On Monday, October 17, 2011 11:45:59 PM UTC-4, Jack wrote:

It was next to impossible to buy a copy of OS/2.

I bought several copies at the Electronics Boutique store in the local mall. It was not at all difficult to obtain.

Most every PC was sold
with DOS/WIN installed.

So what? Anybody who wanted something else just had to buy it and install it, same as today.

Worse, the retailers rarely had
copies of OS/2 to sell, either because IBM didn't provide them copies,
or, because again, fear of MS punishing anyone that sold something other
than MS OS.

Electronics Boutique was a retailer. And they were not the only one that had OS/2 on the shelf.

IBM wanted MS to develop a system that they could use for their ATM
machines, and DOS/WIN was crap (still is) MS either was too dumb (my
guess) or had some other lame reason to not be able to deliver. (I
recall it said that MS told IBM it was not possible) IBM then did it
themselves in about a year, and it was awesome. IBM killed it's
development when it was selling a million copies a month despite their
lack of support. My opinion is they never wanted that part of the
market because of the "pins and needles" mentioned above. At the time,
there was an obvious, and uncomfortable disconnect between IBM OS/2 team
and the rest of the company. It became clear IBM had no intention of
moving in on MS, why is open for speculation.

If you think that IBM needed Microsoft to develop an OS for them you're clueless. IBM was shipping 32-bit preemptively multitasking protected virtual operating systems when Bill Gates was still in high school.

Microsoft bailed on OS/2 because Windows was making much more money for them, pure and simple.

And if IBM was selling a million copies a month then it must have been more available than you claim.