What killed them? If you remember when this all was happening, Microsoft was out to take over C++ and all the companies who did cross-platform frameworks were attached in standard MS style. Monopoly money funded subsidizing of their Visual C-- product and MS-MFC. Then when Watcom wanted to include MFC with the Watcom C++ compiler package, Microsoft said that would only happen if ALL other frameworks on the CD were removed. Remember, Watcom C++ shipped with DOS16, DOS32, Win16, Win32c, Win32, OS/2-16, OS/2-32 compilers with the IBM OCL framework and some others like Zinc if I remember correctly.
Watcom would have to eliminate all the support for the other platforms to license MFC and ship it with their compilers. And Microsoft was all but giving Visual C-- away at the time also.
The Watcom compiler was one of the fastest on the market from what I remember. I had heard that IBM used it for the WinOS/2 subsystem on OS/2 to make it a faster Windows than Dos/Windows.
Think about it, Microsoft HATES anything that abstracts the Win32 API and crossplatform frameworks and crossplatform compilers where one of the early targets of the beast in Redmond. Borland was the only one that got any money out of taking Microsoft to court for attacking it's business using illegal means. The others were too small and just folded and looked for other ways to make a business.
Same here and when I saw what VisualBasic was compared to VX-Rexx, I couldn't figure out why Watcom didn't bring VX-Rexx to the Windows platform.
VX-Rexx was great at quick and dirty applications and prototyping. I remember writing a simple text browser in VX-Rexx when I was building a Java web server. The browser let me write html and push it to the server for testing of the parsing engine.
If you've not seen it, think of it as VisualBasic on steroids. Hey, it used Rexx for one thing and the function browser was pretty cool for it's day. IMHO.
I probably fully discharge the Thinkpad battery 2 or 3 times a year but most of the time it's on AC power with the battery still installed. I now get just over 2 hours out of it now( used to get 2.5 hrs ).
Are they using cheaper battery technology, bad charge circuits or are they pulling the razor/razor-blade sales tactic? Those batteries are not cheap at retail so if they died in less than 2 years.....
Wait. I just realized also that I'm running a 120MHz CPU and todays CPU's are in the GHz range and will have to push alot more current through them when on battery power. It could take it's toll on the battery life.
I still wouldn't doubt the razor-blade mentality of designing these to go bad faster to make money on replacement parts. It's the typical American business way of thinking. IMHO.
The only time it's tedious is when it's a kernel upgrade (rare) or when it requires downloading something big from a patch-dotted server.
There in lies the differences between Linux/UNIX and MS Windows. In Windows, it's all "in the kernel" in that so many application have code spead all over the OS DLL's. The layered nature of Linux/UNIX/BSD and even OS/2 means that the parts can be updated without taking down the whole OS and these parts can be installed or removed as needed by the user of the system.
I'm sure Microsoft is attempting to unravel the mess they have got themselves into. Especially now that Linux is scaling up and down on all kinds of hardware and supporting security issues on Windows isn't working well. It won't work though. IMHO.
I have to ask, why was Tatro SOOO against this move? So much so that Piper was investigated for rigging the bid but later nothing was found. This sounds like what the Microsoft sales reps were saying at the beginning( before the contract was actually awarded ). Is/was Tatro receiving funds from Microsoft?
I just loved how the Texas Attorney General backed out of the DOJ/States vs Microsoft case when Dell and another Texas company pressured such a move. You know Microsoft 'asked' these companies to do this.... What did they 'ask' of Tatro??????
That's what I've been telling the mobile phone makers at Comdex and CES for 2 years now. These companies remind me of Handspring. They've lost the ability to innovate in their sector/productline so they have to try merging with another sector in hopes of growth.
Integration at the expense of usability won't work and when they've got to throw the whole thing out when a feature breaks or becomes useless( new service ), users will get pissed.
Bluetooth is low power and allows a many 2 many use model. That's the sales model they should be going for. Sell products that'll work in the car and easily work in the home or where ever.
