GUI
Henry Spencer
henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org
Fri Nov 28 03:21:59 UTC 2003
On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, William Park wrote:
> > There were features in OS/2, back in 1992, that have still not
> > appeared in Windows...
>
> If it's so good, then why couldn't IBM sell it?
Utter, total, repeated and compounded, planning and marketing ineptness.
Chapman's "In Search of Stupidity" has a whole chapter on the OS/2
disaster:
+ too much time and effort wasted on silly mainframe-compatibility
features
+ the decision to bring out an initial non-GUI version to help market the
PS/2 machines
+ grossly excessive prices for OS/2 itself and (even more important) the
development kit
+ no cooperation with third-party software builders to get key applications
in place
+ no attempt to exploit the opportunity to bundle it with a memory upgrade
(OS/2 needed lots, and memory prices had just jumped... but IBM was one
of the world's biggest memory makers)
+ no cooperation with third-party hardware builders (so the initial GUI
release couldn't run most people's printers!)
+ rumors that the API might change radically with integration of NeXTStep
+ failure to exploit the good-quality OS/2 applications built by IBM's
Desktop Software division
+ a lost opportunity to bring Microsoft to heel by exploiting the
agreement between the two companies in IBM's favor
+ misguided attempts to be Windows compatible
+ more rumors of radical changes impending
+ a marketing campaign grossly botched after Paramount objected to the use
of Star Trek themes without permission
+ IBM's CEO says it's too late to "go after the desktop"
+ the coup de grace: IBM's OS/2 boss says he will put Windows 95 on his
own home machines when it appears
Henry Spencer
henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
More information about the Legacy
mailing list