From: Lowey@Sask.USask.CA (Kevin Lowey)
Subject: Re: Origins of IBM / Microsoft rift
Originator: lowey@jester.usask.ca
Reply-To: lowey@jester.usask.ca
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 22:45:54 GMT

From gordonl@microsoft.com (Gordon Letwin):
> 
> You guys have too Machiavellian a model of Microsoft's approach.  The
> apps group wants to sell apps.  They want to have a good market share and
> make money.  That's all that drives them.  That's why they develop for the
> Mac - it's a successful machine and there's a goodly number of customers
> for Mac software.

What better way to build market share than to be the first people into
the market?  Isn't it better to have as many markets as possible to
sell to?  Imagine, a whole new market to conquer.  Instead, Microsoft
is going to be trailing the pack, after Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus
... .  Sounds like a silly political decision to me rathar than good
marketing sense.  Microsoft is sleeping and missing the potential of
OS/2's market.

> The apps group is *not* developing for the OS/2 PM API for two reasons:
>     1) the OS/2 API will fail.  

Funny, sounds like the OS/2 API is already guaranteed (as much as
Microsoft guarantees anything) of continuing, simply because NT is
going to include it.  This at least applies to text mode applications.

Of course, the only reason the PM APIs aren't being supported is
political, and again stabs a knife in the back of the developers who
already have sunk money into Microsoft's coffers because of promised
support of this API.  Instead of supporting it, Microsoft rips all the
PM support OUT of their development tools.  Thanks a lot.

>     	of OS/2 users out there.  The Apps group believes this because
>     	they know both IBM and Microsoft's track records and they're
>     	making the smart bet.  

Smart?  They're betting on the company that keeps changing its mind
about what features they are going to support, and what environments are
the "Next Greatest thing" every few years, and they call THAT the
smart bet???

Here's a quote to refresh your memory on this:

      "OS/2 is Destined to be a very important piece of software.
       During the next 10 years, millions of programmers and users
       will utilize this system."

      - Bill Gates, in the forward to "Inside OS/2" by Gordon Letwin,
        copyright 1988.

I agree 100% with Bill Gates.  Too bad he abandoned this for something
else not even half-way through this ten-year vision.  Instead of
living up to their promise, Microsoft instead abandoned OS/2.  Not
only are programs deliberately not updated, but all the development
tools are DOWNGRADED so they won't support OS/2 2.0.

Oh well.  Maybe this lack of a Microsoft dominated OS/2 is really a
blessing in disguise.

>     2) OS/2 runs windows applications.  I hear every day how well it
>     	does so.  So who in their right minds will write apps for
>     	OS/2 PM - and only run on OS/2 - when they could write apps
>     	for Windows and run on BOTH platforms?

OS/2 runs Windows applications better than Windows.  The problem is
that Windows applications suck because of all the problems inherited
from Windows, including the damned hour glass, poor multitasking, etc.

OS/2 runs OS/2 applications better than it runs Windows applications,
but it still runs Windows standard mode applications better than
Windows.

- Kevin Lowey
  Definately not a Microsoft spokesman
-- 
- Kevin Lowey (Lowey@Sask.USask.CA)
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