I have to agree somewhat. There's been alot of talk about 802.11 in this thing but these people must think that there's free energy getting beamed to this thing. Since it's a GPS device, you're gonna be on the road/away and battery life is a big deal.
They should have nix'ed the mp3 player and either added more ram or Bluetooth. IMO.
They'd be idiots if they didn't implement this with the SPP Profile( serial ). That' way it's just a serial device and any software which can read a serial device and parse NMEA would work.
Of course they seem to be somewhat idiotic by only mentioning Microsofts crappy products as being compatible. IMO.
That's awesome, thanks for the link. Now, if the mobile phone vendors would only do the same thing( sealed pod with Bluetooth ). Of course the T68i isn't THAT large but still could be smaller without all the UI stuff.
LoB
Re:Oh there's that world class Microsoft innovatio
on
Assorted CES Gizmos
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· Score: 2
I wouldn't doubt it's running MS-DOS so there might be more to your wise crack than meets the eye.
From what I've heard it's not less than $30 billion but that's still enough to outlive any company in court costs. I'll bet that in many of the "settlement" meetings with Microsoft and it's former "partners", the list of how many appeals Microsoft would be willing to file is probably posted in 200pt font on the wall behind them.
I wonder if the economy has much to do with their $10 billion reduction of cash or is it going to all those countries BillG and gang are attempting to payoff to NOT use GNU/Linux and OSS? Their numbers seem to show they are still ripping off business's at the same rate as always so it's probably from investment losses and those billions spent on foreign governments. They have 3 more years worth at their current rate.:)
The fact that they've been doing this since the 1980's leads me to believe they did it on purpose. There is no way they'll complete a deal which does not let them own the technology very quickly. Especially if they see it as a key technology/sector.
This is how Microsoft does business in new markets. They've been "damaging" their reputation for almost 20 years and look what it's got them. Just a mere $30 billion in cash and a 9x% marketshare for desktop OS's and desktop applications. The big wireless guys are smart and have stayed the heck away from anything tied to Microsoft. Remember, they've done this since the 1980's and they are good at it. IMHO.
This is what Microsoft does all the time. The "partner" is rendered so weak by Microsoft that a fraction of what the technology is offered as a settlement and usually taken. FEW cases against Microsoft actually go to trial.
Here's how it work: 1) Microsoft promises to feature YOUR product so you sign an agreement 2) Microsoft stalls while it's engineers figure out what/how you are doing what you're doing and how they can Window-ize it. By Window-izing, I mean make it proprietary so it'll only run on a Windows based OS. 3) YOUR company starts getting fed up with all the Microsoft engineers running your engineers in circles and delaying the product. 4) YOUR company starts running low on capital and now is getting REALLY tired of Microsoft. Legal threats start here. 5) YOUR company files legal action against Microsoft for all the things they did illegally. The list is long. From stealing secrets, sharing them, stealing employees, delayed product, etc 6) YOUR company shrinks to 1/4th it's previous size and sales all but have dried up as Microsoft announces it's version of YOUR product to be released in the next quarter or two. 7) YOU and your one remaining lawyer decide to take the 1 million dollars Microsoft offers to settle the case. 8) YOU give your lawyer 3/4 of the settlement amount and you pay YOUR remaining closing costs to shut the lights out on your multi-billion dollar business which Microsoft now owns for a fraction of what it would have cost them if YOUR product hit the market.
This is what it means to be a Microsoft partner and those that have been down this road are not vocal about it. You don't put up signs when your business has been raped by Microsoft.... IMHO.
can't figure it out why year after year and company after company falls prey from being a Microsoft "partner". It stunned me when Sun signed their now famous licensing agreement with Microsoft. The road was already littered with victims from legal contracts gone bad when one of the parties involved is Microsoft.
Maybe the legal experts hired are all so cocky they think they will be the ones to make a Microsoft "partnership" work. Maybe the exec's want to cash in on the quick boost in their stock price when the press releases hit. Personally, I think it ego and the exec's think they are smarter than all those that have failed before.
Sendo didn't "get what they deserved" but what they got was surely not unexpected if you've been in the industry for more than 5 years.
