing from IBM. You could buy Watcom C/C++, which was cross platform (it supported DOS, Win 3.x, Win 95, Win NT, some 32-bit DOS extenders, and OS/2, and maybe even Novell Netware), and Watcom had licensed a subset of the OS/2 developer documentation and included it on the Watcom CD, so you could at least get reasonably started, but you'd be back to applying to IBM for developer status if you wanted to go farther.
• There was very little promotion of OS/2 at retail. Walk into Egghead or Computer City or CompUSA and you'd find the latest Windows on an endcap near the front of the store. You'd find OS/2 on the bottom shelf in the darkest corner in the most remote part of the store.
Why? Because IBM did not pay for in-store promotion of OS/2. In retail stores shelf placement is for sale. You want your product on an endcap, or on a chest height shelf in a high traffic part of the store? You get that by paying for an in-store promotion campaign.
• Microsoft would watch what new things developers were doing for Windows 95, and would pick some and promote them. Microsoft understood that it was applications that people wanted, not operating systems, so promoting Windows 95 only applications that people would want also promoted Windows 95.
IBM did much less of this. I recall a little of it for some business software, but they didn't do much for consumer software, especially games. Overall IBM seemed pretty indifferent to what most OS/2 developers were doing.
• This doesn't fall under developer support or marketing, but another big problem was hardware support. I remember at one point I was trying to multi-boot between Windows, OS/2, Linux, and FreeBSD, and it was going fine for everything except OS/2. I could not get OS/2 to go beyond 640x480 with my video card.
I went down to Computer City and bought another card that supposedly had better OS/2 support. No luck. CC had a good exchange policy so I swapped that for something else. Nope. I had to go through many cards before finally finding one that worked.
Most of the cards had been fine in Linux and FreeBSD (and of course Windows). It was only OS/2 that was a nightmare.
IBM's attitude on hardware seemed to be "We're IBM. We're big and important! So all you hardware manufacturers need to sign up to our device developer programs and then write drivers for your hardware!". The hardware manufacturers attitude was "Yeah, we'll get right on that...when you've got a significant market share".
IBM should have have made a list of the top 5 or 10 graphic cards, network cards, sound cards, and so on, and put together a group within the OS/2 group that would sign up for the appropriate developer programs from those card's manufacturers, and then write OS/2 drivers for those cards to ship with OS/2. Someone whose computer contained cards that were all top 10 in their category should have been able to run OS/2 out of the box.
In fact, that "We're IBM. We're big and important!" attitude seemed to permeate their entire handling of OS/2. They expected us to beat a path to their door and beg for the privilege to develop for, sell, or use OS/2.
Microsoft (and Apple, BTW) had much better attitude.
• What's really annoying about all this is that Warp was out well before Windows 95, and Warp did an excellent job of running DOS and Windows 3 software. When I had to do DOS or Windows development back then I did it on Warp because it made a better DOS and Windows development and test environment than did native DOS and Windows.
Microsoft was starting to tout the advantages of 32-bit software ahead of the Windows 95 launch in order to push people toward upgrading. IBM should have jumped all over that, pointing out that you didn't need to wait for Windows 95 to get 32-bit. Get Warp now and you can start using 32-bit now, while keeping all your current 16-bit stuff. Position it as having all the 32-bit advantages of Windows 95, but with better support for your existing 16-bit stuff.
I'd say it was more killed by IBM's woefully inadequate developer support and indifference to serious marketing. Windows 95 just happened to be the first thing better than Win 3.1 that came along and was actually supported and marketed, and so by default took the market that could have been IBM's.
Some examples of how poorly IBM handled developers and marketing.
• A columnist in Byte (if I recall correctly...probably Jerry Pournelle) wrote of visiting a major trade show where both Microsoft and IBM had booths. This was after Warp launched, and before Windows 95 launched.
He went to the IBM booth, where they were promoting Warp, and asked what he needed to do in order to develop for it. They told him he needed to become a registered developer to get access to the tools and documentation, and give him an application to fill out. The application required explaining in detail what you proposed to developer for Warp, and your business plan, and so on. Fill all that out, and if IBM deemed you worthy you would be allowed to spend a lot of money to buy the SDK.
