Mxsmanic wrote:

John Doe writes:


Given your persistent single level quoting only, the context of your
argument is anybody's guess, but if you're talking about the time
Microsoft Windows succeeded over IBM's OS/2, Microsoft won the
battle by virtue of having all of the APIs from Windows 3.1 to use
with Windows 95, and the huge base of applications to go with it.


OS/2 could have supported Windows applications, but it didn't (at
least not completely and well).

Well, they did, in fact, eventually tout that OS/2 would 'run Windows
software' which, in market terms, is tantamount to declaring Windows 'the
standard'. And then one asks, why not just get 'the real thing'?

IBM completely misjudged the market and what 'the competition' was. It
wasn't 'windows', it was MS Office. People didn't give a rat's behind what
the O.S. was, they wanted Office to work and it ran on Windows so, you get
Windows.

Which is why OS/2 fans can scream all they want about how OS/2 was
'technically superior' because the only 'technical' thing that really
mattered to the market was how well MS Office ran.

Now, if IBM had teamed up with Wordperfect, back when Wordperfect was still
the defacto PC word processing standard, and developed a GUI version along
with OS/2 they might have been able to successfully compete in that arena.

In those days Microsoft was the underdog, and the angry young males
were rooting for it instead of IBM. It's amusing to see how history
is now being revised so that the currently dominant player can be
portrayed as the bad guy even back then. We're not at war with
Eastasia, we're at war with Eurasia.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.