Regarding Oracle; maybe that's why they went dumpster diving? Larry surely has few kind words for the Redmond gang and would be willing to spend what it might take to fry Microsoft in court. With the right evidence of course.
wouldn't a ~$200 game console make a far better gaming system than your PC? Maybe some kind of display switch would allow you to use your computer monitor for the game console?
Think about it, you'll pay $200 more for a beefy system just to run the games on your PC and most of that would probably be for the video card. When short-range wireless controllers are standard the console box can stay hidden away.
Now if you are talking about playing games on the company time then adding a console becomes an issue.;o
It seems like the console is where the gaming action is these days anyway or am I way off base? Most of my friends have consoles these days.
You can only think of Microsoft actions in how they kill competition. You do that and you'll have the reason for their actions.
BTW, why did Microsoft purchase Coopers & Peters? Why are they spending around $500 million each time they find a government is moving to open source? The answer has nothing to do with being competitive.
Yup and I told the press at that time to watch what would happen after Win95 shipped, Microsoft would start dumping million into the Windows NT FUD campaign because IBM was going after the server space with OS/2( WarpServer for eBusiness ). We only saw one time OS/2 was included in the NT Server shootouts and it kicked butt. Of course, IBM was pretty beat up on OS/2 after the Win95/IBM PC div problems and OS/2 for PPC... FUD ruled in those days for sure.
The FUD coming from Microsoft in those days was deafening and our only recourse was to handwrite letters to the press. If we were lucky, 3 months later we'd see a retraction on the last few pages of the magazine. Today, with the Web and Internet, those "independant" studies Microsoft funds get nailed before they hit the hard copy press.
People still don't believe me when I tell them OS/2 was selling a million copies a month back in the 1994/1995 days. Of course they didn't know that pressure from Microsoft forced companies like HP to stop OS/2 development and promotions at that time too.
I think the number for NT in 1994 was around 500,000 copies and in 1995 it was around 700,000 copies. I still can't believe that a DOS based OS existed all the way up until the year 2000( MS Windows ME )....
The WPS is a great piece of software. Regarding memory useage, I had a stripped down version of OS/2 v4 running PM(GUI) and TCP/IP networking all running from a 10MB partition. The OS with PM( not WPS ) used something like 4MB of RAM and the WPS was in the 4-6MB as you mentioned.
To this day, I still find this incredible when you see all the features you get for so little memory. The other thing that was/is cool about OS/2 is that IBM enabled it to be fully configured/scipted from REXX. From an adminstration point of view, that's also the power of Linux but in OS/2 its provided thoughout the system and well documented( kinda->redbooks ).
Don't forget how in 1994 at the COMDEX computer show, HP pulled 1/2 of their PC's( which were running OS/2 ) from the floor the night before the show. This happened after HP executives getting a threatening call from Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft. Still people say it's all IBMs fault. I think not.
And how come there isn't one example of a threat to Windows on x86 that's succeeded in all these years? Look how many times Microsoft ends up in court or settling out of court with "partners". No company is perfect and when you go up against a monopoly who uses illegal means to fight you, you're gonna look like a dumb ass all the time.
Now Linux is going after Microsoft from the ankles. There is no business model behind it except in software services so Microsoft can't fight Linux companies directly. That is until they start using.Net stuff and Microsoft starts dropping patent bombs on them all.....
It's good to see someone remembers history the way it was and not the way it's rewritten.
Do you guys remember seeing DOOM running full speed in a window on OS/2? What a crowd that generated at Comdex. Up until then, graphical action games/apps on the PC were only done in DOS. The OS/2 DIVE system allowed fullblown multimedia apps to run at very acceptable speeds in a window.
I heard that Microsoft saw what OS/2 could do( DOOM in a window ) and paid ID Software a ton of cash to some up with a way to do the same in MS Windows. The birth of MS DirectX maybe?
