To: Dale J. who wrote (12964 ) 12/31/1998 11:51:00 AM From: QwikSand Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Why didn't the Unix camp recognize what Gates and IBM were doing in the PC world early on? Why didn't Apple recognize Gates had a better business strategy and change? Why did IBM develope OS/2, an OS that needed 4MB of RAM at a time when the average computer had only 1MB of RAM? and Microsoft developed OS/2, with Microsoft doing much of the work for many years. Microsoft did by far most of the original crapazoid 16-bit 80286 software architecture that made the original OS/2 take 4 MB. NT replaced OS/2 as the horse Microsoft would ride in 1990, only after the two companies divorced because of cultural and business conflicts as each tried to screw the other. By the time NT started up it was obvious that a portable 32-bit large-memory system was needed...but it was round two for Microsoft, after the one they threw away. IBM also had to completely rewrite the OS/2 garbage that was designed originally by Microsoft but by the time it came out in a usable form, Windows had already locked up the OEM channel and the ISV base just as MSDOS did 9 years earlier. IBM had only their own machines plus shrink-wrap retail, a totally hopeless situation for building volume and the critical mass of applications that follow volume. This whole situation had nothing AT ALL to do with quality of technology; the bad technology was mainly Microsoft's.
