How high will Microsoft fly? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?

MSFT 485.49

+1.8%

Nov 26 3:59 PM EST

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To: William Chaney who wrote (33423)	11/9/1999 1:40:00 PM
From: Bob Drzyzgula	Read Replies (3) of 74651

Win-OS/2 also played a pretty big role. Once it was possible for OS/2 to do a decent job running Windows apps, the incentive for ISVs to develop PM-based apps kind of evaporated. Vendor after vendor abandonded any plans they ever had to go OS/2 native. Probably some of the best OS/2 support in the 2.1 timeframe came from Word Perfect, in that they had a little utility you could get off their BBS that made it easier to launch the Windows version of Word Perfect from Presentation Manager. Even IBM never saw much point in dumping any money on PM versions of the Smart Suite applications once they bought Lotus. OS/2 was without a doubt a "better DOS than DOS", but it never came close to being a "better Windows than Windows". Once the primary thing one could do with OS/2 on the desktop was run Windows applications (OS/2 remained a kick-ass server for some time), it was kind of difficult to find the point of continuing to use it; all it did was get in one's way. After a while you couldn't even get OS/2 with Win-OS/2 bundled, so you had to go buy a copy of Windows to make it work, thus removing the incentive of even the rabid anti-MS crowd, leaving only the companies who had painted their doors blue and really didn't give a crap about Windows apps to keep OS/2 from a final death. Solid binary compatibility between competing operating systems is one of the last steps along the way for the death of whichever one holds the inferior applications base. Watch how well SCO's new ability to run Linux applications will help it maintain it's market share. Not. Solaris X86 is kind of in the same boat; watch the few ISVs selling Solaris X86 apps abandon that OS in droves as the Linux compatibility gets better. --Bob

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