I think OS/2 was the first PC OS to ship with a multimedia subsystem and apps to use it( video player, videodisk controller, syncronized video/sound, sound player/recorder, etc ). Maybe the Amiga had this way before but no on the x86 PC hardware.
don't forget that not only did/does OS/2 provide all those basic networking clients but also quite a few servers. Sendmail, telnetd, pppd, ftpd, etc. And these were in the OS sold as a client and it was very capable of running dozens of processes and hundreds to thousands of threads. Did I say this was in the client OS?
On a 486 w/10MB RAM system, we were running the PMX XServer, with both TCP and Netware network stacks and apps. Later we used OS/2 for debugging a quad TI DSP development system when all Microsoft had was a 16bit co-operative tasking shell on top of DOS.
IBM (through their own fault) didn't succeed in getting developers on board and in pushing OS/2 through their own PCs. OS/2 could be installed side-by-side with Windows and still IBM sold Windows-only PCs. Go figure.
When large companies like HP and Intel were threated by Microsoft for supporting OS/2, what do you think those smaller software shops could do? Only in Europe could IBM get any support for OS/2 and it wasn't because the OS stunk. Monopolies using illegal means will always win.
I remember Jerry Pournelle writing a long time ago that he couldn't get a copy of OS/2 at the IBM booth at Comdex whereas Microsoft just gave him dozens of MSDN and Windows CDs and books.
I tried like the dickens to get a free copy of OS/2 for a university professor who wanted to teach the OS/2 PM/GDI but couldn't. I think what was going on was Microsofts licensing with IBM prevented them from doing this or made it way too costly. I think might have been why they tried OS/2 for Windows( no WinOS2 and less expensive ).
Microsoft had direct contact with how many copies of OS/2 where sold and I doubt they would give up any of it's licensing terms because of the treat OS/2 presented. OS/2 sales go up and MS dumps million into their FUD machine. Look how hard Microsoft fought to keep that $1 licensing term embedded in SCO UNIX. SCO had to take them to court to get it removed and it wasn't because of the profits that $1/copie presented. It was the ability to track that market.
Remember, IBM had a business to run and the DOJ was still watching while Microsoft had/has a monopoly to run and the CEO says something like "to heck with the DOJ".
I feel that Apple was at fault for both PREP and CHRP failing. When PREP when GA, Apple turned around and said it didn't like it and wouldn't support it. Something about not being ROM friendly or something like that. They went back to the drawing board and came up with CHRP 2 years later( GA ). By that time, Microsoft had Apple in it's crosshairs and all the FUD in the press all but stopped sales of Macs. Apple could not let go of the hardware this time either and MacOS on CHRP was not licensed out.
IMO, Microsoft had 3 threats in those days. Number one was OS/2 on x86 and number two and three was MacOS and OS/2 on PPC. Microsoft totally controlled the x86 market and stomped on anybody even mentioning the name OS/2. Then they made sure the press made it look like Apple was going out of business with all the 'Apple is dead, long live Windows 95' FUD and this took Apple out of the picture which also put PPC out of the picture.
Their plan was brilliant but illegal. The fact that it was illegal means nothing these days if your company is large enough because you'll just be told not to do it again. It's easy to say "OK, sure" while you stand on the switching remains of your competitors.
Boy, those were exciting days but very sad ones. It still amazes me to see that people still think in terms of applications instead of data... The template concepts used in the WorkplaceShell were fantastic and the OpenDoc concept is what will be the turning point of PC usability and software customizability. When it gets a chance to be reborn in Microsofts absense.
You know, it was OS/2's power and customizability that attracted me to it though people thought it was confusing and hard to understand. Windows was/is inflexible and simplistic and people like that. Now Linux is powerful and customizable and all we hear is how hard it is to use..... Is this all because OEM's can't/won't pre-install?
What other tool is so multi faceted that it can do so many things yet users insist that all it's functions be operated in the most simplistic of ways? I believe that OEM pre-installs will be what brings Linux to the masses. There just aren't enough geeks around to go door to door doing installs.