He then went to the IBM booth and ask what he needed to do to develop for Windows 95.
Microsoft handed him a CD with the tools and documentation on it.
• Later, once both operating systems were out, Microsoft continued to make it much easier for developers to get on board. I remember walking into Egghead (a major retail software store in the '90s for those too young to remember when we actually bought software from brick and mortar stores) and seeing for sale at retail Microsoft's Visual C++ and MSDN. You could just walk into Newegg, put down some cash, and walk out with everything you need to get started writing software on you Windows 95 box.
How about for OS/2? Nothing from IBM. You could buy Watcom C/C++, which was cross platform (it supported DOS, Win 3.x, Win 95, Win NT, some 32-bit DOS extenders, and OS/2, and maybe even Novell Netware), and Watcom had licensed a subset of the OS/2 developer documentation and included it on the Watcom CD, so you could at least get reasonably started, but you'd be back to applying to IBM for developer status if you wanted to go farther.
• There was very little promotion of OS/2 at retail. Walk into Egghead or Computer City or CompUSA and you'd find the latest Windows on an endcap near the front of the store. You'd find OS/2 on the bottom shelf in the darkest corner in the most remote part of the store.
Why? Because IBM did not pay for in-store promotion of OS/2. In retail stores shelf placement is for sale. You want your product on an endcap, or on a chest height shelf in a high traffic part of the store? You get that by paying for an in-store promotion campaign.
• Microsoft would watch what new things developers were doing for Windows 95, and would pick some and promote them. Microsoft understood that it was applications that people wanted, not operating systems, so promoting Windows 95 only applications that people would want also promoted Windows 95.
IBM did much less of this. I recall a little of it for some business software, but they didn't do much for consumer software, especially games. Overall IBM seemed pretty indifferent to what most OS/2 developers were doing.
• This doesn't fall under developer support or marketing, but another big problem was hardware support. I remember at one point I was trying to multi-boot between Windows, OS/2, Linux, and FreeBSD, and it was going fine for everything except OS/2. I could not get OS/2 to go beyond 640x480 with my video card.
I went down to Computer City and bought another card that supposedly had better OS/2 support. No luck. CC had a good exchange policy so I swapped that for something else. Nope. I had to go through many cards before finally finding one that worked.
Most of the cards had been fine in Linux and FreeBSD (and of course Windows). It was only OS/2 that was a nightmare.
IBM's attitude on hardware seemed to be "We're IBM. We're big and important! So all you hardware manufacturers need to sign up to our device developer programs and then write drivers for your hardware!". The hardware manufacturers attitude was "Yeah, we'll get right on that...when you've got a significant market share".
IBM should have have made a list of the top 5 or 10 graphic cards, network cards, sound cards, and so on, and put together a group within the OS/2 group that would sign up for the appropriate developer programs from those card's manufacturers, and then write OS/2 drivers for those cards to ship with OS/2. Someone whose computer contained cards that were all top 10 in their category should have been able to run OS/2 out of the box.
In fact, that "We're IBM. We're big and important!" attitude seemed to permeate their entire handling of OS/2. They expected us to beat a path to their door and beg for the privilege to develop for, sell, or use OS/2.
Microsoft (and Apple, BTW) had much better attitude.
• What's really annoying about all this is that Warp was out well before Windows 95, and Warp did an excellent job of running DOS and Windows 3 software. When I had to do DOS or Windows development back then I did it on Warp because it made a better DOS and Windows development and test environment than did native DOS and Windows.
Microsoft was starting to tout the advantages of 32-bit software ahead of the Windows 95 launch in order to push people toward upgrading. IBM should have jumped all over that, pointing out that you didn't need to wait for Windows 95 to get 32-bit. Get Warp now and you can start using 32-bit now, while keeping all your current 16-bit stuff. Position it as having all the 32-bit advantages of Windows 95, but with better support for your existing 16-bit stuff.