Re: Too late! Window hasta la vista 5308 is now fully operational.

[Larry Qualig]

Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On 25 Feb 2006 20:01:43 -0800, Rex Ballard wrote:
>
> > Many players were hedging their bets, they
> > were prepared to consider staying with Windows 3.1, flipping to OS/2,
> > Solaris, UnixWare, or Linux.
>
> Which is one reason why so many of them were so late with 32 bit Windows
> products.  They took a "wait and see" approach, giving Microsoft the
> opportunity to get to their customers first.
>
> > The OEMs didn't like OS/2 because that would give IBM an advantage.
>
> Something I've been saying for YEARS.  Nice of you to finally climb on the
> bandwagon.
>
>
> > and 3.5 still didn't take off, Bill Gates
> > announced Chicago, and promised it within a year (Early 1995?).  But
> > unlike NT, Microsoft really had to scramble and come up with something
> > that could compete with *nix.
>
> Chicago was announced in 1993, and it was expected to ship in late 1994.
> It slipped to August 1995.  Windows 95 was not meant to compete with Unix.
> It was meant to move people to 32 bit, so that the transition to NT would
> be less painful down the road.  This was the exact same tact that Microsoft
> took for OS/2.  Windows 3.1 was designed as a gateway from DOS to OS/2, and
> probably would have been successful if IBM had not grown jealous of the
> success of Windows and sabotaged OS/2 at every turn.


(after some snipping) Just a comment on OS/2 since it's being discussed
here and in another thread. There is one contributing factor in the
failure of OS/2 that I've always found interesting. Anyone who was
around during the OS/2 days may remember reading and hearing that "OS/2
is a better Windows than Windows" meaning that it ran Windows apps
better than Windows did. (Windows 3.1 apps that is.)

It's obvious why OS/2 had good (great) compatibility with Win3.1 apps,
so that users could continue to run the Windows software they already
had. But it also had a huge negative effect in that very few vendors
developed any OS/2 specific applications. Why should they? If vendors
simply wrote apps for Windows then the huge number of Windows users
could run the app and anyone using OS/2 could also run the app. In the
end the number of OS/2 specific apps was basically non-existent which
helped lead to to its demise.