Dang, caffeines got the brain shotting of at the fingers.... The OS/2 thread probably is more to blame.:O
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What killed them? If you remember when this all was happening, Microsoft was out to take over C++ and all the companies who did cross-platform frameworks were attached in standard MS style. Monopoly money funded subsidizing of their Visual C-- product and MS-MFC. Then when Watcom wanted to include MFC with the Watcom C++ compiler package, Microsoft said that would only happen if ALL other frameworks on the CD were removed. Remember, Watcom C++ shipped with DOS16, DOS32, Win16, Win32c, Win32, OS/2-16, OS/2-32 compilers with the IBM OCL framework and some others like Zinc if I remember correctly.
Watcom would have to eliminate all the support for the other platforms to license MFC and ship it with their compilers. And Microsoft was all but giving Visual C-- away at the time also.
The Watcom compiler was one of the fastest on the market from what I remember. I had heard that IBM used it for the WinOS/2 subsystem on OS/2 to make it a faster Windows than Dos/Windows.
Think about it, Microsoft HATES anything that abstracts the Win32 API and crossplatform frameworks and crossplatform compilers where one of the early targets of the beast in Redmond. Borland was the only one that got any money out of taking Microsoft to court for attacking it's business using illegal means. The others were too small and just folded and looked for other ways to make a business.
LoB
Same here and when I saw what VisualBasic was compared to VX-Rexx, I couldn't figure out why Watcom didn't bring VX-Rexx to the Windows platform.
VX-Rexx was great at quick and dirty applications and prototyping. I remember writing a simple text browser in VX-Rexx when I was building a Java web server. The browser let me write html and push it to the server for testing of the parsing engine.
If you've not seen it, think of it as VisualBasic on steroids. Hey, it used Rexx for one thing and the function browser was pretty cool for it's day. IMHO.
LoB
I probably fully discharge the Thinkpad battery 2 or 3 times a year but most of the time it's on AC power with the battery still installed. I now get just over 2 hours out of it now( used to get 2.5 hrs ).
Are they using cheaper battery technology, bad charge circuits or are they pulling the razor/razor-blade sales tactic? Those batteries are not cheap at retail so if they died in less than 2 years.....
Wait. I just realized also that I'm running a 120MHz CPU and todays CPU's are in the GHz range and will have to push alot more current through them when on battery power. It could take it's toll on the battery life.
I still wouldn't doubt the razor-blade mentality of designing these to go bad faster to make money on replacement parts. It's the typical American business way of thinking. IMHO.
LoB
There in lies the differences between Linux/UNIX and MS Windows. In Windows, it's all "in the kernel" in that so many application have code spead all over the OS DLL's. The layered nature of Linux/UNIX/BSD and even OS/2 means that the parts can be updated without taking down the whole OS and these parts can be installed or removed as needed by the user of the system.
I'm sure Microsoft is attempting to unravel the mess they have got themselves into. Especially now that Linux is scaling up and down on all kinds of hardware and supporting security issues on Windows isn't working well. It won't work though. IMHO.
LoB
I have to ask, why was Tatro SOOO against this move? So much so that Piper was investigated for rigging the bid but later nothing was found. This sounds like what the Microsoft sales reps were saying at the beginning( before the contract was actually awarded ). Is/was Tatro receiving funds from Microsoft?
I just loved how the Texas Attorney General backed out of the DOJ/States vs Microsoft case when Dell and another Texas company pressured such a move. You know Microsoft 'asked' these companies to do this.... What did they 'ask' of Tatro??????
LoB
That's what I've been telling the mobile phone makers at Comdex and CES for 2 years now. These companies remind me of Handspring. They've lost the ability to innovate in their sector/productline so they have to try merging with another sector in hopes of growth.
Integration at the expense of usability won't work and when they've got to throw the whole thing out when a feature breaks or becomes useless( new service ), users will get pissed.
Bluetooth is low power and allows a many 2 many use model. That's the sales model they should be going for. Sell products that'll work in the car and easily work in the home or where ever.
LoB
I have to agree somewhat. There's been alot of talk about 802.11 in this thing but these people must think that there's free energy getting beamed to this thing. Since it's a GPS device, you're gonna be on the road/away and battery life is a big deal.
