Re: consider the facts of the Stac case..

[Vincent Fritters]

On 2009-03-03, amicus_curious <ACDC@sti.net> wrote:

> Stick with the bologna and goetta, Vince, you are likely to be better at 
> that than you are at remembering the chronological order of things. 
> Microsoft had their falling out with IBM over Windows 3.0, not NT. 

Microsoft were actively developing NT at the time which is why I said
posioning the marketplace with FUD. It was a "wait until NT comes out
rather than OS/2 because NT is going to kill OS/2". They kept companies
from comitting to OS/2 while at the same time smiling and helping
IBM develop OS/2.


> NT came 
> much later, after OS/2 and Win95 were locking horns.

Yes.
That was version 2.0
I was speaking as far back as 1.3 which is as far as I go.
That was direct competition in the marketplace to see who got released first
and who was better.
IBM blew that one big time for reasons you state below.

>  IBM didn't want a 
> cheap GUI based platform like Windows as competition for their rather pricey 
> OS/2 with its Presentation Manager.  Gates saw the future differently, of 
> course, and was able to gain the upper hand.  If IBM would have had its way 
> and managed to kill Windows at an early age, we would all be using OS/2 on 
> IBM's PS/2 or maybe by now it would be OS/5 on the PS/5, but there would be 
> no massive competition for Wintel PCs, that much is certain.  IBM was unable 
> to recapture the PC market in the early 90s because they were opposed by 
> Microsoft and the cloners like Compaq and Dell and many others.  Would you 
> rather IBM had the monopoly in hardware and software?  Silly boy.

That was true for the 1.x versions, but IBM opened up for the 2.x version.
The problem was it was too late and Microsoft was holding developers hands
to write drivers. IBM was charging for the privilage.

Presentation manager was in OS/2 1.x not OS/2 2.x

2.x had the workplace shell, although technically it was built on PM.

OS/2 2.0 was not tied to the PS/2, it's not PS/5 BTW.
That was OS/2 1.x.

As for us using OS/2 compared to Windows, OS/2 was light years ahead of
anything Microsoft had at the time.
IBM was arrogant, Microsoft were very good a product promotion and we
got stuck with Windows.


-- 
Vincent Fritters
Farmer Vincent's Smoked Meats.
"Meat's Meat and Man's Gotta Eat"