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OS/2 Warp

Yes, and when Windows 95 was released, OS/2 was still quite a bit better. But IBM failed to market the product and see what we have now.....
 
Nope.

OS/2 died on the vine. People that knew used OS/2, but most people didn't know it existed. No internet, you see.

You had Apple.

It was IBM + MS vs Apple, so IBM said we need a GUI based OS, or people will stop buying PC's and use Macs, so we are going to make OS/2. MS said don't rush yourself, plenty of people use DOS and Macs are expensive, I'll make a GUI shell you can run ontop of their old DOS installs on the same PCs, and you perfect your Mac OS killer.

MS on the side was also suppose to make a server OS to go along with that, at that time IBM was still alergic to Unix and needed a powerfull server to work with the PCs. So MS bought a bunch of VMS developers and started working NT (it wasn't originally suppose to run on PC's though)

So MS released Win3.1 (BTW MS developers still ran Unix at that time 😉), it stopped Apple and solidified business uses of PCs for the forseeable future.

But when it came time for MS to step aside and drop DOS for OS/2, they decided they didn't have too and competed against IBM, using their current DOS and Win3.1 market share for leverage. IBM lost it's stranglehold on the PC hardware, and now most PCs weren't PCs, they are PC Compatables. Then came along Win95. (another dos shell, that lied about it.)

Nobody knew what OS/2 was. They knew what Win3.1 was, and it sucked, but everybody said that Win95 would rock.

The rest is history.
 
Originally posted by: M16Grenadier
They should release OS/3 Warp!
Hell yes they should....I ran OS/2 since version 2.0. Beat the HELL out of Windows back in the day. I'm still convinced it was better than any version of Windows until 2000 came out. Damn you IBM for having such a sh1tty marketing department!!!
 
Originally posted by: StormRider
The sad thing is that back in Win 3.1 days, OS/2 Warp really was a better Windows than Windows!

back in those days, *ANYTHING* was a better Windows than Windoze...
 
Actually, IBM screwed it up even though they were told in detail what they need to do.

First, we complained mightly that MS had MSDN and did everything they could to make it easy and cheap to develop (if you every wonder why Windows is so big, that is the single, biggest reason). It fell on deaf ears for awhile, but the finally released some developer tools. The samples were good, but not as rich as anything MS had for Win 3.x or 95. The only saving grace was Borland and Charles Petzold released materials that helped. The IBM compiler was pretty good, but the Borland tools were easier to use.

But really buggered it for the technical standpoint was network connectivity. It was a nightmare to install. It took me about 6 months working with Madge Networks, Novell, and with begruding support from IBM to get IPX/SPX, NetBEUI/NetBIOS, and TCP/IP working. I finally deleted my last copy of the procedure some time last year. 😉 It improved a little with 2.1, but it was not until Warp (3.0), that it came as part of the base package. Installing it was still a little wierd.

Compare that to 95, which installed it out of the box. NT 3.1 also had it integrated (MS had to write their own Novell drivers as Novell's were unstable - had to reinstall NT 3.1 numerous times while just trying to install the Netware drivers.)

And to this day, I still sometimes right click on the desktop to shutdown. Oops.
 
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