They should have nix'ed the mp3 player and either added more ram or Bluetooth. IMO.
LoB
They'd be idiots if they didn't implement this with the SPP Profile( serial ). That' way it's just a serial device and any software which can read a serial device and parse NMEA would work.
Of course they seem to be somewhat idiotic by only mentioning Microsofts crappy products as being compatible. IMO.
LoB
That's awesome, thanks for the link. Now, if the mobile phone vendors would only do the same thing( sealed pod with Bluetooth ). Of course the T68i isn't THAT large but still could be smaller without all the UI stuff.
LoB
I wouldn't doubt it's running MS-DOS so there might be more to your wise crack than meets the eye.
LoB
From what I've heard it's not less than $30 billion but that's still enough to outlive any company in court costs. I'll bet that in many of the "settlement" meetings with Microsoft and it's former "partners", the list of how many appeals Microsoft would be willing to file is probably posted in 200pt font on the wall behind them.
:)
I wonder if the economy has much to do with their $10 billion reduction of cash or is it going to all those countries BillG and gang are attempting to payoff to NOT use GNU/Linux and OSS? Their numbers seem to show they are still ripping off business's at the same rate as always so it's probably from investment losses and those billions spent on foreign governments. They have 3 more years worth at their current rate.
LoB
The fact that they've been doing this since the 1980's leads me to believe they did it on purpose. There is no way they'll complete a deal which does not let them own the technology very quickly. Especially if they see it as a key technology/sector.
This is how Microsoft does business in new markets. They've been "damaging" their reputation for almost 20 years and look what it's got them. Just a mere $30 billion in cash and a 9x% marketshare for desktop OS's and desktop applications. The big wireless guys are smart and have stayed the heck away from anything tied to Microsoft. Remember, they've done this since the 1980's and they are good at it.
IMHO.
LoB
This is what Microsoft does all the time. The "partner" is rendered so weak by Microsoft that a fraction of what the technology is offered as a settlement and usually taken. FEW cases against Microsoft actually go to trial.
Here's how it work:
1) Microsoft promises to feature YOUR product so you sign an agreement
2) Microsoft stalls while it's engineers figure out what/how you are doing what you're doing and how they can Window-ize it. By Window-izing, I mean make it proprietary so it'll only run on a Windows based OS.
3) YOUR company starts getting fed up with all the Microsoft engineers running your engineers in circles and delaying the product.
4) YOUR company starts running low on capital and now is getting REALLY tired of Microsoft. Legal threats start here.
5) YOUR company files legal action against Microsoft for all the things they did illegally. The list is long. From stealing secrets, sharing them, stealing employees, delayed product, etc
6) YOUR company shrinks to 1/4th it's previous size and sales all but have dried up as Microsoft announces it's version of YOUR product to be released in the next quarter or two.
7) YOU and your one remaining lawyer decide to take the 1 million dollars Microsoft offers to settle the case.
8) YOU give your lawyer 3/4 of the settlement amount and you pay YOUR remaining closing costs to shut the lights out on your multi-billion dollar business which Microsoft now owns for a fraction of what it would have cost them if YOUR product hit the market.
This is what it means to be a Microsoft partner and those that have been down this road are not vocal about it. You don't put up signs when your business has been raped by Microsoft.... IMHO.
LoB
can't figure it out why year after year and company after company falls prey from being a Microsoft "partner". It stunned me when Sun signed their now famous licensing agreement with Microsoft. The road was already littered with victims from legal contracts gone bad when one of the parties involved is Microsoft.
Maybe the legal experts hired are all so cocky they think they will be the ones to make a Microsoft "partnership" work. Maybe the exec's want to cash in on the quick boost in their stock price when the press releases hit. Personally, I think it ego and the exec's think they are smarter than all those that have failed before.
Sendo didn't "get what they deserved" but what they got was surely not unexpected if you've been in the industry for more than 5 years.
Regarding Oracle; maybe that's why they went dumpster diving? Larry surely has few kind words for the Redmond gang and would be willing to spend what it might take to fry Microsoft in court. With the right evidence of course.
