From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM, Microsoft, and OS/2 -- a history.
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:26:34 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <1992Oct6.022026.16559@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>
>Below are excerpts from several books that pertain to the IBM/Microsoft split.

Doesn't this look like an ad for Dianetics?  :-)

>
>Robert Cringely's Accidental Empires: Page 287
>	OS/2 1.0 was designed to run on the 80286 processor. Bill Gates
>	urged IBM to go straight for the 80386 processor as the target
>	ofr OS/2, but IBM was afraid that the 386 would offer performance
>	too close to that of its minicomputers.

Perhaps.  The reason I heard was that IBM had anounced a 286 OS when
they released the PC/AT and they didn't want to abandon any customers
that might have been waiting for one.

>Robert Cringely's Accidental Empires: Pages 293,294
>	A fiesty (for IBM) band of graphics programmers at IBM's labe
>	in Hursley, England, first forced Microsoft to use an inferior
>	and difficult-to-implement graphices imaging model in Presentation
>	Manager ...

you mean the GPI graphics API's instead of Windows' GDI calls.  GPI
was designed as a superset to IBM's GDDM calls that were in use with
their mainframe OS's.  Compatibility (for whom?  I don't know) was
part of the issue.

>	Microsoft began moving away from OS/2 in 1989 when it became
>	clear that DOS wasn't going away, nor was it in Microsoft's
>	interest for it to go away.  The best solution for Microsoft
>	would be to put a new face of DOS, and that new face would
>	be yet another version of Windows.  Windows 3.0 would include
>	all that Microsoft had learned about graphical user interfaces
>	from seven years of working on Macintosh applications.
>	Windows 3.0 would also be aimed at ... 386 processors...
>	would give users 90 percent of the features of OS/2...

I don't doubt that this is what they advertised.  The big deal was
that it was not in MS's interest to move people away from DOS.  Mr.
Cringly (and MS) forget the years of failures with Windows 1.x and
2.x.  Yes, Windows 2.x was based on the Mac's look (which got them
sued), but it certainly wasn't aimed at the 386.  Windows 3.0 was a
286 based program with an internal 386 memory manager.  The only
386-specific feature was the DOS box, which worked on a 8088 under
Windows 2.x, but required a 386 (and got much better performance)
under 3.0.

>Robert Cringely's Accidental Empires: Page 294
>	Although by early 1990, OS/2 was up to version 1.2, which included
>	a new file system and other improvements, more than 200 copies
>	of DOS were still being sold for every copy of OS/2.  Gates
>	again proposed to IBM that they abandon the 286-based OS/2 product
>	entirely in favor of a 386-based version 2.0. Instead, IBM's
>	Austin, Texas, lab whipped up its own OS/2 version 1.3, generally
>	refered to as OS/2 Lite...

Who called it OS/2 lite?  And who looks bad here?  I see MS asking IBM
to give its loyal customers the finger.

>Robert Cringely's Accidental Empires: Page 295
>	IBM wanted to take from Microsoft the job of defining to the
>	world what a PC operating system was. Big Blue wanted to abandon
>	DOS in favor of OS/2 1.3, which it thought could be tied more
>	directly into IBM hardware and applicaitons, cutting out the
>	clone makers in the process.

Where is there evidence?  OS/2 was never an IBM-only system.  MS was
supposed to be developing it for the clones, like they do with DOS.
But because they gave up, all of a sudden, Mr. Cringley decides that
it was IBM's plan.

>OS/2 Notebook, Microsoft Press: Pages 613,616
>	[From an interview in early 1990]
>	Gates: In the past, because Microsoft saw a higher volume in Windows
>	applicaitons, we developed Windows version before PM versions.
>	After mid-1990, Microsoft will ship PM versions of applications
>	at the same time or before Windows versions. We can see the
>	opportunity to create much better applications under OS/2.
>	The OS/2 market is growing sufficently so that it is a good
>	business decision to do this.
>
>Reading Gates' statements from early 1990 above, I can now see
>why there are so many upset developers.  However if you read
>carefully it is clear that Gates was hedging his bets even then.

Perhaps.  So he smells like a clean fish.

>Finally (several years later) things came to a head, and
>simultaneously Windows 3.0 became a huge, instant, success.
>Microsoft saw their chance and took it. 
>
>I don't see how people can view this as Microsoft "abandoning" OS/2.

They didn't have to drop all support for it as well.  If they want to
stop making OS/2, itself, fine.  But to discontinue applications is
different.  After all, they haven't stopped making Mac apps, have they?

>In truth they were simply reverting to the path they had wanted all
>along.  They tried to bring IBM along, but Big Blue Bureaucracy was
>always in the way.  In the end it was switch or die.

IBM believes in listening to what the customers want.  IBM was quite
content to support both Windows and OS/2.  As a matter of fact, that
was part of IBM's long-range plan.  But MS wanted nothing to do with
the OS/2 project that they invested so much money in, so they dumped
it a year before they had the chance to realize any profits.  Now
they're pushing NT, determined not to make the same mistake twice.
-- 
David Charlap         |"there aren't 50,000 things for which it's worth writing
dic5340@hertz.njit.edu| software; and the computer industry doesn't have enough
----------------------+ programmers to create that much good software.
Therefore, most of it must be worthless" -- Boris Beizer "The Frozen Keyboard"