Your friends are right.
OS/2 was a more stable product. In addition, it had multitasking features before Windows.
IBM made several mistakes:
1) The name "OS/2" was very similar to "PS/2". This confused many non-technical people, who came to the mistaken conclusion that OS/2 only ran on PS/2 machines. PS/2 machines had only a tiny portion of the market, so it was difficult to convince software developers to create products for such a small market.
2) The resource requirements were much greater than Windows. You need to buy 16M of expensive memory and a 386 box, whereas Windows could run on a 286 machine with 8M RAM.
3) IBM insisted on making the graphics programming interface incompatible with Windows, over Microsoft's objections. Windows already had an established software base, which made it difficult to port programs from Windows to OS/2.
4) IBM mismanaged their relationship with Microsoft. It was difficult to split the market between Windows and OS/2, so Microsoft proposed that IBM buy 25% of Microsoft to align their interests. This was a reasonable proposal for maintaining their alliance, but IBM chose to alienate their partner.
5) OS/2 had extremely poor software development tools for many years, as did Windows. Neither OS had a graphical debugger for many years, even though the Macintosh already had several available. IBM should've funded the development of better compilers, but they didn't think it was important.
By the time of the IBM-Microsoft divorce, the game was already over. Microsoft had an enormous amount of patience in dealing with IBM, but a software company can't deal with a hardware company that devalues the importance of software. |