LoB
wouldn't a ~$200 game console make a far better gaming system than your PC? Maybe some kind of display switch would allow you to use your computer monitor for the game console?
;o
Think about it, you'll pay $200 more for a beefy system just to run the games on your PC and most of that would probably be for the video card. When short-range wireless controllers are standard the console box can stay hidden away.
Now if you are talking about playing games on the company time then adding a console becomes an issue.
It seems like the console is where the gaming action is these days anyway or am I way off base? Most of my friends have consoles these days.
LoB
good points. Been telling Microsoft to do that since around 1990. More should. IMHO.
LoB
http://in.news.yahoo.com/021212/43/1z0mv.html
I think IBM realizes what's at stake here and is willing to put more $$ where it's mouth is. That's gotta piss Bill and Steve off.
LoB
You can only think of Microsoft actions in how they kill competition. You do that and you'll have the reason for their actions.
BTW, why did Microsoft purchase Coopers & Peters? Why are they spending around $500 million each time they find a government is moving to open source? The answer has nothing to do with being competitive.
LoB
Yup and I told the press at that time to watch what would happen after Win95 shipped, Microsoft would start dumping million into the Windows NT FUD campaign because IBM was going after the server space with OS/2( WarpServer for eBusiness ). We only saw one time OS/2 was included in the NT Server shootouts and it kicked butt. Of course, IBM was pretty beat up on OS/2 after the Win95/IBM PC div problems and OS/2 for PPC... FUD ruled in those days for sure.
The FUD coming from Microsoft in those days was deafening and our only recourse was to handwrite letters to the press. If we were lucky, 3 months later we'd see a retraction on the last few pages of the magazine. Today, with the Web and Internet, those "independant" studies Microsoft funds get nailed before they hit the hard copy press.
People still don't believe me when I tell them OS/2 was selling a million copies a month back in the 1994/1995 days. Of course they didn't know that pressure from Microsoft forced companies like HP to stop OS/2 development and promotions at that time too.
I think the number for NT in 1994 was around 500,000 copies and in 1995 it was around 700,000 copies. I still can't believe that a DOS based OS existed all the way up until the year 2000( MS Windows ME )....
LoB
The WPS is a great piece of software. Regarding memory useage, I had a stripped down version of OS/2 v4 running PM(GUI) and TCP/IP networking all running from a 10MB partition. The OS with PM( not WPS ) used something like 4MB of RAM and the WPS was in the 4-6MB as you mentioned.
To this day, I still find this incredible when you see all the features you get for so little memory. The other thing that was/is cool about OS/2 is that IBM enabled it to be fully configured/scipted from REXX. From an adminstration point of view, that's also the power of Linux but in OS/2 its provided thoughout the system and well documented( kinda->redbooks ).
LoB
Don't forget how in 1994 at the COMDEX computer show, HP pulled 1/2 of their PC's( which were running OS/2 ) from the floor the night before the show. This happened after HP executives getting a threatening call from Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft. Still people say it's all IBMs fault. I think not.
.Net stuff and Microsoft starts dropping patent bombs on them all.....
And how come there isn't one example of a threat to Windows on x86 that's succeeded in all these years? Look how many times Microsoft ends up in court or settling out of court with "partners". No company is perfect and when you go up against a monopoly who uses illegal means to fight you, you're gonna look like a dumb ass all the time.
Now Linux is going after Microsoft from the ankles. There is no business model behind it except in software services so Microsoft can't fight Linux companies directly. That is until they start using
It's good to see someone remembers history the way it was and not the way it's rewritten.
LoB
Do you guys remember seeing DOOM running full speed in a window on OS/2? What a crowd that generated at Comdex. Up until then, graphical action games/apps on the PC were only done in DOS. The OS/2 DIVE system allowed fullblown multimedia apps to run at very acceptable speeds in a window.
I heard that Microsoft saw what OS/2 could do( DOOM in a window ) and paid ID Software a ton of cash to some up with a way to do the same in MS Windows. The birth of MS DirectX maybe?
