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. _______________________________________________ Gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
