From: shurr@cbnews.cb.att.com (larry.a.shurr)
Subject: Re: OS/2 Win3.1 support *better* than MS!
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, OH
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:43:36 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.044505.2361@news.Hawaii.Edu> tholen@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu (Dave Tholen) writes:
>Steve Withers writes:
>> At an IBM OS/2 seminar this evening, one of the presenters told us that the
>> news in IBM's internal forums today was that the Win3.1 support in the CSD is
>> going to also include support for those Win3.x programs that will not run
>> under Win3.1.......
>You know, every once in a while, I'd really like to find out exactly why it
>is that one company is able to do something that another company can't.  This
>is a case in point.  If IBM is able to make OS/2 run Windows 3.0 applications
>that Windows 3.1 can't run, why or how are they able to do it?...

Well, I can't speak for IBM or MicroSoft and probably wouldn't want to if
I could :-), but I've been in development situations before where support-
ting the past, present AND future can become, or seem to become, an insup-
erable burden.  That forward-looking, extensible design you came up with
three years ago turns out to have unanticipated limitations now that you're
working on your new version with your new wish list, BUT... such-and-such
customer is using some quirk... uhm... feature which, if only you could 
dispense with it, would make implementing this whole new bunch of features 
so much easier.  So what should you do?  Support your past and forego your 
present goals?  Should you ditch your past in favor of your current goals?
Should you compromise the old and/or the new functionality? Should you 
shoot for full support?  But what about your budgets - time, money, even 
memory (ever hear of a memory budget)?  Oh, and by the way, will your 
decision now hinder future enhancement (though thinking about the future
can get to be a real luxury)?

So maybe MicroSoft screwed up, or maybe they made a conscious choice.
It seems like they made choices.  There are patches and settings available
to make a lot of "old" software work.  I've wondered, though; does using
those patches and settings preclude the use of other software or compromise
the rest of the system in some way?  Have they simply transferred some of 
the tradeoffs to you and I?  (Not me, actually, I haven't had enough time 
to become heavily invested in a Windows environment).

IBM on the other hand, has a different goal.  They can't be wanting us
to develop new Windows software (especially for Windows 2.1 and maybe
not even for MSDOS) if they're so committed to OS/2.  What they do want 
is for you (where "you" is large corporate customers including ones
with large installed bases of DOS and/or Windows PC's and imbedded appli-
cations) to switch to OS/2 NOW!  That way "you" can support your present
software base while making yourself ready for the exciting, dynamic, (and
other marketing adjectives) world of tomorrow etc. etc. etc.  And, by
the way, just for you, an excellent discount on genuine IBM hardware to 
run it on, and you'll be needing a lot of AS/400's to internetwork with,
not to mention this lovely mainframe over here for which I can work out a
lovely deal to go with the lovely software, the lovely upgrades, the 
lovely new PS/2's, and the lovely AS/400's.

O.K., so I'm being flippant, but IBM isn't doing all of this just because
they're a bunch of nice folk who want you and I to have a nice O.S. on our
PC's.  They want -- they need -- to make a lot of sales.  So they invest a
bigger budget in making it all work.  Hopefully, this includes the time 
and effort to reduce the memory budget while improving performance 
(increasing the performance budget?  The metaphor's getting a little 
stretched).  I understand that these were part of the reason for OS/2 1.3.
As long as I'm hoping, I hope they can do it and I hope that they will
make it affordable for small customers and not just big ones.

>Another case in point is memory boards for PS/2s.  IBM says that the system
>maximum memory for a Model 70-A21 is 16 Mbytes, [but it really isn't so].

Hmmm... I'm not as comfortable speculating on darker motivations.  Besides,
I've already speculated enough for one day.

Larry
-- 
Larry A. Shurr (las@cbnmva.att.com or att!cbnmva!las) speaking only for myself.
EOR (end-of-ramble)