I think OS/2 was the first PC OS to ship with a multimedia subsystem and apps to use it( video player, videodisk controller, syncronized video/sound, sound player/recorder, etc ). Maybe the Amiga had this way before but no on the x86 PC hardware.
LoB
LoB
don't forget that not only did/does OS/2 provide all those basic networking clients but also quite a few servers. Sendmail, telnetd, pppd, ftpd, etc. And these were in the OS sold as a client and it was very capable of running dozens of processes and hundreds to thousands of threads. Did I say this was in the client OS?
On a 486 w/10MB RAM system, we were running the PMX XServer, with both TCP and Netware network stacks and apps. Later we used OS/2 for debugging a quad TI DSP development system when all Microsoft had was a 16bit co-operative tasking shell on top of DOS.
LoB
When large companies like HP and Intel were threated by Microsoft for supporting OS/2, what do you think those smaller software shops could do? Only in Europe could IBM get any support for OS/2 and it wasn't because the OS stunk. Monopolies using illegal means will always win.
I remember Jerry Pournelle writing a long time ago that he couldn't get a copy of OS/2 at the IBM booth at Comdex whereas Microsoft just gave him dozens of MSDN and Windows CDs and books.
I tried like the dickens to get a free copy of OS/2 for a university professor who wanted to teach the OS/2 PM/GDI but couldn't. I think what was going on was Microsofts licensing with IBM prevented them from doing this or made it way too costly. I think might have been why they tried OS/2 for Windows( no WinOS2 and less expensive ).
Microsoft had direct contact with how many copies of OS/2 where sold and I doubt they would give up any of it's licensing terms because of the treat OS/2 presented. OS/2 sales go up and MS dumps million into their FUD machine. Look how hard Microsoft fought to keep that $1 licensing term embedded in SCO UNIX. SCO had to take them to court to get it removed and it wasn't because of the profits that $1/copie presented. It was the ability to track that market.
Remember, IBM had a business to run and the DOJ was still watching while Microsoft had/has a monopoly to run and the CEO says something like "to heck with the DOJ".
LoB
I feel that Apple was at fault for both PREP and CHRP failing. When PREP when GA, Apple turned around and said it didn't like it and wouldn't support it. Something about not being ROM friendly or something like that. They went back to the drawing board and came up with CHRP 2 years later( GA ). By that time, Microsoft had Apple in it's crosshairs and all the FUD in the press all but stopped sales of Macs. Apple could not let go of the hardware this time either and MacOS on CHRP was not licensed out.
:O
IMO, Microsoft had 3 threats in those days. Number one was OS/2 on x86 and number two and three was MacOS and OS/2 on PPC. Microsoft totally controlled the x86 market and stomped on anybody even mentioning the name OS/2. Then they made sure the press made it look like Apple was going out of business with all the 'Apple is dead, long live Windows 95' FUD and this took Apple out of the picture which also put PPC out of the picture.
Their plan was brilliant but illegal. The fact that it was illegal means nothing these days if your company is large enough because you'll just be told not to do it again. It's easy to say "OK, sure" while you stand on the switching remains of your competitors.
Boy, those were exciting days but very sad ones. It still amazes me to see that people still think in terms of applications instead of data... The template concepts used in the WorkplaceShell were fantastic and the OpenDoc concept is what will be the turning point of PC usability and software customizability. When it gets a chance to be reborn in Microsofts absense.
You know, it was OS/2's power and customizability that attracted me to it though people thought it was confusing and hard to understand. Windows was/is inflexible and simplistic and people like that. Now Linux is powerful and customizable and all we hear is how hard it is to use..... Is this all because OEM's can't/won't pre-install?
What other tool is so multi faceted that it can do so many things yet users insist that all it's functions be operated in the most simplistic of ways? I believe that OEM pre-installs will be what brings Linux to the masses. There just aren't enough geeks around to go door to door doing installs.
Dang, caffeines got the brain shotting of at the fingers.... The OS/2 thread probably is more to blame.
LoB